[Baines]

God Hand didn't have the greatest print run, but I haven't had much issue running across it after release. It might not have had a great print run, with stores not ordering heavily, but it didn't exactly sell through that well either.


The game does get repetative though. There are less new enemy types than I expected based on the first few stages. Combat arguably starts to break down a bit near the end of the game.

And an annoyance is that while New Game+ makes nearly everything available at the shop from the start, it doesn't carry over either money or what you have bought. So you either have to cheat or spend hours or days building up cash in the casino to take advantage of what is available at the shop. This really kills the idea of going back to a beaten game just to have some beatdown fun.

As for keeping the Kick Me sign, I'd think the later boss fights would start to drag severely. Later bosses have really high HP to counter the really high damage Roulettes you get, and how often you can activate your God Hand as well. (Since a longer bar means you can get more activations in a fight.) The final boss takes what? At least five Double Shaolins? Which presumably does more damage than the regular Shaolin, which itself does I think 1500. How long would it take to bludgeon it to death with just regular moves?

[Baines]

[Baines]

[Baines]

Mercenaries was okay, but needs to go a ways further before it could justify being its own game.

It certainly isn't what I'd want main Resident Evil to become. The pace doesn't sustain itself for more than short bursts.

As well, it doesn't take a horribly long time before you can outlast what Mercenaries mode throws at you. More enemies in general at once isn't a solution, which mostly leaves cheaper enemies or more of the stronger enemies at once. (Such as the Garradors in the castle, or being chased by two Dr. Salvador X on water world.)

Such mechanics would probably be better spent on something like a GTA/RE crossbreed. Not Dead Rising, but bearing some simularities. (Unless you just wanted something like PN03. Which is what Mercenaries is based upon to begin with.)

[Baines]

[Baines]

Once you learn how to dodge, you can do okay with most move sets. (Warning: A few moves are restrictive on being able to cancel into a dodge. Some are still good. Others can be a bit too much of a gamble.)

Different people find different things they like. For most enemies, you can get away with a lot. Even if your moveset is weak against something, you can cover with God Hand activations, Roulettes, and weapons.

For example, if something blocks a lot: You can use a guard break. You can keep pressuring in the hope that they stop blocking and get caught (or at least keep him pinned while you catch his allies in the same flurry). You can stop to bait something you can counter, either with a dodge or with an attack that ducks high attacks. You can activate the God Hand. You can use a Roulette (if you are in a position to connect one before the opponent counters.) You can run and chuck an object at them.

You get people with different strategies. If you look at movesets of different players, you'll find different combinations that all worked. Heck, some people rearranged their movesets for different situations. Some swear by guard breaks, and others swear at them. While everyone agrees on juggles being good, it is extremely easy to make juggle combos (and to keep them going with skillful cancelling between your Square combo and other attacks.)

[Baines]

How would you address the lack of need to customize though?

If you make enemies vary so much in attack and defense styles that you need to alter your moveset when you reach them, you introduce the hassle of constantly having to rewrite your moveset. That would in turn kill the near pure action pacing of the game.

You could let the player create two or three style sets that they can quickly switch between. That avoids the problem of constantly rewriting a single move set. But to encourage use, you'd still need an enemy variety that pretty much required a player have a couple of different styles. As well, where would you put a quick switch on the controls? If you have to go to the menu, you are back to interrupting the pacing.

A key thing to remember was also one of the goals of the game design, to make a fun 3D version of the old (often mindless) 2D side-scrolling beat-em-ups. Add too many complications and you start to drift away from that goal into something else.

[Baines]

[Baines]

[Baines]

[Baines]

The Gamecube version pretty much felt like a concept test of a real game, that Sega would only bother to finish for another console if it proved successful.

For example, it was missing so many "obvious" things, like any form of team edit.

The success rate of the special shots was flat out broken. It only took a couple of games to notice that the real success rate was in no way related to what the developers had presumably planned. From what I recall, this was even more noticeable in that the game gave "fake" stats for simulated CPU vs CPU matches? The stats didn't even come close to what the CPU did in a real match, much less being proportional to a human player.

Etc...

I wasn't the only one with such an opinion. It seemed a pretty common online sentiment amongst people that *did* like the game.

[Baines]

I know about knocking the padding off the goalie. And it takes less than an hour of play to learn how to completely abuse the CPU.

Neither of those change that the super shots are no where near what the development team was aiming for, described as, or even presented in stats. And it only takes a couple of games to notice.

As for any form of team edit, the game kind of needed it. Overall, it is about as barebones as a barebones Sega arcade game conversion (like 18-Wheeler.) Sega can do better than that. Heck, they did much better with Super Monkey Ball.

They put a nod towards editing, but didn't do anything with it.

What do you get for editing? You only buy equipment for your team. You don't have to think or anything though, because all the equipment can be worn simultaneously. You're basically just picking what stat you want to level up first, knowing that all will be leveled by the end.

As I said though, it isn't just the above, but rather an accumulation of various things. Though being completely off on the shots is bad, when it was so readily apparant. (At the time, I suspected the power shots were rebalanced without anyone bothering to retest them. Last minute tweak or just thinking they had it right or something.)

[Baines]

Megaman might not be the best example.

Yes, each boss had a weakness against a particular weapon, but you could also beat any of them with the regular gun. Some were easier to beat that way than others, but the game didn't force a particular choice. (Some of the later games vary in different ways in this regard.)

Metal Blade is a special case admittedly, because it was a broken design. It was effective the regular gun with the addition of 8-way fire. At three shots per sliver of gauge, you really could replace the regular gun. Capcom never again made another weapon that was as all-around good as the Metal Blade.

Also, from what I recall the Metal Blade isn't quite as all-powerful if you play on hard mode. Wasn't US "hard mode" the only mode in the Japanese game, with US "normal" an easier mode added that mostly (only?) changed the damage/health levels? And the more favorable damage is what cemented Metal Blade's status.

[Baines]

[Baines]