It’s what drew me too, but even those who enjoy the game right now seem to think a few patches, maybe several, will only improve it. Here’s to hoping because what @FinnegansFather is saying isn’t appealing to me either.
So, a 70 is a good score if a game is “niche”? Isn’t that like saying a D is a good grade if you are a [insert race/nationality]?
(I’m not saying this particular game deserves a higher score.)
No. I am saying a lot of niche games I consider good get a 70. This game would not cater to the larger group as cleanly or tightly as say Divinity. It’s not a poor score nor is it a “D”.
Well of course it’s not a D, it’s a C-. And obviously when you account for the 7/9 scale it really is closer to a F because really any game below 7 will give you literal cancer or something /s
(I do get your point, and agree. Games that are intentionally niche tend to be less broadly appealing, and therefore more prone to lower grades)
Yeah Pathfinder right now is played in spite of the Kingdom stuff.
It’s a weird feedback loop. The kingdom stuff helps with kingdom stuff and not much else. If you ignore it you can totally lose the entire game though.
It’s extremely not compelling. Add in that later in the game it becomes like Tetsuo at the end of Akira and… well yeah.
Tom COULD be right…
I don’t mind having options. Set it as whatever “normal” is and that is how I will play the first run. If I like the game or something annoys me, I like having the opportunity to tinker.
Well I didn’t say I thought he was… it is the Great debate… I just thought … well --he COULD be right.
I’m having an issue with Prison Architect similar to the issues brought up here. I’m just not sure what “default” difficulty mode that game is balanced around. There are so many toggles and settings I can use to set up a game, that I’m not sure if I’m adding or removing an appropriate amount of challenge every time I check or uncheck a box. I just want to play the game in a way where it will provide challenge and win/lose conditions without me having to decide beforehand if I’m going to win or lose or not based on actual features i can choose to turn on or completely ignore.
I try playing what I think might be a default sort of game, but there’s no real challenge, and nothing scary ever seems to happen. As an example, I figure I can choose to Enable Gangs, but I was hoping something like that might happen organically in a regular sandbox game under certain circumstances without me having to strong-arm the Gangs into my prison by checking a box. But no, that feature seems to be off limits unless i specifically toggle them on.
In my current game I have unlocked all buildings, programs, grants, and everything else, but everything is so routine, day after day, because nobody ever gives me any real problems, there’s plenty of money to go around, and I can just set up and assassinate the few problem prisoners I have (with special cells, escape tunnels, and snipers) without any penalties or second thoughts.
I think the game can be a lot of fun, but it seems up to me to decide if I want to turn it into an actual game or merely a toybox full of Legos and Meeples.
I’m not really asking for help with this game, so I didn’t put all of this in the PA thread, I just don’t stop thinking about this thread the whole time I play the game.
I feel part of the game (like Papers, Please and various others) is to determine what actions the player is willing to take in pursuit of the goals the game sets. You have found an answer to this question where it comes to “problem” prisoners that I suspect may differ from many other players. I wonder if the difficulty settings are so nuanced for this very reason.
What do you think about how it’s done in, say, Imperialism? For all the available options, adjusting them changes a visible difficulty rating for the game. (The difficulty then acts as a score multiplier at the end of the game, which I think also fixes Tom’s initial complaint.)
I played White Day over the Halloween period, which is a mediocre survival horror in the vein of Clock Tower, and they completely dropped the ball and peed the bed in managing difficulty levels.
To get “all” endings, you have to get every single ending on every single difficulty mode. Each one counts separately. So that’s 10 ending x 5 difficulty levels = you have to complete the game 50 times. You can technically cheat your way around this by reloading save files AND making a complete backup of your PS4 file on a USB stick, but even the trophy OCD shouldn’t subject themselves to this.
But there’s worse. The only really good part of the game is that there are 20 ghosts hidden in the school. Most of them are really cool and surprisingly better looking than the actual humans of the game. It’s literally the only reason you should play White Day. The problem is that they only appear on Hard and the game does not tell you this. Technically it does tell you, but only in a loading screen tip which means you’ve already started the game and it’s too late… and you might never get the tip anyway. And despite all those endings, the game is not really worth replaying.
What I mean is that there’s an argument to be made about having only one difficulty level versus having multiple. However, you can at least get the basics of creating difficulty levels right.
Which inspired:
Solid points.
Commandment 4 feels very focused on the enemies. New or tougher player objectives are a good possible source of difficulty, as are restrictions on the player, e.g. Thief 1/2 where the higher difficulty levels require you to steal more stuff and don’t allow you to kill any humans.
Jesus. Fuck that noise so hard.
On a separate note, I don’t think difficulty should be something you choose once at the beginning of a game and can never change thereafter, because a) you have no context for that choice at the beginning - even if games do like you say and tell you what changes, you haven’t played the game to actually understand the difference on a real level, and b) difficulty is rarely an even and player-friendly curve over the course of a game, and being completely stymied by a difficulty spike 50+% of the way into the game is the absolute worst. Now, my solution tends to just be to play on the easiest difficulty because I often don’t even know if I’ll be allowed to adjust the difficulty later and I’d rather just be able to progress. But if I could rely on being able to change things later, I’d actually be willing to try harder difficulties.
This isn’t literal right. They didn’t actually end the game with play the whole game again on this other level to get the real ending?
Well, they used to do this in the olden days. Contra III on SNES does that.
Furi, when playing on Promenade, is insultingly easy by basically scrapping entire phases from bosses, and bosses are the entire game.
Cuphead, which I haven’t played, does something similar:
That seems worded a little different though. It might be harder, see more stuff but presumably you got the “real ending.” Like what you said makes it sound like the end of the game is different, not just the challenge.
Well, if I remember this right, the “final” boss of Contra III only shows up on the hardest difficulty and the ending is also different.
Pratice mode for Double Dragon II ends abruptly after a few levels and the true final boss only shows up the hardest difficulty.
I’m sure I’ve seen more examples, but nothing more comes to mind right now.
EDIT: Thank God for the Internet, where everything pop culture-related is already chronicled in detail!
Good ol’ dependable Contra:
I played this game and Double Dragon although I don’t know we ever made it to the end. My meager allowance and homework as well as limited TV time restrictions made it hard to finish games we rented. As a kid this would probably not have bothered me, as an adult, profanities would emerge.
Taunting players because they haven’t gitten gud is not cool.
I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, technically it’s even worse, but Ghosts & Goblins is pretty famous for asking you to beat the game twice in one shot to get to the “end”.
