Worst Game of 2014: Shovel Knight

[A user named cat]

Jesus christ the 3rd game on that genesis list is fucking Cool Spot. If that's your definition of a good game you are fucking brain damaged.

Hah, it's a completely random list that I admittedly didn't check myself. Cool Spot was actually okayish for a company mascot game, I'd rather play that then garbage like Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery. We can also play that nitpicking game when looking at RPG Codex top 50 list though if you like with such wonderful games like Twitcher 2, Dragon Age and Drakensang: The Barrel Explorer making the cut. If those are anyone's definitions of top RPGs, then they must be brain damaged.

Seriously way to pick out a title listed near the bottom 100. Do you honestly need a tutorial through Genesis' library? Todd's Adventure in Slime World, ToeJam & Earl, Crusader of Centy, Sonic 2, Streets of Rage, Kid Chameleon, Lost Vikings and Rolling Thunder 2 all take a great big chest dump on your shitty humble bundle platformers that have the lasting appeal of a McDonald's promotional pizza.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

>Sonic 2 on 61th
>Sonic 3 on 1st

 

[A user named cat]

>Sonic 2 on 61th
>Sonic 3 on 1st

As I said, I didn't check the list. So maybe it is shit like all top games lists, feel free to hunt down another then.

 

[Angthoron]

Can't fully avoid RAD in kingcomrade

 

[Damned Registrations]

Hah, it's a completely random list that I admittedly didn't check myself. Cool Spot was actually okayish for a company mascot game, I'd rather play that then garbage like Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery. We can also play that nitpicking game when looking at RPG Codex top 50 list though if you like with such wonderful games like Twitcher 2, Dragon Age and Drakensang: The Barrel Explorer making the cut. If those are anyone's definitions of top RPGs, then they must be brain damaged.

Seriously way to pick out a title listed near the bottom 100. Do you honestly need a tutorial through Genesis' library? Todd's Adventure in Slime World, ToeJam & Earl, Crusader of Centy, Sonic 2, Streets of Rage, Kid Chameleon, Lost Vikings and Rolling Thunder 2 all take a great big chest dump on your shitty humble bundle platformers that have the lasting appeal of a McDonald's promotional pizza.

Well at least you mentioned one game I haven't seen before. But how many people have heard of 'Todd's Adventure in Slime World'? Seriously, I'm not going to play through every last genesis game to find a gem here or there when I can easily find awesome shit released more recently like Cave Story or Iji (Or now Shovel Knight) which would easily be in the top 10 if they'd been released for the Genesis.

 

[SCO]

Light Crusader is a good genesis game and i discovered it last year only.

There are both good new retro games and good old ones.

Btw, Valdis Story, which you linked a screenshot, could have been a much better game if most of the bosses weren't shit shit shit.

 

[JarlFrank]

Pixel art can look gorgeous when done right.

But I really want more early 90s SVGA pixel art games

 

[LeStryfe79]

One guy designed, programmed, and did the art for Dust. I didn't care for the way it played, but that game still impresses the hell out of me under the circumstances.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Btw, Valdis Story, which you linked a screenshot, could have been a much better game if most of the bosses weren't shit shit shit.

Really? I've been looking forward to giving it a try

 

[SCO]

Really? I've been looking forward to giving it a try

It's only most (including, most unfortunately, the last). It's a adequate metrovania otherwise, adequate secrets, long.

Doesn't compare to cave story or order of ecclesia by light years though, so even both components of it's metroidvania nature are lesser than the originals spiritual successors. It's also a prologue for another sequel which is a bad habit of new game makers.

 

[sexbad?]

shovel knight would be good if it had better controls

 

[kingcomrade]

Who cares about nostalgia?

A FUCK TON OF PEOPLE. Everyone over the age of 25 cares a ton about nostalgia for video games. It's not bad, like your comment suggests, but it is an exploitable market that manipulates people the same way smart marketing always does. This idea that nobody cares about nostalgia, it's this some niche by alien people, is absolutely stupid. EVERYONE cares about nostalgia.

 

[kingcomrade]

On playing this vs. late '80s-early '90s emulated stuff: Widescreen helps a lot. Also personal taste thing but I really don't like normal international NES music (some of the sounds they use annoy the shit out of me) but VRC6 stuff sounds fantastic (although Shovel Knight is not as good as Jap Castlevania 3 by a lot).

Also anyone that had trouble with the controller thing: I went into Steam's Big Picture mode and set up my controller in that and it started working in Shovel Knight, hooray

Has A Controller: Console Scum

 

[DefJam101]

A FUCK TON OF PEOPLE. Everyone over the age of 25 cares a ton about nostalgia for video games. It's not bad, like your comment suggests, but it is an exploitable market that manipulates people the same way smart marketing always does. This idea that nobody cares about nostalgia, it's this some niche by alien people, is absolutely stupid. EVERYONE cares about nostalgia.

who are you

 

[kingcomrade]

I honestly don't know what you are asking, you could have designed the question in a smarter way. Who am I on the Codex? A much smarter person than you.
Everyone on the Codex thinks I'm being arrogant rather than you people present such a low easy bar

 

[CSM]

If you want to play the best old school games, then play actual old fucking school games. Not pixel art hipster games made by 20 year old Canadians who mimmick games they didn't even play themselves. Do you need a helping hand or penis crutch?

They're Americans. Also, what a dumb fucking opinion is it that you should only play new games?

If it's good then it's good and it deserves to be played.

Shovel Knight is good. Not as good as some people think it is. But still pretty good.

 

[Phage]

Has A Controller: Console Scum

PC gaming enthusiasts have used multiple gamepads and peripherals for decades now. Time for KingBabby to step up his game. Btw did you play MGR on mouse+keyboard? Wtf is wrong with you?

 

[Karellen]

Am I the only one who generally finds low-res, pixellated 2D games more appealing, visually, than most high-resolution games? Honestly, Shovel Knight looks pretty good, and I don't see why I would have particular nostalgia for NES graphics in particular since I never owned one as a child. There's just a lot about the careful use of a limited colour palette and those delicious handcrafted animations that adds up to something pretty appealing when done right.

On the other hand, I often find that I'm underwhelmed by high-res 2D art. I mean, games like Bastion, Dust: An Elysian Tail or Shadowrun: Returns look fine, in a way, but there's a bland, plastic, airbrushed quality to the environments that just rubs me the wrong way. Meanwhile, just looking at something like Hyper Light Drifter in motion is highly satisfying to me (hopefully the game doesn't end up being indie hipster wank). Similarly, Primordia (despite having somewhat cruddy animation) is far more appealing to me visually than, say, Daedalic's Memoria, which is by no means bad in terms of art, but has a weird jaggy, awkward quality to the way characters fit to the environments that I find offputting. In glorious 320*200 that doesn't happen.

I think it might simply be the case that the limitations of low-res 2D graphics either force or enable a greater degree of care as far as the art is concerned, which results in everything looking more unified and coherent. The higher the resolution is, the more difficult that is to accomplish, and everything ends up looking either generic or slightly mismatched. I'm not saying it can't be done, but even so, Banner Saga might be the only recent 2D game with high resolution art that I think is aesthetically impeccable.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I think as resolution improves, there's an expectation of detail in the picture to match the resolution, otherwise things look plasticy. You can get around this to some extent with low detail all over the object, so it looks stylized instead of fake, but this requires a pretty fine touch imo.

Some examples:



Looks fucking wrong and creepy and fake. (Even the baby heads alone would.)
:australia:
Looks fine, lots of detail all over (though in the second it's in the form of fairly subtle shading, doing that shit with more colors blending smoothly will look awful.)

Again, looks creepy and wrong,

but this is fine.


When you're working with low resolutions, I think it's much easier to have the same amount of detail all over the thing, for a lot of reasons. High rez means zooming in for detail work so you can forget what the other parts are like in comparison, there's less possible difference between the most and least detail a thing can have at lower rez, and also at low rez it is easier for your mind to fill in less detailed space with whatever seems most suitable, like when people mistake Zero's hair for a cape in megaman.

First pic looks way better imo.

 

[A user named cat]

Also, what a dumb fucking opinion is it that you should only play new games?

Shovel Knight Duck Tales is good.

 

[pakoito]

Dust: An Elysian Tale is the most overrated Hack&Slash I've seen in many, many years. And my opinion concurs with my DMC/NG/DaS nutties friends. The mechanics are broken and it just drags the rest of the game, which already wasn't big on scenery, theme or story.

Now, Valdis Story was something else. Maybe not the tightest controls but the combat and boss fights were challenging + fun.

 

[A user named cat]

Dust was garbage, I remember getting it in some humble bundle and trying it for about an hour before uninstalling forever. Incredibly mundane and boring, just a shittier version of Odin Sphere.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Pretty much agreed re: Dust. While it's an impressive job for one dude (I think he outsourced the music and voicework but thats about it?) objectively it's just bad compared to other games of the same genre. I think it's pretty illustrative that games like Cave Story and Iji are far superior overall, despite also being the work of a single guy and having very cheap graphics. Iji in particular is amazing and not known nearly well enough, it's a crime that Cave Story got discovered but not Iji.



Fucking hell I need to play that game again.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Looks pretty awesome !

 

[Avellion]

Shovel Knight was actually well designed, and was a decent take on various old NES games.

I think I got about 1 hour into Dust before uninstalling. Combat just got incredibly repetitive after a while. And Iji is so overlooked, I would highly recommend it to anyone. The game has better C&C than anything BioWare has recently made too

First pic looks way better imo.

Why does a robot have green nipples?

Better question, why does a robot even have nipples in the first place?