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JamesE
banned
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 1:48 am Post subject: Re: What is a fan? A miserable pile of secrets! |
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| Shapermc wrote: |
| Yes, we Castlevania fans are an abused bunch of people. The only thing that I can say in our defense is that it could be worse: we could be Sonic the Hedgehog fans. |
You are a Sonic the Hedgehog fan
Posting in boo hoo castlevania doesn't love us anymore thread #1943821a |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 2:04 am |
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| aerisdead wrote: |
| Rondo of Blood is very overrated. |
Word up - the character art ranges from insipid to pedophilic (and before the usual bunch of appeasers try to take my legs out from under me, they give a 12 year old huge, firm jugs - what the fuck is up with that?), the enemies are just sort of there (as they have been all along, of course!) and the control has it's usual chunky kludge which makes the game unbearably painful to those of us who enjoy not having to play as someone with simulated arthritis. It rides on good memories the same way Sonic Adventure rode on good memories.
HoD is an interesting curiosity if you have a cleared file, but it has a lot of problems with pacing and backtracking and absolutely no variety in combat. It feels like a decent Doujin game, which is probably the appeal to a lot of people. |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:04 am |
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| BotageL wrote: |
| JamesE wrote: |
| and the control has it's usual chunky kludge which makes the game unbearably painful to those of us who enjoy not having to play as someone with simulated arthritis |
I guess you didn't play as Maria. |
I didn't enjoy playing as Maria for asthetic reasons. Plus she's a secret character. |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:08 am |
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| showka wrote: |
| We the fans |
lol |
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JamesE
banned
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 3:40 am |
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I remember the build-up to Legion being amazingly sweet in Aria of Sorrow. The ghosts and the moaning. Aria is very polished, feels very complete. The hidden area is awesome. It was my first Castlevania.
Most Castlevania fans seem to have already decided in their heads what the series absolutely must be and this prevents them from enjoying the new ones. It is a sad thing to behold. Endlessly sad, like DonMarco talking about Mario 64 sad. |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 4:24 pm Post subject: Re: What is a fan? A miserable pile of secrets! |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| Okay firenze, we get it, you have mainstream gaming tastes. |
Oh, great. I was wondering when someone was going to turn this into Jocks vs Goths.
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| The fact that IGA's recent games have scored well has more to do with an absolute lack of ANY good 2D games than the particular quality of his own. |
I'm pretty sure that Dawn of Sorrow stands up well for itself, HOLY FRANCHISE aside. It's a big game with cool bosses, neat animation and fun, responsive control. I really dug the Werewolf fights and the room full of succubi you can clear by headstomping and the pentagram hell dimension. Aria was beyond excellent, into near-perfection. Dawn is probably objectively superior but a bit too samey. And PoR hasn't been released yet in the UK.
| Quote: |
| Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin are mildly entertaining 2D diversions that are largely devoid of interesting level design, enemy placement, or satisfying challenge. |
Enemy placement in Castlevania has always been predictable as shit, always - I'm thinking of stage 2 (normal route) in Rondo, where there are a handfull of annoying crows, then some axe armours, then a castle full of the usual respawning zombies. The first series has about as much to say about enemy placement as Crude Busters or Bad Dudes or Shinobi or any other 1980s side scroller. I can't think of anything as cool as the room in Aria with three pendulums or the one with the rotating blades you can slide and puppet-warp through flawlessly. It even has that big cool homage area where the Casltevania 1 starting area is all ruined and volcanic. Then there's the slide puzzle, or the area with multiple wolfmen, or the tower that becomes a shaft. Later, the inverted tower becomes interesting because of it's link to satanic imagery and symbolism, if not for it's cut and pasted-nature - but I'm sure there are areas in SotN like that, just the same. I remember playing them. Oh, and that boss who can stop time? Awesome!
You can either carry around 30 items or try not to get hit. You can play through the game without power-leveling. You have a choice as to how hard the game is, and if you don't take it, you only have yourself to blame. All of the bosses have paterns, all of them have "safe" areas. You are running into this thing as jaded 20 somethings and demanding it impress you. This is what is known as a "bad audience" in musical terminology. It's a sandbox game with multiple possible variations of souls, equipment and playstyles. It's hardly IGA's fault if nobody has the imagination to set up something interesting with such ample material.
Now, see what I just did there? I cited shit, not just repeated some ludacrious conceit Aderack tossed out in an article a few years ago. Show me this great NES era level design. Screengrab or a savestate, I'll take either. Because I don't believe a single word of it - Casltevania was a generic 80s action game with a weird weapon and a unique setting, not much more (until Bloodlines, arguably). |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 6:11 pm Post subject: Re: What is a fan? A miserable pile of secrets! |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| I agree about Aria of Sorrow, but Dawn of Sorrow is nowhere as focused or as tight as that game, and is further bogged down by a bunch of half-baked ideas that don't really work out very well. |
It's not good enough for you to simply throw out "this sucks and is half baked!" when you're not going to support it with premises, 2ps. On a more general note, SotN is anything but tight - riddled with item exploits, sequence breaks, weird design tangents and such things. It is in my considered opinion all the better for it.
So cite some stuff. Please.
| toups wrote: |
| -enemy placement: it's not a matter of being predictable or not but rather how well thought it is. In the first castlevania it's rare to encounter enemies that don't in some way enrich the challenge of the game. |
Here I'm going to suggest that perhaps you have fallen into the same trap Sonic fanbois have - insisting that rigid, punishing and poorly controlled design somehow "enriches" the game. You have been bent to the whim of the game, not vica versa. With DoS, the opposite is true - it's a game one can master and allow as much power as one wants.
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| Even something as simple as putting a skeleton at the top of a stairway means you have to be careful about how you time your climb so that you can reach the top without taking damage and still have time to kill it. |
"Even something as simple as putting a massive fatal drop near this chain of badniks means you have to be careful about how you time your homing dash so you can reach the other side". Do you see?
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| All of the post-sorrow games lack this attention to detail -- instead you have endless hallways filled with skeletons that go down in one hit from your (laughably overpowered) weapon. |
Which - and forgive me if I'm wrong here - is the laughably overpowered weapon you earned and sacrificed Souls for. Nobody makes you give up Soma's pocket knife at any point during the game - you are using the overpowered weapon because you are choosing to use the overpowered weapon. Part of the fault here is your own choice, which you made freely.
You are also missing the more obvious - that those skeletons explode into awesome, gratifying showers of bone, and it makes you feel good to dash through them with a morph soul. Crash bam smash boom! It's not like someone would complain Contra gave them a woody now, is it? It's a new kind of game with new rewards - rewards your bleeb bloop NES mindset refuses to let you reap.
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| it's also worth noting that with the more limited control setups of the earlier games, having more mundane enemy placement was still more engaging. you might find the crows annoying but it's things like that which give castlevania its unique challenge -- figuring out the best way to deal with unusual enemies like that and then planning accordingly. |
It was a very boring, insipid level. Also:
"It's worth noting that with the twitchier control setup, having more mundane badnik placement is still more engaging. You might find the Egg Wizards annoying but it's things like this which give Sonic Heroes it's unique challenge -- figuring out the best way to deal with the engine glitches ad planning accordingly." Do you see?
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| I'm not at all opposed to the controls being loosened up but the level design and enemy placement has to evolve accordingly to keep the challenge up, and it really hasn't. 90% of portrait of ruin is just cutting through hordes of disposable, totally easy enemies and then getting stuck at an unfairly difficult boss fight. this is not the way a castlevania game should be. |
The context and definition of "a castlevania game" as you see it ended in 1994/5. Then, with that series being put to rest, something new borrowed it's name. That game was SotN, and it is full of easy enemies and unfairly hard bosses. You are judging apples by the standards of oranges and it is not useful, helpful or insightful when discussing the games. Play Astroboy.
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| -the boss designs in both dawn of sorrow and portrait of ruin (with very few exceptions) are almost universally abysmally bad. they are either pathetically easy or frustratingly cheap. boss design is not an area that the original castlevania excelled in but was something that was done far better in nearly every sequel (part III, IV, Bloodlines, Rondo, and even SotN are have some very tightly designed bosses). even if you choose to not level up or use potions the challenge is largely artificial and based more on your stats then your ability to learn patterns and dodge attacks; the boss fights never become particularly engaging. |
I'm fighting through boss rush with a knife, axe armour soul and the werewolf soul for extra dodge, allowing myself to beat previously cleared bosses so I might experience new ones - Dimitri and whatisisface are the only low points so far. Pupper Master was excellent, the fish was fun, the flying armour was neat, they're all fine bosses, man. ALL of them have patterns, strategies and safety points one can exploit. Fighting Puppet Master was a real thrill, with his puppet swap attack. Nice art, too.
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| -IGA's games are about as sandboxy as Final Fantasy -- which is to say, you have endless customization options but the end result is always just seeing a large damage number appear above your enemy's head. |
No. Did you miss the souls? The way a knife is different from a katana is different from a polearm is different from a spear is different from a handgun is different from a claymore? They affect timing, arc of attack, vector of attack - everything. You are seriously busting out the objectively false in this thread. My knife fighting required a way different approach to my claim solaris fighting. Can't speak for PoR but then it's guys like you that moan for a "back to basics" approach all the time.
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| even the different weapon types don't do much to vary your attack strategy -- it's usually just a matter of doing more damage at a slower rate or vice versa. |
Sometimes it's fun to fight a final amour with a pocket knife. Fun. Not about winning - about having fun.
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| Anyway, yeah, Dawn of Sorrow had a lot neat things but they weren't held together well at all. I barely remember half the game at this point and this is after multiple playthroughs. |
"I cannot remember sufficient information to back up my points. I do not have a warrant".
And shaper, dude - I was responding to toups, but if you're going to trot out fanbait like this, you cannot expect it to stay light hearted. I take none of this personally, and neither should you.
| ShaperMC wrote: |
| it still never captures the feel of a linear platforming game |
It's not a linear platform game. People do not play shmups expecting a flight sim. MAME games are too easy if you credit feed them - you do need to limit your credits to meter out a reasonable challenge. That is a totally valid thing to say, what the hell? |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 6:35 pm Post subject: Re: What is a fan? A miserable pile of secrets! |
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Offended by language gender bias in this post
| dessgeega wrote: |
| JamesE wrote: |
| Enemy placement in Castlevania has always been predictable as shit, always - I'm thinking of stage 2 (normal route) in Rondo, where there are a handfull of annoying crows, then some axe armours, then a castle full of the usual respawning zombies. |
the chief difference between the recent, igarashi-directed castlevanias and the earlier ones is mobility. dawn of sorrow, the last one i played, for example, allows the player to quickly move and jump all over the place, wielding any of a variety of weapons that hit in a variety of directions, and to take very many hits before death (far more when using cheaply-available on-demand health-up items).
it's hard to build compelling level design around this because the player is given so many options. how can you have an enemy that attacks from a hard-to-reach location when the player can just bring up the pause screen and choose a weapon that can hit that location? consequently, most of dawn's areas are long, flat rooms where enemies wait for the player.
in the earlier castlevania games, however (let's use rondo as our working example), the player moves at a slower pace and has a more limited jump. however, the player's primary weapon has a long range, but only horizontally. positioning the player character before attacks is crucial. and the player's limited vertical mobility means that situations where enemies are placed above the player - such as skeletons who toss bones downwards - have to be approached with care and strategy, and well-considered use of sub-weapons.
here, i've gone and taken a few maps off of vgmaps.com. i'm going to go through them room by room.
images are big and may not be 56k-friendly.
stage 3 of rondo, main path.
the player starts at A, a multi-level room patrolled by spear knights. these knights have a great range of attack, and are often situated slightly above or below the player. this can be a pretty difficult room for a beginning player; killing the knights involves waiting for an opening, leaping in to attack, and leaping out again before they counterattack. knights on the upper level will occasionally stab down at a player on the lower level; if the player is armed with the axe sub-weapon, though, and enough hearts, she can take out the upper knights before even reaching the upper plane. there's a hidden health-up meat at the end for a player who's had a rough time with the room.
up the stairs at B's chapel, the game starts making the player have to contend with larger numbers of enemies. skeletons attack as the player leaps a few small pits (which lead back down to A); they're fragile but quick and toss bones. as the floor flattens out they attack in greater numbers until the player finds a cross (at the crucifix), clearing the room and allowing her to proceed to C.
while climbing the stairs the player is attacked by fleamen, small enemies who hop around and are very hard to hit, especially on the slanted surface of the stairs. fortunately a bible sub-weapon can be found here, greatly enhancing the player's attack range (it flies outwards in a circle). at the top of the stairs the player is beset upon by flying medusa heads from the left and right. she has to dodge or destroy these while passing over small platforms which if jumped on (either because the player leapt over a head or was knocked back by one) will flip over and deposit her at F, an alternate path. a slow pace and good aim are required to pass this section.
after the player has escaped that gauntlet, she enters a wide, open space (D) where she is challenged by a single, unique foe. this is a larger, neanderthalic version of the skeletons encountered at B, who has a huge range and leaps around the wide space of the room. the player similiarly has to make good use of the open space to dodge its attacks and reciprocate. when the skeleton is killed, the church bell rings and the player is free to pass the door to the candle room (E).
in the candle room the player has to jump across a series of small platforms. many of those platforms are inhabited by the spear knights from A, who with their long range can strike a player on an adjacent platform. while the player is trying to dispatch these and clear the platforms for herself, ghosts are materializing and floating toward her, and can be very difficult to evade and attack because their vertical mobility is so much greater than the player's. if she's knocked off the platforms into one of the holes she'll land at F (though much further along than if she had fallen earlier).
if the player manages to cross all the platforms she'll reach G, where an elevator waits to take her to the alternate boss of the stage (and to the secret alternate stage 4). however, to activate it she'll have to dislodge a rock high overhead, requiring the use of a subweapon such as the bible she picked up at C. immediately before the elevator, though, a thief (similiar to the fleamen at C) attempts to reach the player and grab her sub-weapon.
if the player can't (or chooses not to) reach the secret boss, she'll proceed to the normal boss at H. if she's fallen to F, she'll need to battle up a series of staircases inhabited by skeletons (who perch above the player's normal range of attack and toss bones down at her) and a hall full of bone pillars (who have a longer horizontal range of attack then the player, but whose shots can be deflected with careful aiming). the boss at H is a minotaur who charges back and forth through the wide room the player confronts it in. clever use of the platforms in the chamber is required to dodge its attacks.
stage 5 of rondo, main path.
the ghost ship. the player starts on the docks at A. flail skeletons patrol the platforms (below which is watery death). they are slow but have a great range of horizontal attack, and are positioned below the player, making them hard to attack. the player will either have to use a sub-weapon that strikes below (like the axe or bible), or to quickly jump onto the skeleton's platform, attack, and jump back off before it can counter. this is made trickier by the ghosts who are constantly appearing and floating toward the player.
at the end of the docks, a flat part, two very fast, blade-wielding skeletons leap out and attack from both sides. it's pretty hard to get through this part fully unscathed. after these are dealt with the player enters the ghost ship. at B there's a hidden piece of health-restoring meat, and the opportunity to find a secret path to the ship's engine, which can be destroyed for a 1-up. otherwise the player proceeds to a small room where she is surrounded by heavily armored knights, one on each side, who block the exits. they are slow and hold their positions, but their attacks have great range and must be jumped over. the player will want to quickly dispatch one, then go after the other.
if the player took the secret path, at C she'll find a sniper waiting for her. it has a very fast attack that reaches across the entire screen, but a fast player will be able to dispatch it before it attacks.
both paths meet again at D, a small room where the player is ambushed by three waiting skeleton archers who attack one at a time. these have a horizontal attack that is very hard (but possible) to deflect, and move to keep themselves out of the range of the player's whip, leaping over her when she backs them into a corner. the moment they land from their leaps is a good moment for a quick attack.
at E the player is attacked by a haunted portrait, a unique and dangerous foe who can kill the player in a single hit and moves very quickly. if the player hits it, though, it will be knocked back. good timing is crucial to keeping this enemy at bay until it is killed. once it's dispatched, the thorns on the door whither and the player can climb the stairs in the next room (guarded by a sniper) and proceed to the deck (F).
the deck is long and mostly flat. fleamen riding eagles will attack from above and are very hard to hit with the whip. however, if the player climbs the bowsprit she'll find an axe sub-weapon that will allow her a greater vertical range of attack. while contending with the eagle-riders, though, she'll have to get past a bunch of ball-and-chain-wielding knights who attack only periodically, but can through their ball tremendously far and do a great deal of damage. they take several hits to destroy and require an attack-and-evade strategy and good timing, while also avoiding eagle attacks.
when the player clears the deck she may climb the mast (G) and confront death.
i consider all this pretty tight level design. |
This is all well and good, but none of this really resolves the real problem - Rondo is joyless, spartan and tedious. Even a shitty room in Dawn of Sorrow can be made fun via some kung-fu jumpkicks, slides and Soul usage... for all the masochists like to talk about old-school CV's "limited" movement, the games are tedious as fuck. Besides Bloodlines.
Oh god I mentioned masochism on SB why did I do that |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 7:06 pm |
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No, Bloodlines is the best action Castlevania. I have graphs, I can prove it.
Rondo is a dull NES game with a prettier facade. |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 7:10 pm |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| James, it seems to me that you just prefer a faster paced game. Castlevania is sort of a thinking man's platformer. I've always saw it as a more strategic, almost meditative experience sometimes. Which doesn't make it any less thrilling. |
I liked Astroboy. I like Alien Soldier. I admire the need for precison - I just think your childhood tastes warped themselves around technologically limited gameplay and became denatured to think that it is good.
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| I mean, no one here is arguing that castlevania is for everyone, but I think the general idea is that if IGA has a hardon for open-ended metroidalikes he should just create a new franchise and leave Castlevania to its old school roots. |
Why? Why should he do that? So you won't be forced (by evil Konami demons) to buy his games then complain they aren't like completely different games? That is pretty... grasping. CV is a Komani trademark and they can use it how they want. |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 7:12 pm |
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| Shapermc wrote: |
| JamesE wrote: |
| No, Bloodlines is the best action Castlevania. I have graphs, I can prove it. |
John or Eric? |
Either/Or |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 7:50 pm |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| No, so that we can get new games in a style that we all really enjoy. No other franchise has ever had games like the original castlevania. |
Not viable. Sales would laugh it out of the office. The usage of the brand name is the least of your worries, I think. If it did happen it would probably turn out like GBA Shinobi did. And man, there are plenty of games in a similar cut to the first Castlevania, they just never made you feel like your player was made out of lead. I have no problem with methodical pacing (I've been playing the shit out of Aurail lately, and that is paced as hell) (would Ranger-X also count?), it is the controls. The controls are poor and sludgy; the animation and movement do not mesh to create a "complete" feeling.
Hi Showka and Koji
| Quote: |
It's as gender biased as calling an individual of unspecified gender a 'he' in every situation is, only reversed. |
"They" is a perfect example of non-gendered language. I try and use it wherever I can remember to because I don't have a hard-on for one sex over the other (except in my boudior but such things are a dogg's own choice)
Also I'm not sure how pointing out that Richter has the arthritis really bad and his levels are dull is whiny |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:01 am |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| I think we'll have to agree to disagree about the controls. They are slow but they are precise and if you play deliberately then you are always in control of your character. |
It's not just that they are slow, it is that they combine with physics and animation to convince you you are in control of an 8-bit OAP with real bad pains in his knees oh dude
hence the comparison to Sonic - it's possible to play well in spite of the controls, but the controls are still a fucked up problem
Did Ranger X need to cripple me? hell no, and Ranger X is probably the most strategic platformer in the history of the universe, yet I am empowered rather than crippled to shit
Did Aurail need to slow my control and give me a retarded weapon to present a paced challenge? Hell no
The Castlevania "challenge" is produced by sadomasocistic apologist (sup shaper) interfacing with shitfucked control scheme. Intelligent level design + fluid controls = fuck yeah ranger x, dumb, boring level design + fuckshitted control scheme = cult game that is none the less retarded (protip: half the Sonic 360 apologists use the same fucking arguements all over sonic cult uih)
I play games for ESCAPISM, not to feel like I did before I had my tendons lenghtened (1988)
Also I am drunk and hansome
My subjective insight makes this post NGJ to hell watch out Kerion Gillen
I swore a lot up there but don't think I'm one of those horrible cyberbullies please |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 5:10 pm |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| This isn't about artfaggery or who's more "indie" or whatever else. It's just that citing overwhelming critical support is a really weak argument, especially in an environment like this. |
Likewise, it's kind of banal to pull out an appeal to popular dislike when it's an atypical opinion, right? |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 5:17 pm |
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| Yes but if you took a survey of people outside here they would be all boners ahoy and set sail for dick over it. This place has a weird fanboy factor. It does! |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 5:25 pm |
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Yeah, I think I'm going to have to say that's a really stupid precedent.
The games are generally acclaimed. |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 5:27 pm |
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| And everyone here used to really, really like DoS! Then it became fashionable to hate on it, and the overwhelming negativity sucked in a whole bunch of people like a Katamari of tears! |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:26 pm |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| JamesE wrote: |
| And everyone here used to really, really like DoS! Then it became fashionable to hate on it, and the overwhelming negativity sucked in a whole bunch of people like a Katamari of tears! |
I did used to like DoS! Before I finished it and realized that it wasn't half as good as Aria of Sorrow, which was a great game but was still lacking in some areas.
And I don't hate Dawn of Sorrow! It's an alright game! It's just not like FLIPPING AWESOME like SotN or Castlevania IV or Bloodlines. It's not living up to the legacy for me! |
I'm tempted to say that if any of those games had grinding/max out elements you'd have become just as dismissive of them. I honestly couldn't look at DoS for a long time after I spent 40 hours on it. We're on good terms now.
One of the coolest things about SotN is the lack of extra information indexes, which makes packratting pretty pointless. |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:29 pm |
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| showka wrote: |
| None dare say it, but Castlevania fanboys are an arse hair away from turning into Megaman fanboys. |
fixed |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:48 pm |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
james I should show you my aria of sorrow save game where I have 9 of every item with a level 99 Soma.
I maxed the fuck out of that game and I just got tired of DoS giving more of the same. |
So essentially, you've spent an aggregate of hundreds of hours with two very similar games, doing very similar things?
And it still surprises you you're burnt out with Casltevania? |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 6:54 pm |
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| Regardless, I think grinding has destroyed the part of your mind that will ever let you accept a new Castlevania. |
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JamesE
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 7:13 pm |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| JamesE wrote: |
| Regardless, I think grinding has destroyed the part of your mind that will ever let you accept a new Castlevania. |
Maybe! Maybe this says something about games with which grinding is a principle mechanic! Maybe it's a dead-end design-wise! |
Except grinding isn't required to beat the game, and is purely a side issue? |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 7:29 pm |
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| That doesn't make any sense what the hell |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 9:57 am |
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| Alucard Typing Minigames DS |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 7:05 pm |
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| I enjoyed that post |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:46 pm |
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| Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh wrote: |
| The 2D sprites were always more fluid than this. |
No, they've always been very, very stilted (especially so on NES) |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:49 pm |
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| Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh wrote: |
More like it's the Igarashi way of doing 3D. The 2D sprites were always more fluid than this. Look at how abruptly everything moves. Look at how floaty and weightless all the objects feel. The only thing giving a sense of solidity is the sound design. (While we're here, how did they screw up one of the most awesome bits of background music in the series?)
Man, don't Japanese companies have central tech R&D divisions anymore? Teams to develop engines and techniques to distribute to all of the design teams, so they can just plug in their ideas and run with them, rather than wasting time programming then dealing with a shitty engine? I mean, it used to be common practice... |
And it's very early pre-alpha footage |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:17 pm |
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Stage 2 direct comparison:
PSP: http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/8909
PCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33zAvuOIqsg
They're both different kinds of stiff but I think that's inherent to the pace he moves at. It's traditional for Belmonts to move like they've just shit themselves and they're trying to hide an erection, moving like he just shit himself alone is something of an improvement.
It's nice to see they're trying to improve on the original's horribly bland tileset. I think nice sprites overlayed on 3D backgrounds would be the way to go with this but no dice, at least the whip is nice and... whippy. |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 7:19 pm |
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| Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh wrote: |
I wasn't even talking about the protagonist.
I mean, seriously. Check out those barrels. |
They look about the same and it's proto footage? The PCE game has nice barrels and stiff everything else; the new game has fluid everything else and maybe slightly off-kilter barrels but probably not and it's work in progress anyway. The NES games had maybe three frames of animation for the rotating cogs. Bloodlines is kinda neat but uses balljoint. I realise we all want to spoon IGA's eyes out with our kiddy sporks as a sacrifice to the elder gods, but come the fuck on. That's just looking for a chance to attack the poor dude.
(NGJ, fact checking, actually playing the games within recent memory, etc) |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 9:44 pm |
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Uh Toups, the candles float free in 2D space in the original game lots too. An awful lot. It looks very weird there too.
(IGA-bashing, sourpuss, etc) |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 9:49 pm |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| I still think the original game is more consistent in its look and feel, though. I guess they have time to improve that, but given how lazy igarashi's output has been of late I don't have much reason to hope for them to apply much polish to this. |
From what I've seen so far, the alternate levels have had much, much more polish lavished upon them. Regluar stage 2 is a boring crock of shite with abysmal enemy placement, stage 2' is actually fairly interesting, regular stage 3 is boring again. Weird game, and certianly inconsistent (hey didn't you admit to barely having played this up thread someplace how would you even know) |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:13 pm |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| JamesE wrote: |
Uh Toups, the candles float free in 2D space in the original game lots too. An awful lot. It looks very weird there too.
(IGA-bashing, sourpuss, etc) |
For the most part they are presumed to affixed to the wall in the background as can be seen in that very youtube video you linked. -- notice how once richter gets inside the castle nearly every candle is right in the center of a pillar in the background. Even the ones that aren't (there's one weird one that's on a window) still don't look strange because the background isn't scrolling in parallax.
Either way, it looks much stranger in 2.5D than regular 2D. |
You're whipping candles to produce hearts to let you throw knives and you're fixating that the candles (by necessity) aren't affixed to the walls?
Rondo has plenty of candles not attached to the walls but instead thin air, just not in the videos I linked (because the walls are everywhere categorically).
This isn't an IGA choice - he has to retain an old level design AND incorperate a 3D backdrop. In most of his games there are multiple candle types to fit the situation at hand.
But let me repeat: You're whipping candles to produce hearts to let you throw knives in Dracula's castle. Get over the abstraction: it's the least weird thing there.
| Quote: |
| As for the "consistent look and feel" I'm just going by the aesthetics of it. I've played through a good deal of Rondo of Blood a few years ago and I remember it pretty clearly, but you can even see the difference just going by those videos you just linked. The PSP version is prettier but it's also garish. The original game doesn't have as much going on visually but everything hangs together much better. That's all I'm saying. |
We'll see. It's not finished yet. |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:14 pm |
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And they aren't even proper hearts, they're stylised
Hearts don't look like that |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:41 pm |
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| Mister Toups wrote: |
| JamesE wrote: |
| Mister Toups wrote: |
| JamesE wrote: |
Uh Toups, the candles float free in 2D space in the original game lots too. An awful lot. It looks very weird there too.
(IGA-bashing, sourpuss, etc) |
For the most part they are presumed to affixed to the wall in the background as can be seen in that very youtube video you linked. -- notice how once richter gets inside the castle nearly every candle is right in the center of a pillar in the background. Even the ones that aren't (there's one weird one that's on a window) still don't look strange because the background isn't scrolling in parallax.
Either way, it looks much stranger in 2.5D than regular 2D. |
You're whipping candles to produce hearts to let you throw knives and you're fixating that the candles (by necessity) aren't affixed to the walls?
Rondo has plenty of candles not attached to the walls but instead thin air, just not in the videos I linked (because the walls are everywhere categorically).
This isn't an IGA choice - he has to retain an old level design AND incorperate a 3D backdrop. In most of his games there are multiple candle types to fit the situation at hand.
But let me repeat: You're whipping candles to produce hearts to let you throw knives in Dracula's castle. Get over the abstraction: it's the least weird thing there. |
Any time a game makes a transition to 3D certain concessions need to be made because anything in three dimensions will always be less abstract than in two. When rendered in 2D, a stray candle that isn't "attached" to anything doesn't really look that strange and is easy to ignore. In 3D, it stands out a lot more.
I'm just saying it wouldn't kill them to make pillars be on the same layer as the candles so it looks like they're hanging from something. It would just make it look nicer.
And like I said, I know it's early, but I have no reason to believe that IGA & co. will address these problems in the final build. Going by various E3 demos of other IGAvanias I've played, the areas present were almost entirely unchanged in the final version, and the sprite art hadn't changed or improved either. Aside from that both Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin have a half-assed, rushed quality to them, which would suggest to me that they probably aren't going to bother revising the visuals (or anything else, for that matter) too much in this. I'd love to be proven wrong, but so far the evidence is against them. |
You are upset by flying candles in a platform game
YOU ARE UPSET BY FLYING CANDLES IN A PLATFORM GAME
What the fuck
It is a platform game |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:53 pm |
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| aerisdead wrote: |
guys what is up with dracula's interior design
he has to like jump over a pit to get to his dining room and candles float in the air
p.s. I have made this joke before |
As a child I often wondered why Dr Robotnik didn't just surround his entire base with a huge unjumpable spike pit
I was a sad child :( |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 4:02 pm |
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| chompers po pable wrote: |
hopefully they fix not being able to jump on stairs in the remake. (at least it appeared that it wasn't doable in the video link provided by james san).
though it won't help much, i mean we should just accept that the remake will be bad. konami should just go the other way with it and make it intentional in ridiculous ways. |
Psssst: hold up while you jump and you'll land on stairs in the original.
Toups, it feels like you are looking for any excuse whatsoever to be a misery about Castlevania/videogames in general and it's bumming me out. Nobody likes a negative nancy. |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 10:07 pm |
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I'm only negative about things that are awful, though.
You're negative about crazy shit because you have fucking awful taste in games.
I mean don't take that as a flame but you really do, man. I get the feeling you'd complain about a blowjob from Salma Hayek if you noticed something stuck in her teeth. |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:17 am |
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| mechanori wrote: |
| We've discussed this before: some shit just doesn't work when games move from 2D to 3D, or from an unrealistic style to a realistic or detailed one. Toups's complaint isn't ridiculous; you're the one going overboard here. |
Oh, fuck off Mechanori. Just because some people aren't mature enough to deal with abstraction and some of them might have ganged together here doesn't mean I have to buy into stylistic mob rule.
Abstraction is fine. There is nothing wrong with abstraction - the person most against abstraction on these forums is Guardian, for fuck's sake. The candles float because they have to remain in the same places within the context of a 3D backdrop which introduces perspective. Since the Castlevania games Toups can't remember as well as he thinks he does had many, many candles floating against the sky this is within the character of the game and absolutely acceptible. I's an abstracted platformer series and it always has been.
Some of you really need to get over your crazy conciets. Oh god you're playing a videogame which looks like a videogame! How will mainstream society ever accept you and your hobby now?
Do you know how hard it is to get some people to even look at these forums, let alone join them? The mixture of uninformed arrogance and/or pedantic nitpicking that wafts from a fairly defined tier of posters here has tainted the whole place, just like it tainted the Insert Credit forums before it. It's vexing when I'm trying to turn people on to this place and they outright fucking refuse to click my links. None of it needs to happen because this kind of griping bilge is pointless and insubstantial. This isn't great debate, guys. |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:13 am |
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| How can I relax while the candles are floating? |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 3:54 pm |
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Toups, you seriously complain all the time about absolutely anything about any game that seems to come up, ever.
Here's what pisses me off, OK? IGA is like some kind of punchbag to you and some of the other fanboys, even though he's only made 2 games out of 5 in the series that you disliked. It seems like he can do nothing right after the Dawn of Sorrow gaming hipster backlash of 2005.
And now you're complaining about CANDLES FLOATING IN THE AIR. In an abstract platform game, in a Castlevania. Do you even realize how maladroit and kind of pathetic that sounds? Those candles have been floating for 13 years - go to Rondo, unlock Stage '2, start it up. There are three candles floating against a blue, blue sky. Walk forward, and they float against the parallax in exactly the same way. For someone who pines for a certain era of the series, you don't actually seem to retain that much about it.
What you are complaining about is faithful compliance to the era of the series you are constantly pining for. What the hell, man?
It's threads like this that are the reasons some pretty awesome people I know won't post here (and didn't post at IC), because they think this place is bullshit. Right now I can wholeheartedly agree. It's like talking to scenster kids about music. |
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JamesE
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Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Feb 05, 2007 4:45 pm |
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| aerisdead wrote: |
Hey James did you see the Superbowl half time show
Prince really rocked it hard even though it was pissing down
That guy is a proper showman no mistake |
Shit! I had no idea Prince was playing :(
Why are the regular stages of rondo shit and the secret ones excellent |
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