Victor Vran - Tropico devs take on Van Helsing

[Harkonis]

I also haven’t had any of those issues on either pc here.

[Pod]

@KevinC

A goes left, D goes right, W moves forward, S moves back. It’s intuitive to me, it’s no different than a shooter out a third person game like WoW. In any case, it’s playable with a gamepad as well.

The limitations of click to move are that your movements and your attacks are tied to the same mouse location and it also needs to rely on pathfinding to get from A to B, instead of just being able to control which direction you want to go. Say I’m an archer on the bottom left corner of the screen and I’m shooting at a nasty boss with a devastating fireball range attack in the top right of the screen, while the rest of the area is filled with enemies and a few pillars to duck behind for cover. To attack the boss I have to move the mouse cursor all the way to the top right. But I also need to dodge a big fireball, which means I now need to move the mouse to the opposite corner of the screen. Unfortunately, when I do so in haste I accidentally click on one of the monsters chasing me. Instead of moving behind the pillar to avoid the fireball, I now pathfind in front of it because the game thinks I’m trying to shoot the chasing monster on the other side. Now my guy walks into a fireball and dies.

In a situation where I’m controlling with WASD, my mouse is kept on targeting the boss and I can tell the game exactly what I want to do, which is moving down and to the right behind the pillar. No misinterpretation of an attack on a nearby monster, no pathfinding miscalculation sending me up into the path of the fireball, etc.

Having movement location separated from targeting location also opens up things like dodging, rolling, etc.

I know this is from the last page, but I’d like to really highlight that I don’t think simply swapping one control scheme for the other is just for allowing different player inputs. I think such a change completely changes the design of game. Or rather, it SHOULD change the design of the game. So much so that if your game is twin stick, it probably shouldn’t allow click to move. As you say, with WASD+mouse you can basically walk backwards and shoot fireballs in any direction. That allows you to play the game in a completely different manner. Things like kiting are now much simpler.

My touchstone for this is Cannon Fodder. In that game you left click to move and right click to shoot. You can kind of do both at once, but only if you’re doing them in the same direction. Instead, most of the time, you’re frantically left-clicking on the left of the screen whilst right-clicking in every other direction. It’s this adrenaline-based, panicked mouse movement that makes up one of the major challenges of Cannon Fodder. You need to stay calm under that pressure as well as have the required mouse acrobatics to defeat the huge swarms of enemies.

But Cannon Fodder 3, made long after the first two, just used “standard” twin-stick style WASD+mouse, which basically kills the game for me. It’s now just another twin stick shooter. There isn’t much to differentiate it from e.g. Geometry Wars or Alien Swam or Running With Rifles etc other than the theme. You just run around calmly shooting lots of little dudes.

If this game is designed to work with twin-stick style controls, then surely those people playing click to move are at a massive and stressful disadvantage?

[KevinC]

@Pod

I know this is from the last page, but I’d like to really highlight that I don’t think simply swapping one control scheme for the other is just for allowing different player inputs. I think such a change completely changes the design of game. Or rather, it SHOULD change the design of the game. So much so that if your game is twin stick, it probably shouldn’t allow click to move. As you say, with WASD+mouse you can basically walk backwards and shoot fireballs in any direction. That allows you to play the game in a completely different manner. Things like kiting are now much simpler.

My touchstone for this is Cannon Fodder. In that game you left click to move and right click to shoot. You can kind of do both at once, but only if you’re doing them in the same direction. Instead, most of the time, you’re frantically left-clicking on the left of the screen whilst right-clicking in every other direction. It’s this adrenaline-based, panicked mouse movement that makes up one of the major challenges of Cannon Fodder. You need to stay calm under that pressure as well as have the required mouse acrobatics to defeat the huge swarms of enemies.

But Cannon Fodder 3, made long after the first two, just used “standard” twin-stick style WASD+mouse, which basically kills the game for me. It’s now just another twin stick shooter. There isn’t much to differentiate it from e.g. Geometry Wars or Alien Swam or Running With Rifles etc other than the theme. You just run around calmly shooting lots of little dudes.

If this game is designed to work with twin-stick style controls, then surely those people playing click to move are at a massive and stressful disadvantage?

I’m in agreement with you for the most part. I’m not trying to make the argument that all ARPGs should design around both click-to-move and WASD/twinstick equally, just that I would prefer they were designed for the latter instead of the former. It’s kind of the same thing with MOBAs for me. I get why the original DOTA controlled like a RTS, since it was a mod of a RTS game. But why does 99% of the games in the genre share that control scheme, when it’s a control scheme built around a genre where you need to be controlling multiple units simultaneously? It’s not terrible by any means, but I just think you’re limiting yourself a bit by strictly adhering to those controls in a game where you’re controlling one unit, for the most part (I know there’s exceptions, like the vikings in HotS).

I have similar issues with the ARPG genre. I love the original Diablo, I played the hell out of that game. But just because that was a control scheme settled upon in 1996, does that mean that every game in the genre needs to cling to that? Perhaps there’s a better way of doing it. To me it’s like if FPS games never adopted mouselook, because Wolfenstein/DOOM didn’t use it. It’s just one of those pet peeves of mine, when I deal with the clunk involved in click-to-move. Sure, mouselook gives a big advantage over using Page Up/Page Down, but that’s kind of the point. It’s a better control scheme.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to derail too far with my post. WASD+Mouse or twinstick is a clearly superior control scheme in this genre for my tastes and there’s been a frustrating lack of it (especially when I heard it worked so well for Diablo 3 on the consoles). The fact that Victor Vran went that route was enough for me to drop $20 on it, and I prefer the control scheme as much as I thought I would. :)

[Profanicus]

I have to say, this plays really well with a controller. It’s obviously designed for one.

[jg93]

This game is shockingly good. VO’d by the same guy who did the witcher. It reminds me of Bastion meets Diablo. Slick, plays great, deep gameplay, pretty. I just can’t say enough good about this game. For 20 bucks it’s a steal. Not sure how long it is though.

[Jab]

Tom’s review made me decide to check this out and I’m glad that I did. It’s more action based than Diablo 3, but I like just how much customization there is in terms of equipment. Right now I’m going rapier/shotgun and just laying waste to skeletons. I’m still very early in the game and I’m about to unlock hexes, which I already a few from starting on hard mode.

[rhamorim]

Rapier/Shotgun are my favorite “build” right now, but one of the fun things is that different enemies ask for different combinations. For instance, I was having issues facing a certain boss with my rapier/shotgun combo. After the third try, I decided to change my setup and go rapier/lightning gun (also changing a couple destiny cards and the potions I was using) and it worked like a charm. So make sure you have options and you’ll have an even better time with the game.

[Jab]

I’m not a fan of the lightning gun as I don’t want to stay in one place while being surrounded. I’m also focusing on life steal which is helping out a lot with the challenges where you can’t heal or fighting tyrant level enemies.

[rhamorim]

The trick with the lightning gun is in using skill 2 as the main damage dealer, and using skills 1/3 to mostly “paint” the targets instead of staying in one place spamming 1. If you get your timing/positioning right, and you manage to keep 3 lightning balls going around, it wreaks havoc on enemies. It takes a bit to get used to that “flow”, but when it “clicks”, oh boy, is it awesome! ;)

[tomchick]

Yeah, the lightning gun is responsible for some of my favorite “holy shit, I can’t believe how fast I’m clearing teh room!!!1!!!” moments in Victor Vran. I also got the legendary destiny card for the lightning gun, which lets get get your balls out quicker, keeps them out longer, and makes them do more damage. It gets a bit crazy.

-Tom

[rhamorim]

Ok, this sounds ridiculous, but it just might work somehow. :)

Motorhead stars in Victor Vran expansion

A tweet with some pictures:

Official Motörhead (myMotorhead)

[DaveLong]

Kinda not surprised Tom digs this. You were a Tzar fan too, weren’t you? Same devs. That was a great RTS game.

[divedivedive]

Well if this is a game that lets me get my balls out quicker and keep them out longer, count me in!

[Jab]

Lightning gun may sound awesome, but I’m coming around to the grenade launcher. Not just because its basic attack is AOE, but the explosive jump is a great “oh shit” skill when things go bad.

Also one tip I’ve found for anyone who gets stuck is to simply level up your primary weapon. Even though the game shows a full bar for upgrading the attack, you are only limited by the fact that the weapon level can’t exceed your level; so go nuts with pumping up the attack if you find that you’re just not doing the damage.

[rhamorim]

All weapons have their strengths and weaknesses, and some are better against certain enemies than others. For instance, trying to use the lightning gun in a place with plenty of electric spiders is suicide, since the lightning balls will go after any electrified targets including you.

That said, the mortar is great, particularly against slow single enemies like essences or huge mobs of mooks like skeletons. Skill 2 is pretty useful to soften up targets, and as you said, skill 3 is pretty great to get closer to enemies to engage them in melee, or to get away from a tricky situation. But it’s worthless against certain enemies, like spirits or gargoyles.

[BrianRubin]

I took the plunge on this today. SO FUN. So far I’m liking the shotgun/scythe combo with cards to add frost and explosion damage on impact. FUN. :)

[tomchick]

@Jab

Also one tip I’ve found for anyone who gets stuck is to simply level up your primary weapon. Even though the game shows a full bar for upgrading the attack, you are only limited by the fact that the weapon level can’t exceed your level; so go nuts with pumping up the attack if you find that you’re just not doing the damage.

So many of the upgrades are so incremental that it might seem pointless to upgrade the weapons. But, really, that’s the point of all the junk you’ll eventually accumulate in your inventory. There’s not much of a (any?) gold sink in Victor Vran because you should be dumping all your items into the crafting. So, yeah, you’ve got it exactly right that you want to pump your favorite weapon however you can. All that stuff isn’t doing you any good in your inventory and you’re never going to use it anyway!

-Tom

[tomchick]

What the heck are you doing in here, Rubin? Everybody knows there’s no spaceships in Victor Vran! :)

-Tom

[rhamorim]

@Tom Chick

Everybody knows there’s no spaceships in Victor Vran!

Yet. Considering a Mötorhead expansion has been announced, space is not exactly out of the question. ;)

[Jab]

@Tom Chick

So many of the upgrades are so incremental that it might seem pointless to upgrade the weapons. But, really, that’s the point of all the junk you’ll eventually accumulate in your inventory. There’s not much of a (any?) gold sink in Victor Vran because you should be dumping all your items into the crafting. So, yeah, you’ve got it exactly right that you want to pump your favorite weapon however you can. All that stuff isn’t doing you any good in your inventory and you’re never going to use it anyway!

-Tom

I had to get over my ARPG hoarder complex, but things have definitely turned around in terms of difficulty. Although I haven’t had much luck with getting wicked and divine stuff yet.