[Gin]

Like, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter for instance.

The first time you play the game, it might take you as long as 15 hours to finish. It will be dense and confusing, but you can play it a second time, and find new treasures within it. The game's mechanics suddenly begin to unravel before you, and you're getting to the point where you can finish the entire game in a few hours. You start scoring higher, and all of the sudden new options are opened up to you. Your better performence has given you more tools, and you rocket to the peak of the game.

A great sense of satisfaction permeates you, and you place the game back in it's case with a full heart.

Perhaps one day later, you would pick up the game again, and strive to challenge yourself, is it really impossible to achieve 1/4 with just one play?

Or Dead Rising. The first time you play, certainly, you are going to die. Maybe even very quickly. But even though you died, it seems like you learned something important about the game. A new little secret to help you along. Not just that either, your character has grown stronger, more resourceful. Once again, a game is unraveling in your hands, offering up new treasures as you delve deeper, as your score gets higher, as you learn how to use that sledgehammer just right and memorize the timing of events and patterns of the bosses. You can play, and replay, until you are honed to a perfect mastery over the game, and all it's secrets and magic lies at your fingertips, waiting to be enjoyed. New game modes gradually open up to test your newfound skill, and invigorate your blood.

It is pretty awesome.

Are there any other really cool games like this?

Preferably with a score of some sort.

Actually now that I think about it Capcom has been pretty awesome.

[Jeff Garneau]

fftactics is like this.

probably any srpg i guess.

btw i finally played bofDQ it fucking blew.

[dark steve]

play it again >:|

[dongle]

Can we merge this thread with the Rogue-like thread?

[Infernarl]

super fucking metroid

[BenoitRen]

This sounds a bit like Mega Man Zero to me.
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Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[option]

sounds like... most games really...

What you discribed happens with me in pretty much every game I play that I consider good enough for multiple play throughs.

[GcDiaz]

Vagrant Story would be better than it already is if there was more than that one portion of the world to unlock on multiple playthroughs. As it is, the more you play it, the stronger your character gets, the better your equipment becomes, and the more badass you feel when you're knocking bosses the fuck out. Maybe if the secret bosses actually opened even more maps and super-enemies to fight; enemies which would come equipped with more unique and rare materials and weapons for you to customize. The game is not nearly big enough for the range of abilities you already have.
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Steam/PSN/Xbawks: GcDiaz

Let's bring sexy back!

[negativedge]

[Jeff Garneau]

ok: the story is fucking retarded. the writing is fucking retarded. the character designs make the game embarrassing to play in front of other people. the animation is terrible.

yes, i get that it is HARD, and that once you know what you're doing it's EASY but i would like to be entertained or something here. i, uh, played until i had three people in my party and got back to town (which took me a long ass time). game fucking blows.

[option]

I agree with you Jeff Garneau

[skelethulu]

I like how some shooters have been handling this... if you play for an hour, you get an extra continue. Play more hours and earn more continues.

Of course, only little baby girls need to continue, but I guess it hits on that BoF:DQ / Dead Rising stuff.

[Tezcat]

I'd actually say that God of War can be quite like this, or at least, it has been for me and my roommates. When we first started playing, we beat it, and immediately played through again, finding more and more hidden chests, perfecting our combos into long uninterrupted chains, and just watching as the challenges became easier and easier.

So we chose harder modes, and challenges, but it always just (as you put it) 'unraveled' for us. And it's such a great feeling when you blast through a game in a ridiculously short amount of time because you've learned it so well. Some games allow you to do that, to really start loving them in that way.

Others don't.

[showka]

At first I thought the title was a quote from when Alucard talks to the librarian in Symphony of the Night.

[BotageL]

[Gin]

[negativedge]

I like Dragon Quarter's story, actually. It's focused and poignant.

[Loki Laufeyson]

[BotageL]

[Talbain]

I totally 39-credited (on MAME) Metal Slug 3 with some friends the other day. It was awesome.

Somewhat more seriously though, I'm beginning to think that making a game "hard" or "easy" doesn't really do much for the game itself. The gameplay's usually the selling point for me, and if it's good (which is not a measure of how hard or easy it is), I can keep playing the game. Obviously, if I keep playing a game I'll get better at it. That's how games work, pretty much like everything else (writing, reading, math, etc.), at least in theory. Also, difficulty should be a consequence of gameplay; this is the problem with most RPGs (mostly in that the game puts few limits on you, SRPGs and simulation games tend to be the opposites of this, where many restrictions are put on you, resulting in a need for thought and strategy-of course, this need for thought, if too excessive, can also kill enjoyable gameplay).

The only other point aside from gameplay is narrative; engrossing stories always help, just like a well-written research paper has a certain structure to make it more edible for the reader.

As for BoF:DQ... yeah, it's Breath of Fire. It's a game you play through a few times at most to get what you can out of it. After that, it's just ego stroking, like completionists who have to get 200% or whatever in SOTN.
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[Jeff Garneau]

what jesus. you're so wrong.

posting while holding b to scroll text in lunar knights btw.

full post forthcoming after bossfight.

[Jeff Garneau]

what the fuck why does this keep freezing.

the character designs belong on a show for children. i see that they are going for an anime look and raise that they are going for an anime plot. is there really any reason for this to look like an anime?

fuck it just froze again.

i mean, i could get into the fighting which is pretty good but basically just spamming that fire trap and pushing shit away. pretty touch & go sometimes though. i can appreciate the difficulty. maybe if nobody ever talked and if there weren't cutscenes and instead of character models they had little icons this would be fun to play.

ok this game officially does not work with ezflash 4. ethoscapade, don't try to play this game until the next patch.

i don't see anything goddamn poignant about this story. it's like. retarded. there's some girl. who's like, a weapon or something (GOSH THINK I SAW THAT A FEW TIMES). and there's some rebel girl. and you're like some kind of shitty trainee soldier. fuck this.

i mean, if they want to do a generic story, fine. just don't go about it in a generic way. there was no moment which actually caught my eye in the game. you know, pretty much any movie that you see has something that makes it worth watching. there's like a zillion romantic comedies that come out every year and basically every one of them is pretty fun to watch. think about how rare it is that you walk out of a theater or turn off a movie halfway through.

and yet, this game manages to have pretty much zero distinguishing characteristics outside of an (admittedly pretty good) combat system. fuck that.











and don't give me this hipster shit just because you dress like you're poor.

[bort]

i guess i appreciated dragon quarter's story just for it's focus the way it actually presented itself (constant forward motion to the end and no bs), but really it is dumb as hell. like, there will be a really tough boss gauntlet or whatever but you are fighting CUPID and VEXACION (according to wikipedia he is master of the Beast Skills!).

so yeah it is kind of stupid, then the end kind of undoes any sort of tension the game would have had (oh looks like they were wrong! the world is pretty and the dragon wont kill you!)

but yeah mechanically it's pretty much the best.

and the art style is pretty fucked.

oh and i actually love that you are playing as a pretty dumb guy. not like, rpg character dumb, but he actually seems slow and not in a funny way. just kind of stupid.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

jeff I liked you better when you weren't like this
_________________

[BotageL]

[Jeff Garneau]

i paid crazy bacon lips ten dollars for that game.

i am going to buy a famicom and takeshi no chousenjou like right now on ebay though. and i'm getting an hd-advance for ps2 so i can play mgs1.


i mean i would pay good money for games but really when was the last time a good game came out? shadow of the colossus?

also i am making a really good game in an independent study at my college but it is a secret i will sell it to you when it is finished and i'll have hell to pay if i don't finish it so i probably will.

also legato which part of this picture does not look retarded to you?


i mean yeah most games look like anime and most games are really fucking boring but people were saying this game is king shit.

seems to me really like anime-style designs in 3D are actually just used as a shortcut for not including any fucking detail in what the characters look like. i mean, what the fuck can i say about these dudes? the protagonist has a really short jacket? the girl has red hair? they have faces? the protagonist doesn't even look sweet in that picture. he's just sort of there, like all the animation in this game. your legs move too goddamn fast when you're running and they didn't do any mocap for the cutscenes so it just looks like body parts on hinges. same as the anime aesthetic choice: it doesn't look sweet on its own, it doesn't serve the narrative, it's just there.







legato i'm sorry your choices of entertainment media prevent you from being friends with cool people.

i mean, shit, i fucking love naruto, but i accept that the show is completely retarded. it's a show for children. anime is for children with a few exceptions. dragon quarter is for full-grown children (and those who love battle systems so much as to ignore everything else).

[Jeff Garneau]

dais now my first few sentences don't make sense.

[rabite gets whacked!]

hey y'all don't give jeff a hard time he's just come off winter break and he's a month into the semester and it's massive worldview upheaval everyday (or every social/curricular flux) at college, see.

Hey jeff this game doesn't offer a thing except a take on storytelling through gameplay which is unique to games, which is why everyone thinks it's valuable, see?
The game and story themselves don't matter much on their own, of course. Few do, even SotC's, Killer7's, etc.

(Post that shit!)

[Jeff Garneau]

[rabite gets whacked!]

no, it rewards replay/restart by telling more of the story each time.

so though the story is mostly useless, it tackles the age old gaming problem of "how do we make this worth replaying, once you're dead/finished?"

[Deets]

I thought the game was pretty fun on its own, but if Garneau doesn't like it for reasons that I can't disagree with at all, then more power to him.

[haircute]

[rabite gets whacked!]

[Deets]

Done and done!

[rabite gets whacked!]

Capitulated, then!

[Jeff Garneau]

[rabite gets whacked!]

reiteration/clarification:
Most games make the average player replay portions. not in the New Game Plus fashion, but in the "they tried and died" fashion. Shiren/Dragon Quarter acknowledge this and use the mechanic creatively, at least (and both in slightly different ways).

If guardian were here he might have made up a term for this consideration to be used in very serious discussion.

[negativedge]

Jeff are you calling out SB. Because that could make for an awesome thread.

[SplashBeats]

Jeff Garneau, play FFXII.

[negativedge]

[Jeff Garneau]