Company News Molyneux talking crazy again

[John Yossarian]

Have you guys played Bushido Blade on the Playstation?

Exactly what I was thinking.

Ive had 10 minute battles in that game before, as well as 2 second ones.

Going "ZOMG, one hit kills??? wheres SPECIAL in all this???" is fucking pathetic.

The only interesting fights were against the bosses though. The fights against the 5k ninjas you faced before the bosses were as boring as any bad HP system fights. The ninjas could kill you or injure you, but it was just a matter of probability, after you fight tens of them, chances are one of them is actually gonna swing back.
So if a cRPG with tons of things to fight and where fighting is what you do 90% of the time were to implement this system, it wouldn't make the most of the fights any better. However, if a cRPG where every creature is more than a punching bag with loot and fights are very important events(like boss fights in Bushido Blade) were to use this system in then it could be great, but so would an HP system. Just a matter of taste I guess, but I dont see how either would be better.

 

[Keldryn]

I'd like to see an rpg with more realistic kills. There should be less wading through the bodies of your enemies and grinding and more thought into setting up a situation you can survive. Maybe just less emphasis on combat. I've mentioned earlier that I'd like to see a game set in the modern day, or a real Call of Cthulhu BRP style RPG, where players are notoriously fragile (although I suppose to ACa lesser degree than paranoia).

I totally agree with you here. In my own CRPG designs, which will of course likely never see the light of day, I opt for a paradigm of less frequent but more challenging and more rewarding combats. Every combat should be an exciting, life-or-death experience, not just "ho-hum, let's just mop up these wimpy catapult-fodder goblins for a few extra XP." Basically, every "planned" encounter -- that is to say, one that is intended to be a part of a quest and not just an incidental character/creature -- would be more like a traditional boss fight. Obviously, your basic townsperson or peasant isn't going to be that tough. But a fight against any reasonably well-trained and well-equipped individual isn't going to be a cakewalk.

I guess I'm in the minority in that I don't see what's so great about Ocarina / BG&E and I greatly prefer the written parsers in the Infocom and early Sierra games to the SCUMM keyword, later Sierra GUIs (even SQ4 where you can sniff and lick all sorts of crap) and later LucasArts click-hold systems. There's a reason the command "use" is absolutely verboten in interactive fiction.

The "sniff" and "lick" icons/commands in Space Quest IV were hilarious, but pretty much never used for anything. But I think that was part of the point... just there for comic relief. I was never a huge fan of the Infocom text adventures, and while I did love many of the Sierra games with the text parser (Hero's Quest/Quest For Glory I, Trial By Fire, Space Quest III, etc), I also remember a lot of frustration in guessing how the designers wanted me to say something. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but the parser didn't understand it. It gave the illusion of having a lot of freedom, but there was often only one verb that the parser would allow to interact with an object on-screen, and guessing which of a dozen synonyms for "use" it wanted was a pain in the ass. That isn't really freedom. And any object within a game is going to be limited in terms of how it can be interacted with, either because everything is scripted on a case-by-case basis, or by the implicit rules of the game engine itself.

I've asked this before and got no response, but what the heck: Apparently HP first appeared in D&D and did not exist in Chainmail, which had some weird system involving armor tables or something. Anybody know how it worked?

I can't really say, as I've never played it. I looked up the entry on Wiki, and this is what it had to say:

In the core rules, each figure represents 20 men. Troops are divided into six basic types: light foot, heavy foot, armored foot, light horse, medium horse, and heavy horse. Melee is resolved by rolling six-sided dice: for example, when heavy horse is attacking light foot, the attacker is allowed to roll 4 dice per man, with each 5 or 6 denoting a kill. On the other hand, when light foot is attacking heavy horse, the attacker is allowed only 1 die per man, with a 6 denoting a kill.

The Fantasy Supplement

The rules first appeared under the name Chainmail when they were published by Guidon Games in 1971. For this edition of the game Gygax added rules for jousting, man-to-man melee, and conducting battles with fantasy creatures. The man-to-man melee used two six-sided dice (2d6) to determine whether a kill is made and took account of the attacker's weapon and the defender's armor. The armor sequence was nearly identical to what would be used in Dungeons & Dragons.

So it looks like the concept of Hit Points may indeed have first appeared in the original D&D rules.

 

[Keldryn]

Personally, I'm unwilling to believe that a game with a single action button automatically becomes a button mashing affair. For a group of intelligent people you sure exhibit an inability to imagine implementations outside of the old text based games you like so much or the new graphic ones you hate.

I don't necessarily think having a single button is better either. It's kind of scary and seems like it could be limiting. But at the same time I realize that reducing interface hurdles is a universal good. Though I understand some of you prize these interface hurdles as some sort of badge of achievement, rightfully so, you are sorely blinded by nostalgia to link them with thinking or intelligence.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[Keldryn]

Ah the Codex, ever fearful of new ideas.

Anyway, I can kind of see what he's getting at. Consider Kingdom Hearts 2, which I'm sure you all hate but was a pretty fun brawler if you ask me. In KH2 you had Action commands, where an icon would flash onscreen and you hit the Action button to do some special move. For instance one enemy in a large battle has a laser gun-like weapon, and if you time it right you can grab him as he's about to start firing and aim the blast at all the other enemies. It actually adds a fun, dynamic feeling to combat... which was hurt in a couple ways by how well it was implemented.

I haven't played KH2 yet. I have the first game, but I find the controls and interface to be so poorly thought-out that it just ruins the fun. I'm not sure how much it has changed from KH1, but the bottom menu command in KH1 (that assigned an action to the X button) was usually a context-sensitive command. That part worked well, but the whole "navigate a menu with the right analog stick while you play in real-time" concept just doesn't work.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has a similar mechanic to what you describe. You normally use the red B button to attack with your sword, and the R button to block with your shield. The green A button performs a jumping attack, IIRC. In some battles a chime will sound and an icon will briefly appear on-screen. If you hit the A button at the right moment, you will perform a special move. For example, when fighting the armoured knights, that special move will make Link do a leap or a roll behind the knight and strike him on his unarmoured back. 3 or 4 of these hits will make pieces of the knight's armour fall off, so that you can damage him with strikes to his front as well. If he drops his sword (either when you kill him or if you knock him down), you can press that same A button when near his sword to pick it up and fight with it.

Now, as you can imagine, most of the bosses had these commands as responses to their various attacks, with multiple steps, which made for some realy cool cinematic battles. However there was one big problem with it: You often had to do the sequence up to 4 times before the boss finally died. It would have been a lot more fun/interesting if the boss died the first time you did it, even if that meant pulling it off would have been more difficult.

That's a pretty standard boss battle design in every genre, especially for Japanese games. Pretty much every boss in every game has a sequence that you need to perform 3 or 4 times to finish it off.

Honestly though the worry here is that in trying to make everything "one button" you an end up with a lot of frustrating bits. Someone mentioned standing by a chair witha guy across the room... so sure, it makes sense to kick the chair. What if I want to do something else though, like grab a nearby pool cue or hit someone coming up behind me? KH2 had a similar problem, in that the Action button was the same one used for Team Attacks and another special move and it made the decision based on context. Action superseded Team Attack, however if your timing was slightly off you ended up doing the team attack which could be trouble.

Yeah, I don't think that making everything a single button would ever really work for a game that has much depth to it. Sure, you could play Myst with only one mouse button, but the level of interactivity in that game is pretty minimal. But for actions that are not applicable in the majority of situations, I think a single context-sensitive action button is a better design concept than a number of buttons/keys that are rarely used and only for specific purposes. A context-sensitive attack button/key/command could work as well, depending on the style of game. It wouldn't work for a combat-intensive game, but perhaps for an adventure-style game.

 

[Keldryn]

Ah the Codex, ever fearful of new ideas.
So did fucking Dragons Lair in 1983. OMGF teh new is coming to get me!. AND it was a absolutely horrible excuse for gameplay back then.

True enough. But that was the entire gameplay experience. I tried playing it several times when I was a kid, and I could never really tell if inserting the coin had actually done anything... was I playing the game or just watching a looped demo?

What he's talking about in Kingdom Hearts 2 isn't the same thing. The "Quicktime Event System" or whatever it was called in Shen Mue is a lot more like Dragon's Lair. And it sucks.

the one button mentality partly stems from trying to simultaneously appeal to non-gamers and old stuffy exec suit types that dont play games either, I think this is common phrase from many Publishers "we trying to appeal to a wider/broader audience", They are slowly turning the game controller into something like a remote for a TV, if this contextual design is taken too far these one button games are not going to be much different than watching a movie, except even the less than blockbuster movies will still have more realistic actors(because the actors are fucking real people), better story and dialogue (in most cases will be written by professional writers) and better production value (the movie industry has hit its stride long ago in terms of production methods and schedules)

Maybe, but I like to think that the industry has moved beyond the whole "interactive movie" concept that produced some truly shitty games in the mid- to late- 90s. Click something or press a button, and watch a digitized movie clip. Fun times were had by all.

I don't really see things moving back in that direction of non-interactivity. Some of those games were as interactive as throwing popcorn at the movie screen.

 

[Keldryn]

It's hilarious that Ultima VII was brought up, as if no other game with a point-and-click interface didn't have the player characters performing context-sensitive actions.

I didn't bring up Ultima VII because no other game with a point-and-click interface had context-sensitive actions. I mentioned it because it was a rather elegantly designed user interface that allowed a two-button mouse to give the player all of the options he or she needed to interact with the game world. And Ultima VII offered a level of interactivity that is generally unmatched by any other game, 14 years later.

It was a very innovative interface at the time. In 1992, there wasn't much like it. King's Quest V had been released, the first of Sierra's adventure games to not use the text parser, but it had a good 5 or 6 command icons. Did the game really need a "talk" icon in addition to a "use" icon? You couldn't "use" a character, and you generally couldn't "talk" to an item. It didn't add anything to the game to be able to use those two command seperately. Dynamix's Rise of the Dragon and Heart of China had pretty well-designed point-and-click context-sensitive interfaces as wel -- perhaps better designed interfaces than what Sierra had to offer.

But Ultima VII stood out because the interface was very streamlined but intuitive and flexible. And without cluttering up the screen with icons and other UI modules. It was a brilliant interface, and really showed how the Origin of the early 90s was truly ahead of the majority of other developers.

 

[Keldryn]

The only interesting fights were against the bosses though. The fights against the 5k ninjas you faced before the bosses were as boring as any bad HP system fights. The ninjas could kill you or injure you, but it was just a matter of probability, after you fight tens of them, chances are one of them is actually gonna swing back.

Wasn't the fight with continuous waves of ninjas a seperate mode in the game? I don't remember that being part of the actual story mode of the game. It was a distinct "gauntlet mode" that just threw wave after wave of ninjas at you so you could see how far you could get. It was pretty lame, and i didn't play it much.

Most of the fights in the story mode were good, not just the "boss" fights. And two-player matches were great... there was a lot more excitement in knowing that one good hit could end the fight before it started. Sometimes it would, and sometimes it would take a long time as you've got one fighter limping around the battlefield, her left leg crippled, and the other fighter is taking weak swings at her with his one good arm. Classic stuff. Wish there was a modern remake of it, as 3D Playstation 1 games have not aged well.

 

[John Yossarian]

Wasn't the fight with continuous waves of ninjas a seperate mode in the game? I don't remember that being part of the actual story mode of the game. It was a distinct "gauntlet mode" that just threw wave after wave of ninjas at you so you could see how far you could get. It was pretty lame, and i didn't play it much.

There was a separate mode, but in the story mode you still had to kill countless red and black ninjas, which was usually a two seconds affair. It was slightly more interesting since you had terrain and trees to worry about, and the ninjas could come from different sides, but it was still boring. OTOH, the boss and two-player fights were about the best and most tactical I've ever seen, which kinda made the other ones bearable.

 

[suibhne]

At least based on the limited context provided by the article, I can't imagine any logical defense of Molyneux's suggestions. But keep it up! Criticizing the Codex's close-mindedness is always the best joke possible at any given conversational moment. Really.

...

When people use only one button, it's because the combat system sucks. Making a better, more intuitive, more engaging fighting system doesn't require reducing it to simply one button - unless, of course, you're a really bad game designer and can't do any better.

As for one-hit kills, sure. Fine. But fighting systems producing one-hit kills, e.g. kendo, offer those as the exception rather than the rule, i.e. only in the case of unusual skill and opportunity. And the process of analogizing real-life actions into a simple user interface for RT combat - RPG or otherwise, using 1 button or 10 - greatly compresses the skill range and the perceptual range possible in real life, much as an SLR camera is unable to capture anywhere close to the range of light visible to the human eye. It's extremely difficult to analogize "unusual skill and opportunity" in a complex RT fighting system, yet Molyneux wants to take the opposite approach and make the user interface as simple as possible and make such kills ordinary rather than extraordinary. Just...wow.

I guess what he's describing would indeed be more cinematic, in the sense that the player would end up having about as much control over their character as while sitting in a movie theater.

 

[Sarvis]

I haven't played KH2 yet. I have the first game, but I find the controls and interface to be so poorly thought-out that it just ruins the fun. I'm not sure how much it has changed from KH1, but the bottom menu command in KH1 (that assigned an action to the X button) was usually a context-sensitive command. That part worked well, but the whole "navigate a menu with the right analog stick while you play in real-time" concept just doesn't work.

Honestly, just don't bother using the summons. Quick keys for the spells are generally all you need, the only thing is you need potions sometimes and that's annoying. KH2 is a little better in this regard, you still have the same menu setup... but you can assign potions to the quick key. Of course, you probably won't need them because KH2 is actually quite a bit easier than KH1. Too easy actually.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has a similar mechanic to what you describe.

I must have deleted the horror of that game from my memory, because I don't remember the controls being like that...

That's a pretty standard boss battle design in every genre, especially for Japanese games. Pretty much every boss in every game has a sequence that you need to perform 3 or 4 times to finish it off.

Not really, or at least not what I'm talking about. Yes, you often have to memorize patterns to hit the boss, but this is much more dynamic and less interactive. It really is more like Dragon's Lair, for bosses anyway, as using the Action button at the right time kicks off a special sequence. A good example is in a fight against a Hydra. You have to fight it normally until you damage it enough to stun it, which gives you a chance to use the action command. Time that right and a pegasus flies in, you hop on and fly past each head in a predefined sequence, where the action icon flashes at specific points allowing you to hit for massive damage. It's quite fun and dynamic feeling <i>the first time</i> because it creates a more fantastic fight sequence... but when you're doing it the 4th time it's just gotten old. Especially since in between each sequence you have to fight the boss as if it were a normal boss in any other game.

 

[Keldryn]

There was a separate mode, but in the story mode you still had to kill countless red and black ninjas, which was usually a two seconds affair. It was slightly more interesting since you had terrain and trees to worry about, and the ninjas could come from different sides, but it was still boring. OTOH, the boss and two-player fights were about the best and most tactical I've ever seen, which kinda made the other ones bearable.

Was that ninja bit in the story mode of the first game? Gah, I guess you do start losing your memory as you age. I have no recollection of that part of the game whatsoever. Where was it in the game? It's been years since I've played it. And I didn't really care for the sequel, which I didn't play much of.

The two-player fights were great though. There was a level of tension and excitement that you just couldn't create during a Soul Calibur match.

 

[Keldryn]

At least based on the limited context provided by the article, I can't imagine any logical defense of Molyneux's suggestions. But keep it up! Criticizing the Codex's close-mindedness is always the best joke possible at any given conversational moment. Really.

Maybe not, but it's always good for a chuckle.

When people use only one button, it's because the combat system sucks. Making a better, more intuitive, more engaging fighting system doesn't require reducing it to simply one button - unless, of course, you're a really bad game designer and can't do any better.

Yeah, there has to be a happy medium between a totally context-driven one-button attack, and the sequence of D-pad presses and buttons you have to input to pull off a move in Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter, or <shudder> Tekken.

As for one-hit kills, sure. Fine. But fighting systems producing one-hit kills, e.g. kendo, offer those as the exception rather than the rule, i.e. only in the case of unusual skill and opportunity. And the process of analogizing real-life actions into a simple user interface for RT combat - RPG or otherwise, using 1 button or 10 - greatly compresses the skill range and the perceptual range possible in real life, much as an SLR camera is unable to capture anywhere close to the range of light visible to the human eye. It's extremely difficult to analogize "unusual skill and opportunity" in a complex RT fighting system, yet Molyneux wants to take the opposite approach and make the user interface as simple as possible and make such kills ordinary rather than extraordinary. Just...wow.

It might work in a game that is trying to emulate that cinematic style, where the hero takes on a hundred opponents and doesn't get a scratch. The real danger to her character wasn't from the mass of ninjas, but from the "boss" battle afterwards. It's like how Stormtroopers can never hit Luke, but Darth Vader certainly can.

However, for a sword duel more grounded in reality, a combat system like Bushido Blade would probably work a lot better. If most (or all) fights in the game are intended to be climactic moments, then timed presses of a single button and/or one-hit kills might be more appropriate. If combat occurs hundreds of times throughout the game, it obviously won't be.

 

[Keldryn]

Honestly, just don't bother using the summons. Quick keys for the spells are generally all you need, the only thing is you need potions sometimes and that's annoying. KH2 is a little better in this regard, you still have the same menu setup... but you can assign potions to the quick key. Of course, you probably won't need them because KH2 is actually quite a bit easier than KH1. Too easy actually.

Well, I won't be playing KH2 for quite some time. It's not even remotely on my "want" list. I didn't even get any of the summon in KH1; I'm still on the Tarzan level, and the only world I've completed is the Alice in Wonderland one. I liked the concept of the game, but the execution kind of sucks. Kingdom Hearts is one of those games that I find difficult not because the game was designed to be challenging, but because of boneheaded UI and game design decisions.

I must have deleted the horror of that game from my memory, because I don't remember the controls being like that...

Why didn't you like The Wind Waker? It's one of my favourites from the past few years, and I think it compares pretty well to Ocarina of Time. It has a pretty wide-open world to explore, with basically no loading screens, lots of secrets to uncover... didn't like the graphics, or was there something else?

But yes, the controls did work like that in some fights. The A button would give you a context-sensitive attack against certain enemies when the opportunity presented itself. The icon for the A button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen would "burst" and a chime would go off. I remember it doing so in the fights with all of the armoured knights (such as in the "frozen" castle -- that black and white sequence was incredibly cool), and I can't remember how it worked in all of the boss fights. It came in during the final duel with Ganondorf, IIRC.

Not really, or at least not what I'm talking about. Yes, you often have to memorize patterns to hit the boss, but this is much more dynamic and less interactive. It really is more like Dragon's Lair, for bosses anyway, as using the Action button at the right time kicks off a special sequence. A good example is in a fight against a Hydra. You have to fight it normally until you damage it enough to stun it, which gives you a chance to use the action command. Time that right and a pegasus flies in, you hop on and fly past each head in a predefined sequence, where the action icon flashes at specific points allowing you to hit for massive damage. It's quite fun and dynamic feeling <i>the first time</i> because it creates a more fantastic fight sequence... but when you're doing it the 4th time it's just gotten old. Especially since in between each sequence you have to fight the boss as if it were a normal boss in any other game.

Ah, okay, I see what you mean now. Kind of sucks that they pull that shtick off four times. Is the the exact same sequence every time?

Did you play Shadow of the Colossus?

 

[Sarvis]

...I can't imagine any logical defense of Molyneux's suggestions. ... Criticizing the Codex's close-mindedness

Uh-huh.

Let's just say your Avatar is well selected.


<b>Keldryn</b>

Well, I won't be playing KH2 for quite some time. It's not even remotely on my "want" list. I didn't even get any of the summon in KH1; I'm still on the Tarzan level, and the only world I've completed is the Alice in Wonderland one. I liked the concept of the game, but the execution kind of sucks. Kingdom Hearts is one of those games that I find difficult not because the game was designed to be challenging, but because of boneheaded UI and game design decisions.

Well, I thought they were pretty fun. Not really great games, but fun brawlers kind of like Final Fight. Honestly I think the gameplay in KH2 was quite improved, except that they made it too easy. No big deal, but if you get the chance to borrow it or something you can see what I mean with the action keys when you fight the first boss.

Why didn't you like The Wind Waker? It's one of my favourites from the past few years, and I think it compares pretty well to Ocarina of Time. It has a pretty wide-open world to explore, with basically no loading screens, lots of secrets to uncover... didn't like the graphics, or was there something else?

Yes, it had a huge open world... with nothing in it. The game was ok, really on the level of KH, until you had to get the Triforce pieces and spend hours sailing around looking for them. Worse yet was the game length, with only a few short dungeons. Really the last dungeon is the only one that impressed me, and made it start feeling like a Zelda game... but it felt like the dungeons you normally see in the MIDDLE of a Zelda game, not at the end. It could have been redeemed a bit if after you got the Triforce and went after Gannon he had been in another nice, long, difficult dungeon.. but no, they just made it a few short "hallways" or something. There were a few secrets, but few of them were worthwhile... really the best one was the only truly difficult fight in the game, where you drop into a room and enemies rush you en masse for like 3 minutes straight.

I still don't remember the chime thing... I remember how you kill Gannon (again it was way, WAY too easy... it's GANNON... I mean, come on!) but I don't remember a chime or special button for it, I thought it was just blocking with the shield. Oh well, poor memory I guess.

You'll probably groan when I say the graphics were kiddy, but they were. They were 100% indicative of the game, it's plot and difficulty were perfectly in line with the age group the graphics represented.

Sorry, Zelda rant... heh.

Ah, okay, I see what you mean now. Kind of sucks that they pull that shtick off four times. Is the the exact same sequence every time?

For most of the bosses, yes. I think it was a cool idea, I was really excited by it in the first fight... but as it went on I really felt it was handled badly. Yes, it's a cool sequence for most of the bosses... making it repeat 4 times is just tedious.

Did you play Shadow of the Colossus?

Yes, but haven't beaten it. Good game!

 

[suibhne]

Let's just say your Avatar is well selected.

As is your appellation. :wink:

 

[Bradylama]

Molyneux also went on to possibly commit gaming swordfighting heresy by asking 'do we need a block button anyway?' although he admitted that wasn't a very popular view amongst his Lionhead colleagues.

I guess this answers the Molyneux or Lionhead question.

 

[Keldryn]

Well, I thought they were pretty fun. Not really great games, but fun brawlers kind of like Final Fight. Honestly I think the gameplay in KH2 was quite improved, except that they made it too easy. No big deal, but if you get the chance to borrow it or something you can see what I mean with the action keys when you fight the first boss.

I'll probably pick it up when it's down to $20 as a Greatest Hits title. I don't rent or borrow games very often, as it can take me months or a year to get through it unless I get obsessed with it.

Yes, it had a huge open world... with nothing in it.

Oh, like Morrowind? :-P

I thought it was done pretty well... every map sector had an island, which usually had at least one secret. There were lookout platforms, giant octos, treasure chests, and submerged ships sprinkled all around the ocean. I had a blast exploring the world.

The game was ok, really on the level of KH, until you had to get the Triforce pieces and spend hours sailing around looking for them. Worse yet was the game length, with only a few short dungeons.

The hunt for the Triforce did feel like filler. I think the game had five major dungeons, instead of the usual eight. From interviews with Aonuma (the project director), it seems there were at least two dungeons cut from the game due to getting the game out on schedule. I think one was where you would get the third stone or jewel or whatever it was. After going through two dungeons for the first two, you blow open a cave and Lord Jabu Jabu just gives you the third stone. Not sure about the second one. I thought that some of the dungeons were definitely pretty long... the second one (where you use the Deku Leaf a bunch) and the Tower of the Gods were epic Zeldaish dungeons. I thought Ganon's Tower was a bit disappointing, as it was basically a Greatest Hits version of four previous dungeons. But the climactic duel with Ganon was very cool.

Really the last dungeon is the only one that impressed me, and made it start feeling like a Zelda game... but it felt like the dungeons you normally see in the MIDDLE of a Zelda game, not at the end. It could have been redeemed a bit if after you got the Triforce and went after Gannon he had been in another nice, long, difficult dungeon.. but no, they just made it a few short "hallways" or something. There were a few secrets, but few of them were worthwhile... really the best one was the only truly difficult fight in the game, where you drop into a room and enemies rush you en masse for like 3 minutes straight.

It was more than a few short hallways... there was a central hub with four hallways, each of which lead to an area "heavily inspired" by each of the four previous dungeons. It was a pretty linear journey to a black-and-white repeat of that dungeon's boss battle. After that you had three fairly tough battles against three forms of Ganon (including the very difficult one with the worm/caterpillar thing), and then off to the final duel. I think, it's been a while.

I still don't remember the chime thing... I remember how you kill Gannon (again it was way, WAY too easy... it's GANNON... I mean, come on!) but I don't remember a chime or special button for it, I thought it was just blocking with the shield. Oh well, poor memory I guess.[

You'll probably groan when I say the graphics were kiddy, but they were. They were 100% indicative of the game, it's plot and difficulty were perfectly in line with the age group the graphics represented.

Sorry, Zelda rant... heh.

Most "dedicated" gamers found it on the easy side. You found it easy, and so did I. I think I only ever got 13 out of the total 20 heart containers... didn't need any more and I'd never actually died in the game.

But for a lot of people who didn't go through the transition from 2D games to 3D games in the late 90s like we did, the game was actually very difficult. I know many people like this. And my limited experience is certainly not a large enough sample to be representative, but... they are all women. My wife, my sister, my friends' wives, and some of my female friends. All about my age (32) or a up to 5 years younger. They all played games on the NES, Genesis, and/or Super NES when growing up, just like I did. They sort of drifted away from video games a bit during the Playstation/Saturn/N64 years, continued playing on the SNES (like my wife), or played mostly RPG and Civ-type or Tycoon-type games on the PC (my sister).

My wife tried to play The Wind Waker a couple of years ago -- the last Zelda game she played was A Link to the Past on the SNES. She found the game too difficult to play. She hated the analog stick and wanted to use the D-pad. It was hard to control the character, and the camera and perspective were disorienting. The first time she picked up an Xbox controller, she said "Wow. This has so many buttons." And I've heard these same complaints from many gamers -- mostly women -- about modern games. All of them are very intelligent and are very techno-literate. They know computers very well, and were perfectly at home playing games on the Super Nintendo, and 2D RPGs on the Playstation. As soon as you bring analog sticks and a 3D view into the picture, a huge barrier pops up.

And I find it fascinating. We "hardcore" gamers demand more depth and complexity in our games, or else they are too easy for us. But for people who haven't grown with each incremental advance in gaming technology, are they too complex?

On the other hand, there are many children playing Playstation 2 and Gamecube games who weren't even born when the Super Nintendo -- much less the NES -- came out (now doesn't that make you feel old?). And they don't seem to have a lot of trouble grasping modern 3D gameplay and controllers. But the brains of children that age are perfectly adapted for rapid learning. The "critical period" for language acquisition ends around 11 or 12 years of age, after which it becomes much more difficult to learn new languages and sounds.

Well that certainly got off-topic. But I think it's a fascinating subject. And it's one reason why I think Nintendo may be on to something with the direction they are taking with the Wii.

 

[Human Shield]

For everyone's knowledge Bushido Blade 1's story mode was a series of fighting real characters with maps that you could run between (get a loading pause in tunnel areas in-between). Bushido Blade 2 had you fight a bunch of ninjas then fight a character on a single closed area.

The AI challenge was bad in both games and blocking mechanics in the series wasn't worked out, they could have really improved the dynamics if they continued the series.

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

Keldryn, you would probably HATE "Rematch". It's a one turn interactive fiction. Enter the wrong command and you die and start over. Do it right and you win. There wasn't any walkthrough available, so I spent about six months wracking my brain against that one move. When I finally figured it out (and a great day it was) I submitted my one and only contribution to the collective gaming knowledge and I feel thereby repaying all the times I had relied on it previously.

 

[Ryuken]

The concepts that are being discussed here sound a lot like what Eon was planning to do.Too bad it got cancelled.

 

[Direwolf]

Eon' description looks pretty cool. Too bad it was never released...

 

[St. Toxic]

Shame to waste mb2, not to mention all the fun you could have with the scroller wheel.

 

[Sovard]

Isn't what Molydouche is describing awfully similar to Dark Messiah of M&M? I mean, the situational action key. You only ever have that one "use" key, it just depends upon your active ability. You can freeze an enemy, create a slippery patch of ice, etc. from a single ability and button. I do remember prior games where such things would be multiple spells.

One key to do everything doesn't seem very exciting though. It sounds like it would limit the actual tactical choices.


Also, to all that Bushido Blade discussion, I used to play 1 and 2 a helluva lot in head-to-head. That game was such a breath of fresh air compared to all of the derivative fighting games and their HP bars/flashy uber move approach. I actually played another samurai combat game that those developers released, it was more of a realistic iaijutsu duel type of system. It was slightly clunky, but deftly dodging a blow and performing a perfect counterattack was all it took. Eventually the battles became more about the skill of evasion than anything. By botching an offensive maneuver you actually had to make a split decision to dodge (and in a decent direction) right away. The twitch gave way to tactics and the battles became heated few second feint/parry/dodge/strike matches, until you both kind of back off and re-approach. Created a very period samurai movie feel to it.

I wish I was doing game design, I'd make all of these "visionaries" wish they were something more than all talk.

 

[voodoo1man]

I give him credit for at least thinking outside the box. The fact that he's way way way outsided the box is a different matter.

It would be nice if he confined his out of the box experiments to proof-of-concept demos that Lionhead only exposes their guinea pig developers to, instead of full-on games that they try to sell for $50 to everybody. I didn't need Black & White to be able to tell that mouse gestures are dumb.

 

[Surgey]

Shadow of Colossus was great and had style, but it felt a little empty. The fights were great, though. I was hoping for some dungeon delving, but the developers focused on one thing (the Colossus fights), and they made those tons of fun, despite a pretty agonizing framerate.