Game musings and news

[Mongrel]

Wound up searching for more space-y games that alolow trading, piracy etc. Stuff like the 'X' series of games, Escape Velocity: Nova, the upcoming Star Citizen, and so forth.

Jesus, what a boring, self-important overstuffed bunch. How does something so conceptually ridiculous generate so many mercilessly dreary games?

I'm not asking for much, I just want to yell YARRR a lot, have a laser peg-leg and a robot parrot, and make people walk the SPACE PLANCK.

[Classic]

I guess the DS Infinite Space game is probably not something you'd be stoked for.

[pacobird]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2103144/ ... e-now.html

[Mongrel]

Haha, it turns out that maybe someone is actually making the exact sort of game I was looking for after all?!

http://cosmo-nautica.com/

I mean, there's very little so far, so maybe this goes nowhere or ends in development hell. But, like, maybe not?!

[beatbandito]

Finally Finished with his work on the Blue Bomber, Inafune makes a huge leap into a brand new type of character. The Azure Striker.



fr srs though this looks like megaman zx / gunstar heroes and should be legit

[Thad]

This is great fodder for our separate discussion about filing the serial numbers off existing characters. Capcom mismanages the Mega Man franchise into the ground; Inafune takes the opportunity to strike off on his own and do it his own way. My views on whether individual creators or profit-driven corporations are the better arbiter of how to properly manage a beloved franchise (Star Wars notwithstanding) are well-known, and this is a tremendous Fuck Yeah! moment for me.

I've been a Mega Man fan since I was 8. But I've never been the kind of fan who cares more about whether his name is Mega Man or he looks exactly like Mega Man than whether the games are actually good or fun.

Hell, Mega Man Legends is as good an example as any that the Mega Man name is less important than the gameplay or the general vibe. (I sometimes wonder if it was even intended as a Mega Man game in the first place; were the handful of Mega Man trappings part of the premise from the beginning, or were they mandated by Capcom in a backfired attempt to boost sales?)

Parish says it all better.

Me, I’m just looking forward to seeing Inafune file off the serial numbers for Mega Man Legends and give us an obvious analog to that series, too. You know it’s gonna happen sooner or later. Hopefully later. Gotta give those other Mega Man-alikes some breathing room, after all.

Hell yes.

I would rather have a Mega Man Legends game with Inafune at the helm and no Mega Man Legends branding than a Mega Man Legends game with the Mega Man Legends branding and no Inafune. (I was definitely one of the people who was relieved, instead of outraged, when MML3 was taken out behind the woodshed and shot. I want MML3 done right or not done at all.)

I'm very excited about this -- and dammit, I'm going to have to get me a 3DS one of these days. But in the meantime, I guess I'll wait on the PC release of Mighty No. 9.

[Mongrel]

Has there ever been a AAA or AA game that has a character creator that allows you to choose something other than a variation on a platonic god or goddess?

I mean, where you can make your character snarly, grizzled, scarred, or just plain ugly - body type sliders are a bonus - short, fat, lumpish, skinny, arm or leg missing (Caveat: your character is a human or humanoid - games where you play a Kaiju or demon from hell or whatever probably have plenty of ugly options). And I don't mean grizzled like "Your Hayden Christensen man-toy has slightly greying hair at the temples", I mean a character creator where you could make a one-eyed Charles Bronson circa Death Wish IV. Or how about a Dame Edna.

I can't think of any, but there must be some. Though it can't be bloody many. Hell, have there been any low-budget small-time games that do this (though an elaborate character creation engine is mostly a recent, high-end thing).

In fact the only thing I can think of that's halfway close is the time Sharkey played that fat naked Sith dude on the KOTOR MMO.

[Classic]

SWTOR, which isn't quite what you'd expect from "KOTOR MMO" has 4 body types per gender. And only one of them is lumpy fat man.
Also, as far as I can tell, all of the female body types is impossibly thin and stacked.

...
Didn't we praise Saint's Row (2) (3?) for having a ridiculous character creator?

Also, I feel like I've made an ugly character in Demon's Souls. But I don't know that they looked anything less than supremely athletic.

[Mongrel]

Yeah I don't mean "ugly" in the sense of "Garry's Mod rictus grin, lol!"

[patito]

You can make pretty ugly dudes in demon's souls and dark souls, even before you get into the grotesque. Saint's Row has a pretty wild variety of body types if you wanna make someone super fat or super skinny. All Bethesda game's characters are super ugly by default, but everyone gets to have the same body. Dragon's Dogma's character creation was neat because the bodytype you chose actually affected gameplay, if you were a huge dude you could carry more stuff but were slower than small character, so sort of a cliche but I can't think of another game that has that.

So yeah, most of those are AAA game or close to that.

[Cthulhu-chan]

Dragon's Dogma's character creation was neat because the bodytype you chose actually affected gameplay, if you were a huge dude you could carry more stuff but were slower than small character

Actually tall characters were faster than smaller characters when walking, due to longer strides. Both sprint at the same speed. Tall characters also have better reach. Really, being small and light only gave a few benefits. You could fit in a couple of small underground openings, your stamina regen was much faster (but your stamina pool was smaller), and climbing ate less stamina over time. Pretty much every other advantage fell to being a huge meat wall.

[Brantly B.]

Elder Scrolls Online does have a fat slider so you can be fat. Good ol Phantasy Star Online did too. Fable and GTA: San Andreas could make you fat, under the right conditions.

[Friday]

An interesting example is WoW. At launch, all of the Horde races were pretty damn ugly, or cow. Not surprisingly, this led to there being more Alliance than Horde (despite Horde having access to Shaman and therefore Bloodlust, which made them strictly better than Alliance at raiding, and also the infamous original incarnation of Will of the Forsaken, which made them strictly better at PvP, and therefore completely strictly better at everything).

Some servers it was really bad, with the Alliance outnumbering Horde as high as 3 or even 4 to 1.

So, then BC (the first expansion) came out, and WotF was toned down, Alliance got Shamans and Bloodlust, and in general the Horde was nerfed quite a bit. This led to the Horde vastly increasing in size because now they could be pretty Blood Elves, the new Horde race.

tl;dr: human beings value being good looking over actual in-game advantages

That gives me an idea! MMO where your character looks fucking awesome and you can just hit checkboxes for additional powers/stats but each time you do it makes your character uglier and uglier until finally you are a godlike ugly fat burn victim with misshapen tits and a huge nose constantly shitting his/her pants

[Friday]

Double amusing that when BC came out, the new Alliance race, Draenei, had a global raid +1% hit racial. So for awhile the Alliance was strictly 1% better at raiding because they didn't need to gear that 1% hit and could instead get 1% more of something else, like crit.

Probably the best example of how human beings value being good looking over skilled is the sheer number of Blood Elf hunters. Orcs have amazing racials for being a hunter, and Blood Elves have only a close range (not where a hunter wants to be) short duration silence.

This did not stop a plague of blood elves running around with their cat pets.

(pssst, having a 1% advantage over the Horde did not stop the flood of Alliance players endlessly bitterly complaining about Blizzard favoring Horde, because the Alliance was too stupid to realize they were better)

[Mongrel]

I don't think that "ugly" is necessarily the best descriptor of what a lot of these games are missing; it essentially boils down to character. The ability to add even a few facial lines, a better choice of expressions, slightly off-perfect body types, and so forth. I don't want to be the Elephant Man, but I'd love to be able to play a character that looks like James Garner or Michael Caine or Forest Whitaker, or anyone else who's by no means ugly, but certainly wouldn't make the cut for a Twilight movie.

That probably sounds like a lot, and up until recently that WOULD be asking a lot, but modern games can probably achieve a lot of that with a few slider bar options for the starting model. And even (mostly older) games that only offer a library of premade player models could have benefited from a slightly wider selection of ages and looks.

Kudos to Saint's Row for getting close, but it's depressing that there's very little that's even close.

[Brantly B.]

That gives me an idea! MMO where your character looks fucking gnilley and you can just hit checkboxes for additional powers/stats but each time you do it makes your character uglier and uglier until finally you are a godlike ugly fat burn victim with misshapen tits and a huge nose constantly shitting his/her pants

That reminds me, I need to play Soul Sacrifice.

[TedBelmont]

Double amusing that when BC came out, the new Alliance race, Draenei, had a global raid +1% hit racial. So for awhile the Alliance was strictly 1% better at raiding because they didn't need to gear that 1% hit and could instead get 1% more of something else, like crit.

Probably the best example of how human beings value being good looking over skilled is the sheer number of Blood Elf hunters. Orcs have amazing racials for being a hunter, and Blood Elves have only a close range (not where a hunter wants to be) short duration silence.

This did not stop a plague of blood elves running around with their cat pets.

(pssst, having a 1% advantage over the Horde did not stop the flood of Alliance players endlessly bitterly complaining about Blizzard favoring Horde, because the Alliance was too stupid to realize they were better)

My mom's first and still main character is a belf hunter, which she literally rolled because she wanted to be pretty and have a pet.

[ocksi]

An interesting example is WoW. At launch, all of the Horde races were pretty grape ugly, or cow. Not surprisingly, this led to there being more Alliance than Horde (despite Horde having access to Shaman and therefore Bloodlust, which made them strictly better than Alliance at raiding, and also the infamous original incarnation of Will of the Forsaken, which made them strictly better at PvP, and therefore completely strictly better at everything).

Bloodlust wasn't introduced until level 70 (TBC)

[Rico]

FEAR WARD

[Friday]

FROST SHOCK

my bad on the blood lust.

hey guys remember when slows affected charge's movement speed good times