Rant #1: Games are getting soft

[tenentenen]

Jump to 2011, and now we have Epic Yarn. It's a cute game, and it's just as fun to play as past kirby, but I have one huge beef with it. IT'S TOO EASY. Instead of flying over everything with the price of not enjoying the game, you can now play through the game without paying attention to enemies/pits and you'll probably enjoy it just as much (Or more) than the average gamer. The reward for playing well is minuscule when compared to past Kirby games. So you unlock more things and maybe a secret ending for finding all the items and collecting enough gems. Big whoop. Most people (Myself included) just don't care enough to play through a game that doesn't reward good playing.
Unfortunately for you and for your readers, you lost most of your credibility when you wrote the bold statement. The very mention of that line showed your bias, and it came off quite strong. By letting the reader know that you are a)lazy, b) unmotivated, and c)biased, they have no reason to trust your statements on Kirby's epic yarn.

I think that the main "Beef" people have with Epic yarn, is that it isn't a traditional Kirby game, and so they dismiss it as being the easy surface game, which is actually quite shallow. Looking at Epic Yarn from a relativley unbiased viewpoint, there are many wonderful things about key that make it one of the better platforming experiences in recent years.

For example:
-The art style is very creative, new, and innovative.
-Not only is the art style visually creative, but the art style is seamlessly integrated into the gameplay.
-The game IS challenging in a fun way if you actually Play the game. (Play meaning experiencing all parts of the game to their fullest.)
-The creators stayed true to the general motif of kirby, ei: transformations, fun spirited, colorful, cute.

In the future, you could try looking at games objectivley, and playing them without personal bias, it may increase your enjoyment, or it may decrease it. This is nothing against you, It just happens to be one of my pet peeves when someone makes unbased claims due to bias.

QUOTE(Tonitonichopchop @ Mar 8 2011, 01:12 PM) There should be a challenge in completing the core, game, but in Epic Yarn, there's none.

KEY's gameplay elements INCLUDE going the extra mile, you also have to look at what the intended purpose of the game was, as well as the intended audience to do a complete analysis.

 

[Law]

Saying it's less difficult due to fewer buttons is faulty logic.
And there have been plenty of successful 3/4 button fighters.
All it has done was remove the difficulty/chance of fumbles from pressing the wrong button.

Good job proving my point.

Good job proving you're not very good at reading and think a / means it's the end of a sentence.

 

[King Zargo]

Games are Soft......ware.....

HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!! Get it? I made a funny.

I am f-ing genius.

 

[purplesludge]

Saying it's less difficult due to fewer buttons is faulty logic.
And there have been plenty of successful 3/4 button fighters.
All it has done was remove the difficulty/chance of fumbles from pressing the wrong button.

Good job proving my point.

Good job not reading the whole thing.
QUOTE

If anything it has put more emphasis in the actual fighting.
Now more than ever you need to know your match ups, what works and what doesn't, how each character interacts with eachother, and so forth.

Also if your point relied on people accidentally pressing the wrong button its not a very good one.

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

Jump to 2011, and now we have Epic Yarn. It's a cute game, and it's just as fun to play as past kirby, but I have one huge beef with it. IT'S TOO EASY. Instead of flying over everything with the price of not enjoying the game, you can now play through the game without paying attention to enemies/pits and you'll probably enjoy it just as much (Or more) than the average gamer. The reward for playing well is minuscule when compared to past Kirby games. So you unlock more things and maybe a secret ending for finding all the items and collecting enough gems. Big whoop. Most people (Myself included) just don't care enough to play through a game that doesn't reward good playing.
Unfortunately for you and for your readers, you lost most of your credibility when you wrote the bold statement. The very mention of that line showed your bias, and it came off quite strong. By letting the reader know that you are a)lazy, b) unmotivated, and c)biased, they have no reason to trust your statements on Kirby's epic yarn.

I think that the main "Beef" people have with Epic yarn, is that it isn't a traditional Kirby game, and so they dismiss it as being the easy surface game, which is actually quite shallow. Looking at Epic Yarn from a relativley unbiased viewpoint, there are many wonderful things about key that make it one of the better platforming experiences in recent years.

For example:
-The art style is very creative, new, and innovative.
-Not only is the art style visually creative, but the art style is seamlessly integrated into the gameplay.
-The game IS challenging in a fun way if you actually Play the game. (Play meaning experiencing all parts of the game to their fullest.)
-The creators stayed true to the general motif of kirby, ei: transformations, fun spirited, colorful, cute.

In the future, you could try looking at games objectivley, and playing them without personal bias, it may increase your enjoyment, or it may decrease it. This is nothing against you, It just happens to be one of my pet peeves when someone makes unbased claims due to bias.

There should be a challenge in completing the core, game, but in Epic Yarn, there's none.
KEY's gameplay elements INCLUDE going the extra mile, you also have to look at what the intended purpose of the game was, as well as the intended audience to do a complete analysis.


I never stated I wasn't biased (As this is my rant/opinion). I don't hate Epic Yarn by any means, but the amount of fun I had with the game was minimal since there is no challenge involved if you aren't aiming for 100%.

I do try to look at things objectively, but looking past something like no difficulty is impossible for me since my basis for enjoying a game is challenge and reward.

QUOTE(Tonitonichopchop @ Mar 8 2011, 08:21 PM) QUOTE(Zarcon @ Mar 8 2011, 10:14 PM)

Saying it's less difficult due to fewer buttons is faulty logic.
And there have been plenty of successful 3/4 button fighters.
All it has done was remove the difficulty/chance of fumbles from pressing the wrong button.

Good job proving my point.

Good job proving you're not very good at reading and think a / means it's the end of a sentence.

He said my logic is flawed that less buttons doesn't mean an easier game. Then he states all that having less buttons does is remove the difficulty and less chance of fumbling the wrong button.

That was exactly what I was saying.

 

[Zarcon]

Others have already pointed out what I meant so I won't go on about it.
If the game was so easy now we wouldn't see the same exact people making it to the final rounds and winning tournaments.

Have you played MvC3?
Online?
I can assure that the moment you run into one of these players they will wipe the floor with you.
The only difference would be that you might have thought you had a better chance with the "dumbed down" controls.

[EDIT]

Good difficulty is when you can blame yourself for the loss.
Bad difficulty is when you can blame something else for the loss.

With MvC3 when you lose it's because you didn't know the match up or you got too greedy.
With MvC2 when you lose it might have been because you hit the wrong button.
So many times have I heard "Oh, he tried to do _________ but it looks like he accidentally _______ instead and it cost him the match."

Especially in fighting games, you shouldn't lose because of input. You should lose because the other player was better than you.

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

Others have already pointed out what I meant so I won't go on about it.
If the game was so easy now we wouldn't see the same exact people making it to the final rounds and winning tournaments.

Have you played MvC3?
Online?
I can assure that the moment you run into one of these players they will wipe the floor with you.
The only difference would be that you might have thought you had a better chance with the "dumbed down" controls.

I never said the game was easy, simply that it's easier. Like I said in my first post, I'm not a pro gamer or anything like that, but achieving a higher level of play is easier with a 3 button style than it is with 4. It just seems like a step down rather than a step up, that's all.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Games nowadays are so soft!

And MvC3 has a great fighting engine. Instead of making it based on the lame memorization of overly complicated combos, it was based more on knowing what attacks to use when and reflexes. It's easy to play, hard to master. It sure beats the hell out of spending forever to learn ludicrous combos in other fighting games.

And there's nothing wrong with an easy and fun game. Epic Yarn is exactly that. It's not terribly challenging but it's a lot of fun to play, especially with a buddy.

There's plenty of challenging games today and plenty of fun, easy going ones. Plus nowadays a lot of games rely on multiplayer for challenge. Even if you're quite good at a game's multiplayer you'll probably meet someone just as good or better than you.

 

[Law]

Games nowadays are so soft!

QUOTE(Law @ Mar 8 2011, 08:12 PM) I just played some Demon's Souls and it totally isn't as hard as people say it is.

(I'm probably going to eat these words later)

It totally isn't very hard, you just have to know when to keep fighting and when to walk away and lick your wounds.

edit: then again, FROM SOFTWARE have been working on their controls this gen. If Demon's Souls was released during the PS2 era it would have been much harder* just because FROM SOFTWARE hadn't figured out good control schemes yet (AC2 I'm looking at you)

*but not in a good way

 

[Zarcon]

Others have already pointed out what I meant so I won't go on about it.
If the game was so easy now we wouldn't see the same exact people making it to the final rounds and winning tournaments.

Have you played MvC3?
Online?
I can assure that the moment you run into one of these players they will wipe the floor with you.
The only difference would be that you might have thought you had a better chance with the "dumbed down" controls.

I never said the game was easy, simply that it's easier. Like I said in my first post, I'm not a pro gamer or anything like that, but achieving a higher level of play is easier with a 3 button style than it is with 4. It just seems like a step down rather than a step up, that's all.

I edited the previous post, but I'll elaborate a bit more.
It's not really easier.
It's easier to get into, the level of entry has just been lowered, but the skill cap is still up there.
It might seem easier until you play against people who really understand how the game works and what each character is capable of.

 

[Sylar1]

Wall of Text, use the enter key bro

Play Demon Souls, it's stupidly hard.

 

[Demonbart]

Play Kingdom Hearts on expert. I dare you.
Also, Megaman 9 and 10.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

I could rattle off plenty of games that are hard as hell on the higher difficulty settings...

But you see, that's the beauty of it. Most games have a difficulty slider. I see TONS of people complain about how EASY a game is, but when I check their achievements/trophies they have only completed that game on easy/normal. You don't like it? Bump up the difficulty.

You want a hard game? Play Dead Space 2 on Hardcore. Play Halo Reach on Legendary. Play Demon's Souls NG+. Play ANY modern bullet hell shooter. Play a fighting game with the 360's D-pad (I kid, I kid.)

My point is, yes games are easier these days...But they can also be difficult if you feel like playing with the settings.

Besides all this...What does difficulty matter? As long as you are having fun, who cares how difficult it is or isn't? If you're the kind of person that likes getting your ass handed to you every time a trash enemy bites your ankle, and that's how you get your fun, well, awesome for you, but you certainly aren't the norm.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Play a fighting game with the 360's D-pad.

Fixed. I love the Xbox 360 controller but the D-Pad is seriously shitty.

And yeah, many people don't know about just cranking the difficulty to max on a game. Most games on max are decently challenging.

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

Play Kingdom Hearts on expert. I dare you.
Also, Megaman 9 and 10.

I've done all three. Any other challenge you got for me?

 

[Zarcon]

I could rattle off plenty of games that are hard as hell on the higher difficulty settings...

But you see, that's the beauty of it. Most games have a difficulty slider.

The thing about difficulty settings is that...it's almost always stupid/cheap difficulty.
Like everything having stupidly high health.
I just shot this human guy 30 times in the head and he isn't dead, really?

 

[darkreaperofdrea]

i see too much people living in the past

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

Updated the first post into a few sections. I know it's kinda long, but it's a rant and I didn't really expect anyone to read it anyway.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

I could rattle off plenty of games that are hard as hell on the higher difficulty settings...

But you see, that's the beauty of it. Most games have a difficulty slider.

The thing about difficulty settings is that...it's almost always stupid/cheap difficulty.
Like everything having stupidly high health.
I just shot this human guy 30 times in the head and he isn't dead, really?

To be honest, I'd rather have that than "NES Hard"

 

[Tonitonichopchop]

I could rattle off plenty of games that are hard as hell on the higher difficulty settings...

But you see, that's the beauty of it. Most games have a difficulty slider.

The thing about difficulty settings is that...it's almost always stupid/cheap difficulty.
Like everything having stupidly high health.
I just shot this human guy 30 times in the head and he isn't dead, really?

To be honest, I'd rather have that than "NES Hard"

I somewhat agree. The one problem I have with "NES hard" is the difficulty in having to retry a boss or stage. You're almost always required to work your way back up, and since lives are limited, you don't have all the time in the world to learn a boss's fighting tactic or to learn how a stage works.