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Post by Xeogred on Mar 21, 2019 20:51:18 GMT -5
I like all 7 of those, 20thcenturygamer! Some great discussions here. I kind of want to say ultimately, it's just in my DNA. There have been a few short points in my life where I maybe stepped out of retro gaming for some period of time, like early 7th gen era when Halo, CoD, XBL, were all the rave while I was in high school/college. It was easy to get caught up in all the AAA buzz with bros and the advent of the internet gaining popularity. But this gen I've since then fallen back on my more trusted instincts, brands, genres, and developers, etc and it's worked out very well. Back to the main point, I grew up on the NES and those games never magically "got bad" at any point years later. The same applies to everything after that and before too! Even if I'm not big on the pre-NES era, I can easily see the appeal. Time shouldn't fully dictate the quality of something. Classic novels, movies, music, etc, can stand the test of time and that applies to videogames as a newer art form as well. Outside of this brief moment in my timeline, I've always had a balance of playing old games mixed in with the new and have consistently kept that rotation going forever.
The indie scene and what small team developers go for nowadays are proof that a lot of old game design was simply awesome and never needed to be abandoned. Sidescrollers have once again lived on like Iga always told us, because many of those experiences cannot be transferred to 3D space. And vice versa! It's become another "style" of game and I think people are opening up to that. I feel like graphics have become less important nowadays even to the mainstream gamer, though of course many still don't want to go back and play older stuff.
That said, I'm extremely picky about indie games. My initial prerequisite tends to be requiring pixel art and sprites. It's far more than just a throwback to old tech, it's a great art style and aesthetic that can still look amazing to this day when done well. But not a lot of indie games go for that. A lot of times I think, why don't I just play more old games I missed out on? Instead of hitting up more modern indie releases. I appreciate the historical approach Tsumuri mentioned as well and can get like that myself. Deus Ex blew my face off when I played it back in the day, I had previously never played anything with a blend of genres quite like that. Years later I got to Ultima Underworld and Looking Glass games to further expand my knowledge and experience on that style of game, where the blueprints started, etc. It's all fascinating. I did two years of game design in the mid 2000's with Maya Studios and I became even more fascinated to know everything behind a game, I love knowing about the developing process, the staff specifics, composers, directors, tricks they did with the programming, etc. It's crazy to me to beat retro games nowadays and watch a credits roll that's maybe 10 people max? 10 people back in the day made this. That's amazing.
Long story short, this is really a question I don't even ever ask myself. I just play retro games and always will. I'm sure a dose of nostalgia and my timely birth at 1987 certainly helped shape my tastes and path in life, but if you could erase my memories and put Super Mario Bros, Mega Man 2/3, Metroid, Zelda, and Blaster Master in front of me right now, I would fall in love all over again.
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Post by Ex on Mar 21, 2019 21:27:57 GMT -5
1. Challenge. Tough, fair, non-optional challenge. 2. Instant action. No load times or tutorials, rarely any excessive menu navigation. Just press power, press start, kick ass. 3. Chiptunes: The lost art. Even modern attempts at aping the sound of older hardware rarely ring authentic because they're not truly bound by the same limitations. I want my video games to sound like video games, not films. 3. No Internet bullshit. I mostly play games to get away from other people, thanks. <-AMEN.4. Brevity. I can finish most non-RPG retro games in a single play session, maybe two or three for an extremely challenging title. They're not glorified second jobs designed to eat up hundreds of hours of your time just because they can. 5. Completeness. No DLC, no loot boxes, just one (1) whole video game. 6. Characterization and story. Or, rather, the lack thereof. Simon Belmont doesn't need to talk, just whip. Fewer words can be so much more and I can't stand how modern game characters are never content to shut their mouths and leave anything to my imagination. 99 out of 100 games these days are ludicrously overwritten. 7. Inventiveness. The drive for increased realism in game graphics has made many titles more "grounded," less wildly creative and downright weird. This is definitely not true for every game, but it drags far too many down to drab mediocrity. Less photorealistic skin pores and more technicolor acid trips, please. I'm with you 100% on all of this except perhaps 6. I do love me some impetus driving narrative. Although when the narrative is bloated and navel gazing, as a lot of modern video game writing tends to be, yeah that's not so good. On 5; one positive of being a habitual late-to-the-party gamer, is you can buy complete collections of releases. I mean you can buy the "ultimate" or "game of the year" versions of games, and it will include all the DLC released. Because it does so irk me to buy a new game on a console/handheld, and then a year later it gets ported with a bunch of new content added to it for a PC release. That happened to me plenty of times in recent years. On 4, it does surprise me that anyone post-college age can manage to beat 50-100 hour long games routinely. I don't know how they can play that much and still be a functional adult. Although as toei said, I think a lot of gamers only finish 30% of these huge modern releases, and then just jump aboard the next shiny hype-train. Personally I'd rather see shorter games with more polish instead. Quality > Quantity
Number 3... hard to get into my real thoughts on this without majorly digressing. But I'll say that young generations are overly reliant on technology to interact with one another, to the detriment of in-person friendships. Face to actual face isn't valued as highly, and is frankly awkward for many young adults. Communicating over apps approximates a feeling of friendship, providing a (faux) sense of social validation. And it's easier than having to get together in meat form. Ergo group gaming with others online further staves the pangs of loneliness via party by proxy. I believe this era of simulated unison drives the rise of MMO-Xgenre gaming in general. BUT for a disgruntled misanthrope like me, I couldn't care less to play games with strangers.
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 21, 2019 21:41:05 GMT -5
I'm with you guys on #3. Even though I technically don't have many old consoles hooked up right now (gravitating back to more emulation thesedays), it sure is pure bliss to turn on a system that has no connection to the internet or anyone else whatsoever. Gaming is 95% solitary for me and the other 5% I guess with some fun couch co-op/fighting game nights at a friends every few months, or the one very rare game I might group up with people online for once a year, if even. I pretty much always put my status to Invisible Mode on Steam nowadays and have kept my current gaming friend lists as trim as possible for the least possible distractions. Leave me alone, I just want to play a game.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 22, 2019 13:07:50 GMT -5
1. Challenge. Tough, fair, non-optional challenge. 2. Instant action. No load times or tutorials, rarely any excessive menu navigation. Just press power, press start, kick ass. 3. Chiptunes: The lost art. Even modern attempts at aping the sound of older hardware rarely ring authentic because they're not truly bound by the same limitations. I want my video games to sound like video games, not films. 3. No Internet bullshit. I mostly play games to get away from other people, thanks. 4. Brevity. I can finish most non-RPG retro games in a single play session, maybe two or three for an extremely challenging title. They're not glorified second jobs designed to eat up hundreds of hours of your time just because they can. 5. Completeness. No DLC, no loot boxes, just one (1) whole video game. 6. Characterization and story. Or, rather, the lack thereof. Simon Belmont doesn't need to talk, just whip. Fewer words can be so much more and I can't stand how modern game characters are never content to shut their mouths and leave anything to my imagination. 99 out of 100 games these days are ludicrously overwritten. 7. Inventiveness. The drive for increased realism in game graphics has made many titles more "grounded," less wildly creative and downright weird. This is definitely not true for every game, but it drags far too many down to drab mediocrity. Less photorealistic skin pores and more technicolor acid trips, please. I agree with a lot of these. Not all, but my disagreements more fall into contextual situations more than outright thinking they're wrong. The first point, I can mostly agree on because a lot of games just aren't that challenging anymore. But a lot of retro titles were challenging for all the wrong reasons. I read a writeup a while back that talked about challenge, and how difficulty often boils down to leniency and fairness. A lot of retro games were just plain unfair, but ones that did it right recognize this and offer the player some fallback. These are games like Ninja Gaiden, where sure, the game is brutal, but unlimited continues lets you take as many cracks at it as you like. Even Holy Diver, one of the most ridiculously unfair games I've ever played, lets you keep battering away until you make it or give up. Or even "easier" games like Donkey Kong Country or various Mario games. Those can actually get quite difficult, but the game doles out lives fairly copiously, so it doesn't feel quite so bad. Then you get easier games that might have limited continues, or something like that. The worst examples are something like Battletoads or Ninja Gaiden III (US), where not only is the game rather unfair (especially Battletoads, but I'll get to that in a second), but it lacks leniency as well with limited lives and continues. I still think those are good games (perhaps even great), but those design decisions don't actually help them. And then there are the games that are just hideously broken, which seems to be less of a problem in the professional space these days. You can still see it in the indie community, however. Speaking to Battletoads, one of the ways the game is unfair is that the game does a poor job teaching what is expected of the player. Many of the deaths aren't telegraphed at all: they're "gotcha" moments because it throws so many new things at the player. It's very much a memorization-based game. And yes, there's nothing wrong with those, but games like that should probably be lenient with punishment. Its best feature, the wild creativity and constantly throwing cool new stuff at the player, is at odds with the restrictive continue system. I think it would be remembered much more fondly if it had unlimited continues. I'm pretty much completely on board with 2, 3, 4, and 5. While I can suffer through the pangs of modern gaming for good games, the immediacy is absolutely an appeal, as is the lack of all the Internet-related junk that comes with patches, DLC, and the like. And I've been thinking about what makes chiptunes so special, and I do think it's that the best composers used the limitations of the chips to produce great music. I think the best of those works embraced the limitations, and didn't try to sound like "real" music in the areas where it couldn't really achieve that goal. For instance, the Genesis sound chip has no shortage of terrible soundtracks, but then you get absolute gems, I think because composers leaned into the strengths of the chip instead of trying to approximate real instruments. Inventiveness is absolutely important. I don't mind realistic games; in fact, I quite enjoy a few. But since video games are often meant to be escapism, realism shouldn't always be the goal. I do think we're starting to hit a point in modern gaming where the benefits of each successive generation do less for the realism aspect, so there is more branching out into stylized worlds. That's a good thing! Lastly, I like story in games. Now, not bloated story that serves no purpose. But even then, I will take it if the gameplay is strong enough. Golden Sun is an example of a game that could get by on about a third of the text that is there: it's pretty badly overwritten. But the puzzles and battling keep it all engaging. But I love deep lore in games, I love reading in RPGs, it just has to have a point. But that doesn't hold true for all games. I don't need reams of text in DOOM. Much like you, I don't care for tons of story in Castlevania. Give me an excuse to go kill Dracula again, and I'm good. But again, it just all depends on the context and the mood I'm in. Sometimes, immediacy is good, and sometimes mini-novels are what the doctor ordered. (Which reminds me, I do need to try to make another run at Planescape: Torment or finish off Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter.)
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Post by Ex on Mar 22, 2019 14:05:12 GMT -5
With modern game OSTs, I super get sick of classically orchestrated stuff. I've heard it in many different genres. I really don't want a symphonic suite as the background setting to a first person shooter. I much prefer more imaginative instrumentation and composition than classic symphonic OSTs offer in general. Every modern fantasy WRPG I've played all sound the damn same in their OST department. By that I mean the orchestrated music sounds uninspired and just bland, kinda kludging all together into a mishmash of mediocrity. I can think think of one modern(ish) JRPG that had a GOOD symphonic orchestrated OST:
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Post by Sarge on Mar 22, 2019 14:15:55 GMT -5
Yeah, unfortunately a lot of modern games go for film-style orchestration, which means they tend to be more evocative of moods than actually having strong, memorable melodies and hooks. Great classical music had memorable melodies! They weren't just mood pieces, but they still managed to communicate them, while still having the sort of stuff that sticks in your brain!
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Post by 20thcenturygamer on Mar 22, 2019 14:59:19 GMT -5
See, I don't mind limited continues at all. In fact, I love them in many instances. I think there's a case to be made for a middle ground between no safety net and one that's present, but not unbreakable. One of my favorite examples is Blaster Master. It's a real pressure cooker of an experience for a multitude of reasons: The moment-to-moment gameplay is demanding and requires a careful approach and a lot of precision (especially in the overhead segments, where damage sustained has the secondary effect of downgrading your weapon). It's also a long game that will take most players multiple hours to complete. Finally, you know the whole time that you can only mess up so much before your run is blown. All these factors combined make it feel like both a sprint and a marathon simultaneously, and one with high stakes to boot. It results in such a state of tense, focused immersion that it's one of the best experiences I've had on the system (or any system). An unbreakable safety net in the form of unlimited continues or a save system would be fatal to that tension. The very lack of these features is what makes Blaster Master *work*. I thought I was going to keel over when I first finished it, it was such a rush.
And yes, Battletoads is a pure memorization and a huge pain in the ass. I hesitate to call it fun. Would I have really cared when I finally got my first warpless run otherwise, though? Hell, no. I'm glad every game isn't a straight-up troll on its players like Battletoads often is, but that's what makes finally wiping that smirk off its face feel so good. I'll call it a unique case.
In general, I'll fire up an unlimited continues game when I want to relax and a limited continues one when I want to to hunker down and go into full "eye of the tiger" gaming fight mode.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 22, 2019 16:10:50 GMT -5
Yeah, there's something to be said for that, too. It wouldn't quite be the same if you didn't have games where you just have to dig deep for the win. Stuff like Battletoads, Ninja Gaiden III, and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! are some of the most meaningful "wins" in my gaming repertoire.
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Post by Ex on Mar 22, 2019 16:49:03 GMT -5
Stuff like Battletoads, Ninja Gaiden III, and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! are some of the most meaningful "wins" in my gaming repertoire. Where would you place Urban Reign in that list?
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Post by Sarge on Mar 22, 2019 17:39:01 GMT -5
It's there. It's definitely, most assuredly, there.
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