Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

[Shale]

Heart Gold: Picked up the third badge and dicked around at the casino until I earned enough coins for Dratini and Abra. Party is currently Bayleef/Flaafy/Furret/Geodude/Dratini/Kadabra. Going to have to keep an eye out for replacements for Kadabra, since I can't evolve the thing. Same with Geodude, but it'd be replaced anyway.

[DjinnAndTonic]

FF13 - Hey, played and finished this in Japanese. I'll keep it short because it's been discussed to death. Overall, I liked it. The game had a lot of polish over a solid battle system and generally avoided a lot of the things that are annoying in RPGs. It had some issues, like the Crystarium being a bit tedious to navigate, especially as the layers stacked up, but this was generally outweighed by the good, such as battles basically being unloseable. Game seemed like it was easy, but I found enough challenge in it to keep me interested. It could just be I suck at games (or that trying to read tiny Japanese text on my tiny Japanese TV made it hard to select commands), but I died often enough that I didn't feel like it was a cakewalk. Optima Change system is really cool - AI is intelligently programmed, and the enemy difficulty is simply increased to keep up with that. Changing the AI through the Optima Change system was just really intuitive and fun, so I'm definitely happy with how this part of the game was balanced.

Story was... a mixed bag. The concept of l'Cie was cool enough, and Cocoon had some decent world-building, but the execution of the ending was really fumbled. Characters were interesting to watch, though I didn't grow very attached to any of them or really empathize with their plights. Sazh and Snow ended up being the most likable in the end to me. I was pretty ambiguous to Lightning for most of the game. My feelings for Vanilla were up and down. She started off as a kind of curiosity with her perky attitude in contrast to the whole setting, then she started to really grow on me while everyone else was being emo, then she started getting really depressed too and it stopped being fun to watch her, then she got all lesbian-y with Fang and that was fun again. Fang is a lesbian, so it's in my contract to like her. Hope can die in fire over and over and over again. Fuck you Hope and fuck your development and your angst and your voice. How coincidental it is that his Mom has the same name as Snow's vigilante group. Hope made everyone else look better in comparison, at least. Villains existed even less in this game than previous games... awesome. The only thing I really understood about the far'Cie was that they're an entire race of gods with Sephiroth mommy abandonment issues. ...awesome. >.>;;

In the DL!?

Well, the game seems like it would translate into the DL well enough. Speed is kind of weird, since it depends on which ability the PC selects instead of 'how fast their turn comes up'. I'm leaning towards taking all PCs as average speed when using a full ATB meter, since a full ATB meter is the usual amount of damage one PC does in one 'turn'. Additionally, if they decide to use less a full ATB meter, then they could take their turn quicker (by a factor of X/5 of average, I suppose). This -does- present the problem of allowing PCs to use 1-ATB moves very quickly... though that's representative of how it is in-game, so I'm personally fine with it.

Lightning: Attacker, Blaster, Healer. Probably one of the better mixes for the DL, she gets solid physical and magical damage, though she'll probably lean more towards Attacker for everything by her Scene Drive Limit. Also, solid, infinite healing~. If she gets enough TP, she can play with Odin, too.

Snow: Attacker, Blaster, Defender. Not sure how to interpret Defender... but it seems like a losing role in the DL, unless you simply allow Snow to stay in Defender except when he 'gets a turn', then switches to Attacker, which would probably triple his durability? Shiva has healing, too.

Sazh: Attacker, Blaster, Enhancer. Sazh gets the offensive buffs, so his damage is probably better than Lightning's in practice, since he can use 1-ATB to quickly buff with Haste and Faith, and then switch to Blaster for Desperado.

Hope: Blaster, Enhancer, Healer, Whiner. Last Resort's usefulness doesn't translate to the DL, but gamebest magic stat is good. So is infinite healing. Don't think he gets the offense buffs, but increasing his durability with a partial ATB bar is a viable strategy.

Vanilla: Blaster, Jammer, Healer. Jammer is nuts. Damage + Debuffs is good. Infinite Healing. If you allow the FF13 cast to start with TP, Hecatoneir gets a 6-ATB bar. Only PC with ID! 2nd-best Magic stat. My kneejerk is that she's awesome in the DL, but I'd have to see some numbers (particularly durability).

Fang: Attacker, Defender, Jammer. Jammer, but with the speed manipulation stuff and gamebest attack. Highwind doesn't translate to the DL unless someone can think of a way to implement the Chain guage for opponents that don't have stats for one? I suppose if you took an average of all endgame foes, you could come up with something. Probably loses the most in translation? Bahamut isn't even all that special.

Vanilla > Sazh > Hope > Lightning > Fang > Snow for rankings? Their stats may balance them out more than I realize from just their skillsets.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

FF13 generally avoided a lot of the things that are annoying in RPGs.

This... is the most confusing thing I have ever read.  FF13 is almost everything that is annoying in jRPGs encapsulated very neatly in the first thing you see: "Press any button to continue." The game barely wants you to play it.

[DjinnAndTonic]

The battle system is entirely about timing and strategy switching, with a little bit of resource management and weapon-upgrading. The fact that it's more streamlined to hit 'Auto-Attack' when you were just going to select Attack 5 times anyway seems like complaining that Link's Boomerang comes back without you -telling- it to come back...

[Hunter Sopko]

Plenty of game playing lately.

Pokemon Sapphire- Been raising up the Metagross you get from Steven's house (woo Rash nature). Up to level 30 with that so far, as well as picking up the last of the wild pokemon I need to fill out the Pokedex. Met up with Latias once, but it ran immediately.

Sonic's Ultimate Collection- Picked this up in the GameDays sale, spent two hours playing Space Harrier after unlocking it. Also Streets of Rage 2. Good times. Started up a game of PSIV out of nostalgia. Man is Igglanova pathetic. Alys' portrait is wierd though, as it has two random black pixels making it look like she has a mustache.

Mega Man 10- Also picked this up, didn't get very far. Just beat Chill Man before putting it down.

[Cotigo]

The battle system is entirely about timing and strategy switching, with a little bit of resource management and weapon-upgrading. The fact that it's more streamlined to hit 'Auto-Attack' when you were just going to select Attack 5 times anyway seems like complaining that Link's Boomerang comes back without you -telling- it to come back...

The core problem isn't just that most JRPGs boil down to mashing X.  Making you only hit X once fixes that problem in the most superficial and asinine way but misses the fucking point.  Gameplay should be more engaging than just hitting a button and then watching pretty things.  Making you hit the button less often does NOT address that problem.

EDIT:  In fact, it just highlights the problem.  Once you take away mashing X, there's... nothing else.  Take your example about the boomerang.  Yes it would be shitty if you had to select the boomerang, tell it to come back, and then return to the battle.  However, that example sucks because LoZ isn't just flingin' boomerangs--if you had to make the boomerang come back you could just as well keep playing for a while before doing so.  When you take out all the repetitive attack selecting in a JRPG what you get is... playing with the AI every few seconds and then staring at the screen.

Yawn.

EDIT2: stupid fucking can't play mass effect 2 on my pc, stupid fucking conversations about the shittiness of jrpgs reminding me of that stupid fucking fact grumble grumble grumble.

[metroid composite]

NSMBWii

Okay, I have to admit 9-3 and 9-4 are downright awesome.  They're hard, but they're hard in rather creative ways that encourage me to use strategies I'm not used to using (9-3 puts me on the aggressive hunting down enemies which I could hypothetically just run past; that's very rare for me in a Mario game.  9-4 is...well 9-4 is mostly "that's a lot of Bob-Ombs").  And furthermore, they're not hard in terms of "you must be really, really precise because we're making all your ledges super narrow"--they're actually very non-rigid as far as challenging stuff goes, which is impressive from a game design standpoint.  (Usually when something is tricky, there's an obvious "right" answer).

[DjinnAndTonic]

The core problem isn't just that most JRPGs boil down to mashing X.  Making you only hit X once fixes that problem in the most superficial and asinine way but misses the fucking point.  Gameplay should be more engaging than just hitting a button and then watching pretty things.  Making you hit the button less often does NOT address that problem.

EDIT:  In fact, it just highlights the problem.  Once you take away mashing X, there's... nothing else.  Take your example about the boomerang.  Yes it would be shitty if you had to select the boomerang, tell it to come back, and then return to the battle.  However, that example sucks because LoZ isn't just flingin' boomerangs--if you had to make the boomerang come back you could just as well keep playing for a while before doing so.  When you take out all the repetitive attack selecting in a JRPG what you get is... playing with the AI every few seconds and then staring at the screen.

Yawn.

EDIT2: stupid fucking can't play mass effect 2 on my pc, stupid fucking conversations about the shittiness of jrpgs reminding me of that stupid fucking fact grumble grumble grumble.

Yes, it's entirely about playing with the AI every few seconds. Very rapidly in some cases. And when you aren't playing with the AI, you're selecting either specific commands from the buffing/healing classes, or you're timing how long to wait between attacks to keep a Chain going in the attacking classes. It's a pretty well-designed cycle, and works on top of the usual things that make jRPGs fun - character/party customization and pre-battle setup planning. It has the added layer of AI combination setups to further add to customization. You could argue it's all mashing buttons, but you could argue that of a lot of genres. I can mash buttons almost entirely at random, and if I do it long enough, I can beat God of War eventually (anecdotal). But I could also learn the correct method for beating different enemy types and get through the game more quickly/efficiently.

It's a simple core design with a few complexities added on when you look at it more carefully, which is pretty much what you want out of gameplay.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

So, "jRPG combat isn't very fun by its nature, so let's not have the player interact with it very much" is a better solution than "let's make combat engaging?"

[DjinnAndTonic]

My point was that twitchy button mashing and focusing crosshairs are not the only ways that games can be fun.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Of course not. FFXIII is all about button mashing and it's not fun at all.

When your designers have given up on making most of the gameplay fun and simply decide to automate it so the player isn't bothered to deal with it, that's a very bad sign for the game's direction in general.

[Cotigo]

My point was that twitchy button mashing and focusing crosshairs are not the only ways that games can be fun.

Which doesn't negate the fact that navigating menus and watching battle animations ISN'T fun.  Yes, there are other ways to make games fun--EDIT: Platformers, Puzzle games, Adventure games (which are really just a sub-genre of puzzle I guess), rhythm games, and the like are all great fun and aren't GoW/DMC type action games or FPSes  Nice strawman but no cigar. 

Anyway, JRPG gameplay hasn't been one of those for quite some time.  Now, I haven't played FF13 at all but from the sounds of it, it just takes FF12's gameplay to the next level of not doing anything during battles. Which, as I said previously--it TECHNICALLY solves the problem but only technically.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'll hedge my bets and just avoid the game completely.

[Just Another Day]

Of course not. FFXIII is all about button mashing and it's not fun at all.

When your designers have given up on making most of the gameplay fun and simply decide to automate it so the player isn't bothered to deal with it, that's a very bad sign for the game's direction in general.

I think of FFXIII as a small-unit tactics type of game, where the basic unit of control isn't really the character but the formation. I guess Ogre Battle would be another example (maybe not a great one, though I kinda liked it).  The point is, yes, if it were a standard ATB RPG then inputting command after command would be tedious. Luckily, that's not how this game works. I think it flows pretty snappily, and I think there's a pleasing amount of skill and reflexes in setting tactics and shifting from formation to formation to manage damage and healing and status and so on.

[SageAcrin]

jRPGs and wRPGs are both all about hitting buttons that make strategies go.

jRPGs take less buttons and have less strategies. This makes them simpler and more accessable. I've seen so many people turned off by needing fifteen million buttons and spells and skills to do anything and failing to do so makes them often dead.

(I love WRPGs, but this is still true, and some of them have been actively hampered by options-IWD1 for example is hosed over because it has tons of worthless offense spells cluttering the game up when a few of them are ridiculously good and balance is special and etc, it's not a bad game or anything but the options didn't help it a lot.)

If you don't like having strategy make a game go, RPGs have issues, but the point is that's mostly a taste thing. Yes, it does often boil down to mashing X as you know the strategy, but FPSes often boil down to mashing left click with the right movements as a strategy and have eight options or so and are fundamentally simple beasts as well.

Fighting games often boil down to a few given strategies for a given matchup and distance and mashing a few motions.

Puzzle games often boil down to mashing a button or two and knowing basic strategies in the case of the more action-y puzzle games like Tetris Attack, or in the case of something like Myst, using writing deconstruction skills(what, it's not like they're realistic puzzles. You just think like the writer instead.), which is admittedly standout for how different it is from normal for games but fundamentally would get old fast. And by "get old fast" I mean let's face it it got old halfway through Myst for most people.

Rythym games are all about mashing a few buttons in the right order. Platformers, basic strategy and mashing a few buttons.

Let's face it, gaming by and large is strategy+few buttons. RPGs just don't have the action element(in general). I can't see that it matters too much either way, except as personal taste, anymore than using motion controls instead of button mashing.

Oh, and as to watching animations? Meh, yeah. Games need animation skip. :| Granted, there's fighting games that have needed that too, objectively. and god knows there's been some damn puzzle games. why no I don't want to sit through some long animation every time I want to go through a hallway or something without skipping it(I wish I could remember a specific example of this. Loom maybe? I've played more puzzle games than I think, but I can't remember which one annoyed me for this.). That's more of an issue with the genre in general still lacking polish-somehow-than anything.

Eyecandy is always of subjective worth, but repetitive eyecandy is something that needs a skip option universally.

Edit:

Although I will state that it's probably an element of games really *loving* that hell-spawned "HOLY HELL MILLION HOURS OF PLAY" number they can put on their boxes to justify the 60-70 dollar investment in the game as being way better than 20 dollars into two hours of movie. It doesn't actually count if you make three times the content and then make someone watch it ten times over, guys.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Even barring the fact that the game's battle system not only prohibits you from actually doing things, but also greatly handicaps your ability to decide what to do, FFXIII is all about railroading the player down a slow-motion version of the Death Star trench from cutscene to cutscene. If Suda51 made it, it would be a deconstruction of the way these games play out, and it would also have better writing.

It doesn't WANT you to play it, it wants you to look at it and grudgingly allows you some small amount of participation, like you might to a kid.

[metroid composite]

Which doesn't negate the fact that navigating menus and watching battle animations ISN'T fun.

Oh?  Technically I think they can be on a basic level.  Even something like a main menu.  I remember the first time my mother touched a Wii, she spent a long time on the main menu, just experimenting with moving the cursor over the different items.  For that matter, and this pertains to animation, I've definitely had moments when I just sat back and watched the Demo Loop of the main menu.  And these can be creative--see SSX on tour, Metroid Prime etc.

Think about it--why do most videogame menus make little sound effects every time you move your cursor?  They don't need to (Windows doesn't bother!) but they do.  It comes down to an action-reward paradigm.  Why do some games do visual tricks like circular menus instead of keeping all menus in a blue rectangle?  They're competing for menu mindshare.

Don't get me wrong, if you want to keep someone entertained for 40 hours, you're going to need more than clicking sounds and looping animations; most menu tricks are on a more-like 3 second gratification time scale.  But RPGs do the "depth" thing pretty effectively--I'd wager it's why a lot of us like them.

Adventure games (which are really just a sub-genre of puzzle I guess)

I dunno about that--puzzle games are typically mathematical in nature.  Adventure games are typically focused on the literary and the exploration.  Actually, I tend to associate "Adventure" as a genere more with the exploration and backtracking half, just because the "Action-Adventure" genre tends to have exploration and absolutely no literary thinking.  But then...Phoenix Wright games get classified as "Adventure" games too, despite being 100% literary thinking.  Hmm..."Adventure" may actually need to split because it covers such a broad range of ideas.

Not that it'd be the first time genre's were divided up weirdly; I'm still weirded out that "First Person Shooter" and "Third Person Shooter" are considered completely different genres.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Which doesn't negate the fact that navigating menus and watching battle animations ISN'T fun.  Yes, there are other ways to make games fun--EDIT: Platformers, Puzzle games, Adventure games (which are really just a sub-genre of puzzle I guess), rhythm games, and the like are all great fun and aren't GoW/DMC type action games or FPSes  Nice strawman but no cigar. 

Anyway, JRPG gameplay hasn't been one of those for quite some time.  Now, I haven't played FF13 at all but from the sounds of it, it just takes FF12's gameplay to the next level of not doing anything during battles. Which, as I said previously--it TECHNICALLY solves the problem but only technically.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'll hedge my bets and just avoid the game completely.

It wasn't meant to be a strawman, just a subset of the genres that seem the most opposite in nature to what jRPGs are.

I guess the basic disagreement here is that you think 'navigating menus and watching animations' is inherently not fun, no matter what form it takes or what other pieces of the game exist. Honestly, I feel that most modern RPGs have streamlined the menu-based combat to the point that it -can- be fun, especially as a non-reaction-based expression of strategic play based on preparations. FF13 does a pretty good job of leaving the traditional RPG system in place while focusing on the tactics-changing aspect and uses automation to streamline how the time element was introduced.

And again, yeah, there's no penalty for dying against randoms, so conceivably you could just mash the attack button mindlessly and -eventually- you could win in most situations. But this applies to most reaction-based genres as well. The part that is entertaining is overcoming the game in a skilled/efficient manner, not simply making it to the ending. (Although, I suppose that is just my opinion too. Some people might very well only play FF13 to watch the pretty cutscenes. I don't really feel that's the best way to go about it, but obviously there are people who have this view.)

[Grefter]

I heard you found pressing buttons to cycle through lots of things in menus was boring, so here, we automated that for you and made it so you only have (Can) do it for one character, now all you have to do is pick "Now go back home, girl, and do whatever it is that you do!" over and over again, but hey we thought that might be boring so we gave you another menu to pick stuff from when you push a button.  Just to keep you occupied you will have to do this every three seconds.  Oh and it will stop to animate that second menu choice every single fucking time.  This is the exciting interactive combat system that flows well.

So in short.   FF13 is "Hey man, I heard you liked automation and menus, so I added automated menus with a side order of menus that let you select kinds of automation from".

Alternately just to be snarky.  FF13 is a small unit tactics game that is all about positioning where you have no direct control over positioning and 2 characters are pretty much entirely motionless.

Have I mentioned just how amazingly horrible this game is lately?  It doesn't do anything it sets out to do well at all.  Sure it is different in its own way, but that doesn't mean they were good choices.  Sure the game has a lot of polish, but the production value is so fucking high that if it wasn't that polished after that much money then some people would have a lot of explaining to do and a lot of dead hookers to be dumping.  Different ideas don't make a game good.  Polish doesn't make a game good.  Polish makes a good game great, but it doesn't stop shit from being anything other than a shiny piece of shit.

Edit - Oh and for all that I have said that the game is boring I don't necessarilly mean that it is entirely ridiculously easy, it can and probably will kill you sometimes, but it the very generous retry system culls most of the threat from a loss (here comes Risk vs Reward stuff again but from the other side of the coin in that there is absolutely no risk involved here other than a few minutes, which I honestly can't come down overly hard on because it meant this shit was over and done with sooner).  The game can kill you and make you change your strategy (to use defensive mechanisms that it gives you which are even MORE boring than the regular xxxxxxxxxxxxx attack gameplay).  That does make the game harder, but it doesn't make it interesting either.

[Just Another Day]

Oh?  Technically I think they can be on a basic level.  Even something like a main menu.  I remember the first time my mother touched a Wii, she spent a long time on the main menu, just experimenting with moving the cursor over the different items.  For that matter, and this pertains to animation, I've definitely had moments when I just sat back and watched the Demo Loop of the main menu.  And these can be creative--see SSX on tour, Metroid Prime etc.

It's not quite the same thing, but managing information can be plenty fun too, even if all you're really doing is scrolling through menus. Those of you who know me know that I can happily spend hours tinkering in FE10 menu screens (Suikoden 3 and FF12 also spring to mind); notably, I guess, none of those games have really inspired menu trees so much as good enough to not get in the way.

[Grefter]

And that is exactly why FE series is good at what it does when it works best (The series fails badly when you have to do more than cursor over a unit to know what it is capable of).  It is also exactly what is wrong about FF13.  You don't have any information or need any information.  You have a big flashing red light that tells you when to stop and heal, otherwise it is attack, buff, debuff, rinse, repeat.

Edit - I mean it keeps you active, but it is not engaging.  Stopping myself from falling over all day keeps me active as well, but I don't pay attention to it and I sure as shit barely paid attention to what was happening on screen when I beat the game (Did about half the missions as well for reference).

[DomaDragoon]

My point was that twitchy button mashing and focusing crosshairs are not the only ways that games can be fun.

Which doesn't negate the fact that navigating menus and watching battle animations ISN'T fun.

* DomaDragoon points at Pokemon

Yes it is. Like everything else, it's all in the presentation and the mind control crack waves that are beamed into your brain via radiation. I'm not going to get into the whole FF XIII debate, being that I don't own it and have never played it, but I just had to mention that some of us were dropped on our heads when we were young actually like that sort of thing, Zenny.

[Grefter]

Pokemon is presented as walking around and competing in blood sport and whatnot.  That is the essence of the combat system.  FF13 most certainly not an overarching plot of of pressing X over and over.

Also in Pokemon you are picking what to do.  In this you are pressing Auto Battle.  The difference is astronomical.

[Taishyr]

Derailing the derail with no real regrets...

VVVVVV: Beaten. Awesome little indie game. FLIP FLIP. I suck at it (1000 deaths+!) but hey, that's my playstyle (reckless as fuck if the option's available). Would definitely recommend for platformer fans, pricetag's a biiiit steep but fuck, the music's awesome, gameplay's pretty sweet, game's just overall quite nice. Sooo.

DQM: Joker: Finished Madame Rummy's Island Of Stupid. Interesting game conceptually, have the feeling it's building up to a Caravan-level "well, what now?" style letdown. Current team is a Phantom Fencer, Green Dragon, Dragon Slime, and Cluboon!Incarnus. Rank Incarnus, idly. Awesome skillset options, good stats.

FFXII: Still avoiding main plot. Act shocked.

[Grefter]

You will learn to regret it Captain Toro.

Chrono Trigger - Dimensional Vortex is a bit snoozish, but better than the other new dungeon.  The new post game loot is still silly with Magus armour and whatnot.  About half way through the thing.

ToV - So done most of the sidequest stuff I could be bothered with, starting on the final dungeon.  Just beat second last Secret Mission.  Is kind of sad that it has taken me this long to get around to finishing this, it is really good and it is going on 12 months since I bought it...

[metroid composite]

Oh?  Technically I think they can be on a basic level.  Even something like a main menu.  I remember the first time my mother touched a Wii, she spent a long time on the main menu, just experimenting with moving the cursor over the different items.  For that matter, and this pertains to animation, I've definitely had moments when I just sat back and watched the Demo Loop of the main menu.  And these can be creative--see SSX on tour, Metroid Prime etc.

It's not quite the same thing, but managing information can be plenty fun too, even if all you're really doing is scrolling through menus. Those of you who know me know that I can happily spend hours tinkering in FE10 menu screens (Suikoden 3 and FF12 also spring to mind); notably, I guess, none of those games have really inspired menu trees so much as good enough to not get in the way.

Well, right, and this is why having some depth to your game beyond making a "boop" sound when you move the menu cursor is a good idea.

And definitely there's streamlining that can be done.  For instance, the human brain can only weigh about 7 options simultaneously.  Pokemon is well-streamlined--when you're selecting a move you have four options; when you're changing Pokemon you have 5 options.  Fire Emblem also does this in places--like if I'm not mistaken you still carry 5 items.  When selecting supports, there's usually at most 7 support choices (note that using 7 itself is often slightly borderline--the brain is probably considering the back button as one of its 7 options).  When making a custom weapon, you can choose to modify 4 aspects.  If it's using the same weapon system, there are 8 weapon types to choose from (4 magic, 4 physical, so magic/physical split probably keeps us from going over the 7 cap), and within each of those weapon types, there's 4-5 different metals (bronze, iron, killer, steel, silver?)

So...yes: there is also informational design that goes into Fire Emblem menus to make them more fun (unlike the Start->AllPrograms menu in windows).