Games

[icycalm]

Is anyone interested in seeing an icycalm DMC3 (***) review?

[Tain]

I'd love to see one.

[icycalm]

There you go:

http://culture.vg/reviews/in-depth/devi ... 5-ps2.html

Glad I finally got that out of the way. It's been weighing on me for over half a goddamn decade! DMC3 a great game lol. It's barely even a decent one -- something to tie you over for a couple of days while you wait for Platinum Games to subcontract for Capcom and make a proper DMC sequel.

[Lord Knight]

You may want to do some quick editing in this sentence: "There is one boss who attacks you with an electric guitar at some point, but there's nothing special about either the way he looks or his attacks"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiJ5Fw4chIQ

That boss was a female demon and she did not attack with a guitar but transformed into one after you defeated her.

I can also approve that the wall running, while it sounded cool in concept, was done in a clunky manner and was utterly useless during combat.

The part where the bosses are re-used is probably a homage to Capcom's Rockman games, where the last challenge before the final boss in each game was to fight all the bosses in a row and with limited healing. DMC3 even has a similar hub room where you can choose which boss to tackle next.

[icycalm]

Okay, thanks for the heads-up. I removed the offending paragraph, and here it is for the benefit of any latecomers who didn't get to read it:

There is one boss who attacks you with an electric guitar at some point, but there's nothing special about either the way he looks or his attacks, and the guitar ends up being a gimmick that even degrades the game by making the gameworld look silly. So basically the only ones who are going to be impressed by him are those who lack an aesthetic sense to such a degree, that they can't see he sticks out from the DMC setting like a sore thumb.

Like I said, I played the game a single time 6 or 7 years ago, and the only boss fight apart from the first that stuck in my mind was vaguely connected with a guitar in some way, so I assumed that the boss was using it as a weapon of some sort. So I was trying to provide yet another example of how utterly unimaginative and underwhelming the boss fights are, to the point that even with such an usual gimmick they are nothing to get excited over. Dante takes the guitar/boss after the battle is over and can use it as a weapon, but it must have been a gimmicky one because I don't remember making much use of it during the remaining game.

As for the recycling of the bosses being a "homage" to Rockman -- if so, then I guess DMC1 and 4 were also "homaging" Rockman, and who knows how many other Capcom titles I no longer remember or haven't even played?

"Homaging" is only cool if the aspect you are paying homage to was good in the first place, and though I haven't really played many Rockman games aside from some GBA installments, I can tell you that asset recycling in any way, shape or form is a bad idea, and especially with assets of such importance as goddamn boss fights! It's not even that these games needed more boss fights than they already had before the doubling -- all the above-mentioned titles would have worked just fine with just their original, unique number of bosses, so the technique is obviously just a cheap way to extend game-time, and in all probability served the exact same purpose in the Rockman games.

[icycalm]

As for the hub boss-select area, that's the "labyrinth-type" area I mentioned in the review, so I switched all references to it with the term "hub" which you now reminded me. And as I said, that hub area is the worst-looking and worst-designed area in a game featuring some of the shittiest, most forgettable level designs in the history of 3D action level design.

[icycalm]

Q: Everyone is wondering why the graphics in your multi-million dollar sequel to GTA V are blocky little black and white squares. Any comment on that Mr. Dan Houser?

DH: Haven't you managed to figure it out yet? It's a homage to Pong of course, lol.

[Lord Knight]

Another small fix: "3's most memorable and well-designed boss is the very first one you encounter, a multi-headed hydra-like thing."

The first boss was actually a big grim reaper enemy, which I had totally forgotten about, and the second one was a Cerberus.

I find it interesting that you say "and Ninja Gaiden aside there was simply no better 3D action system in existence around this game's release, circa 2005" about a game that puts emphasis on its scoring system, since it reminded me of the part in the scoring essay where you said a similar thing about arcade games with scoring -- that the best arcade games had scoring so that you would have a reason to replay them instead of going back to other arcade games which were worse. The difference is that here, in DMC3's case, it was not the whole experience that was better than the competition but only one single aspect.

[icycalm]

Another small fix: "3's most memorable and well-designed boss is the very first one you encounter, a multi-headed hydra-like thing."

The first boss was actually a big grim reaper enemy, which I had totally forgotten about, and the second one was a Cerberus.

Yeah, I had forgotten about it too, and it's for this reason that I am classifying it as a mid-boss instead of a proper boss. The DMC games do not usually follow the classic 1 boss per stage, at the END of the stage, formula. Some missions might have two "boss" encounters, some none -- which is great because it keeps you on your toes since you've no idea what to expect, but it makes distinguishing between proper bosses and mid-bosses a little difficult. So, for MY purposes, the first proper boss of DMC3 was the Cerberus -- and that's the end of that lol. It was simply the first fight in the game that felt to me like a boss fight.

As for the hydra comment, I just wanted to find a way to say it had multiple heads. I guess I might look for a way to rephrase that at some point.

I find it interesting that you say "and Ninja Gaiden aside there was simply no better 3D action system in existence around this game's release, circa 2005" about a game that puts emphasis on its scoring system

DMC does NOT puts its emphasis on the scoring system -- only the aspies do that. But you'll have to read my DMC and Ninja Gaiden reviews to fully understand that, so wait for those.

The difference is that here, in DMC3's case, it was not the whole experience that was better than the competition but only one single aspect.

Exactly. And this one aspect (the combat system) was not enough to compensate for how shitty the game was at everything else -- hence why I would rather mash buttons in Otogi all day long, than replay any part of DMC3 for any length of time whatsoever.

[icycalm]

I've been having a little discussion with S.A. Renegade from Scathing Accuracy about his Persona 3 review vis-a-vis the one we currently have on this site, and in the course of that discussion we have come to talk about my views on DMC3 and the whole aesthetics/mechanics interaction once again. So I am going to copy-paste here all the comments from that discussion that pertain to this thread, and then continue answering them (and I'll post the ones that pertain to Persona 3 in the Persona 3 thread at some later time). So here goes:

Before I go on, I'd like to say that I don't really understand your continued assertion that I hardly pay attention to anything but the mechanics, that I'm blind as a bat, etc. I don't agree with this. First of all, if that were true, I would have never given such a high score to games like Ace Attorney or Ghost Trick, which BARELY even qualify as games if you look at them from a purely mechanical perspective (they are closer to visual novels than games). And yet I love these games due to their story, characters, art, music, general style and personality. By the same token, games like Killer7 that, had I reviewed based purely on mechanics, I would've probably given a straight F because of how bad they are, I ended up giving a mediocre score because the art, atmosphere and setting elevate it somewhat.

There are many, many other instances of me talking about things that have nothing to do with mechanics. Just off the top of my head: blasting Star Ocean 4 for not having pair endings like its predecessors (as well as dedicating tons of paragraphs blasting the characters and not using a certain song for a certain dungeon), noting that two of the main reasons why Bioshock is good are the amazing setting and atmosphere, regularly trashing western games for having ugly characters and generally poor art design compared to jap games, regularly complaining that I'm tired of generic medieval fantasy settings and that I prefer other settings like futuristic or contemporary much more. I even regularly commit your so-called animu wanking of name-dropping character designers, music composers and voice actors. So no, I don't agree that I'm blind and hardly pay attention to anything but mechanics.

As for the "blind as bats" comment, note that it was written before I had read too many of your reviews. And it is true that in quite a few of them the aesthetic aspects weigh heavily --- as they should. But in others, such as for instance the Ninja Gaiden 3 and Bayonetta reviews, it's not mentioned at all. It's like these games have no artwork, no graphics, no setting and stage designs for you -- hell, they don't even seem to have bosses as far as you are concerned. So I would say that, in this matter, both your reviews and Shepton's are a little uneven, to say the least. The original DMC and Ninja Gaiden had some of the most spectacular environments, stage designs and boss fights ever -- on top of their unprecedented combat mechanics -- and yet, by reading your reviews, I get no idea of how their successors fare in these regards -- which for me are very important, as can be seen in my recent DMC3 review, a game I found impossible to properly enjoy because its environment seems like an endless, featureless dungeon and its boss fights utterly fucking suck.

Anyway, I am going to clear all this up in the forum eventually. If any of this seems useful to you, take it, and ignore the rest. What is in your reviews is mostly excellent, so I am not so much concerned about what isn't. I am only mentioning it for the sake of thoroughness, and to justify the fact that I won't be able to feature all of your content on my frontpage, as I'd like to.

The reason why I don't mention artwork, graphics, setting or stage designs in my Ninja Gaiden 3 and Bayonetta reviews is because these aspects are so, so, so secondary to my enjoyment of action games that I barely even find them worth mentioning (after reading your DMC3 review I know how important they are to you, and it's kind of funny just how different we are and how the way we treat these games is almost diametrically opposed). Generally speaking (since my goal is simply to talk about whatever I want rather than give a proper review of all aspects of a game) I will only talk about something if I feel strongly about it (either positively or negatively). For example, if I'm reviewing a game in a series that is known for exceptional music, and the music in the one I'm reviewing happens to be below the standards of what I expect, I'll note it. But if I'm reviewing a game in a series that has always had music so forgettable that I don't even notice it, I probably won't even say anything at all. This is the case when it comes to, say, the stories in action games. My reaction to almost all of them is usually "Meh.", and they have no bearing on my enjoyment of the games, so chances are I won't mention them.

Sure, it's definitely nice if an action game has good art, setting and whatnot, but to me this is just icing on the cake. It is not the reason I play these games, and as such, if these aspects aren't exceptional in one way or another I probably won't mention them.

Now, just so it's clear where I stand on this issue, I will comment on some of the things I disagree with on your DMC3 review:

>"you have the Scathing Accuracy guys to thank for it, with their "DMC3 this and that" spiel in every other 3D action game review, as if the goddamn thing were some kind of paragon example of the genre"

Yes it is. It's a masterpiece of the genre and the greatest action game of all time :)

>"over the span of a couple of nights"

This point illustrates to me just how differently we treat this genre. You played DMC3 once over the span of a couple of nights, I played it... maybe 8, 10 times over the span of hundreds and hundreds of hours? To me, playing an action game only once is completely missing the point of the game. It's akin to someone getting a fighting game and only playing the arcade or story mode. More on this in a bit...

>What's wrong with DMC3 is basically everything except the battle system (90+% of which was anyway inherited from Kamiya...)

If I read this I basically interpret it as saying that the game is awesome.

>"O rly? In that case you wouldn't mind if the entire game did, in fact, take place inside a single bare room, with infinite waves of enemies being thrown at you so you can PLAY THE GEAM'S GAEMPLAY forever to your heart's content?"

No, I wouldn't mind. Do you remember the Bloody Palace? If not, it was a mode which consisted of nothing but 100 identical arenas (or rooms, if you prefer) full of enemies to fight. You defeated the enemies and then progressed to the next room, where a new set of enemies awaited you. So on and so on for 100 rooms. Every 20 rooms or so there'd be a boss. That was it, and it was great. So no, I wouldn't mind. The game would be just as good. Maybe even better, since then they wouldn't have to waste resources on story, level design, characters and other unimportant stuff that isn't even that good in the first place and could concentrate on making the stuff that matters better, such as the controls, the moves, the enemies, the balance, and presenting worthwhile challenges to the player. In fact, you just gave me a great idea: what if there really was a DMC3 game that was nothing but 100 identical bare rooms each with its own set of difficult enemy challenges, all properly and meticulously balanced (because they wouldn't be wasting resources on other stuff), and to be able to advance to the next challenge you'd have to get an SS rank on the previous one? That game would be awesome. I would play it and love it. It would be kind of like the Trauma Center games which consist of nothing but individual stages to get XS rank on (although the most recent one ruined that a little by putting more emphasis on the story instead of the challenges). But again, you would probably hate it.

>"and it is time we agreed that stage design is a far more important aspect of a game, even an action game — and indeed especially those! — than the battle system, since the main reason we play videogames is to be immersed inside wildly imaginative and strikingly beautiful environments"

No, this is wrong. It's one of the reason we might play a game, but not the only one. Further, stage design is absolutely not the most important aspect of action games. The combat system, the enemy design, the difficulty and balance, these are the most important aspects. I think you might be confusing action games with action-adventure. It's easy to confuse the two these days because developers keep bloating what should be pure action games with unnecessary exploration elements, trinket finding, puzzles, and even RPG elements! But here's the thing, if a game puts special care and emphasis on its combat system, and is above all about fighting enemies and overcoming difficult skill-based challenges, it is an action game despite any unnecessary fluff that the developers may have added. And I think we can all agree that DMC, Bayonetta and Ninja Gaiden fall under the pure action game label. Now, for a game like Zelda (which is action-adventure), I would agree that the design of the dungeons is of great, and perhaps even paramount, importance. But that's because it's a different genre.

>"not to get good at pushing plastic buttons according to the dictates of obscure algorithms."

Except... that actually is indeed the reason. To tackle a set of well designed challenges (levels, stages, chapters, operations, rooms, whatever you want to call them) with the well designed tools that you are given (that is the battle system), and in doing so, learn, improve your skill with, and eventually reach a mastery of the system. THIS is the essence of the action game. This is what is fun about these games. This is the reason that I play them. From your humble beginnings getting killed over and over by the first boss on normal because you suck, all the way through your journey of mastery to the point where nothing is able to hit you on the hardest difficulty, where you manage to overcome all challenges perfectly with elegance and style, where you achieve a state of "flow" and it's as if you become one with the game and nothing can stop you. You call it autism, I call it fun.

>"and there's absolutely nothing in the entire game like that shape-shifting shadow-cat miniboss"

Actually those shadow cats are just regular enemies, not mini bosses. You end up fighting up to 3 of them at the same time in the hardest difficulty. Fun stuff. I agree with this point though, the enemies in DMC1 were better designed. That is one aspect in which DMC1 is superior.

>"3's most memorable and well-designed boss is the very first one you encounter, a multi-headed hydra-like thing, and even he can barely hold a candle to even the lamest of the bosses from the original"

Hydra thing...? Cerberus is a dog, not a hydra :P I disagree though, I think DMC3 had some really great bosses! Vergil is probably my favorite, with Agni & Rudra in second place, it was so overwhelming at first to have to fight both of them at the same time because you're not used to multi-tasking against enemies that difficult yet, fighting one while keeping your focus open to what the other is doing as well, and once you get better it becomes a really fun fight. As you said, Cerberus was also good, as was Beowulf, and I also really liked the fight against Lady (though I only really appreciated it once I started trying to SS rank it, but it's actually a really fun boss fight). You're right though, it did have some bad ones... the biggest offender being Arkham (also known as Disco Blob), Gigapede was lazy and boring too. So was the Leviathan's Heart.

>"It's like, at first I tried to vary my moves and mix them up a bit, because that's how you're supposed to enjoy DMC's fights, but since the mixing up is not necessary to defeat the enemies...for whom an "S" rank on a screen that's essentially situated OUTSIDE the game has any meaning."

What? How can you say that? The S rank is clearly a challenge that is situated inside the game. If I said something like "I'm gonna beat the game without upgrading my moves" or "Speed run with no energy tanks" in Metroid or "Level 1 solo character run" in an RPG, etc, THAT is a challenge situated outside of the game. But the ranking system is absolutely a part of the game and is (or should be) designed and balanced by the developers themselves. It's true that varying your moves isn't necessary to beat enemies, but that is because you act as if the ranking system doesn't exist. The fact that your ranking is tied to your style meter is an ingenious way to give you incentive to vary your moves rather than simply abusing a few really effective ones like how Ninja Gaiden is all about izuna drop, izuna drop, izuna drop, or UT, UT, UT with no reason to do much else most of the time (note that this doesn't mean I'm trashing Ninja Gaiden. It, along with DMC is one of the masterpieces of the genre). Not only does your style meter directly affect your rank, but it also affects the number of red orbs you get, which affect your rank, but it ALSO affects the speed at which you regenerate your devil orbs, which is important to effectively use the DT Flux to dispatch enemies effectively and keep battles from becoming long and drawn out (which, you guessed it, also affects your rank).

>"DMC3, then, is by no means the tough-as-nails game that the hype has made it out to be, and you can take my word for it that the original is even slightly harder — and Ninja Gaiden a little harder still than both of them (all at normal difficulty, of course)."

I agree with this, Ninja Gaiden was a little harder than both of them on normal difficulty. But there's your problem, normal difficulty is only a very small fraction of these games. What about hard? What about DMD/Master Ninja mode? What about SS ranking DMD? You're missing out on 80% of the fun. I guarantee you that SS ranking DMD in DMC3 is unbelievably hard.

You go on to say that you don't see anything special about the fighting mechanics and say that you didn't try three quarters of the moveset and furthermore only played the game once, and you don't see the genius of the style meter and how it improves the game, or great additions to the genre such as the ability to dodge three times in rapid succession before a recovery period (which Bayonetta later adopted and increased it to 5 times) and air dodges (which Bayonetta also adopted), or the slew of amazing combo potential opened up by the implementation of jump canceling.

>""BUT THE COMBAT SYSTEM REALLY BEGINS TO SHINE IF YOU REPLAY THE ENTIRE FUCKIN' GAME 16 TIMES AND TRY TO S-RANK EVERY TEDIOUS LITTLE COPY-PASTE FIGHT IT CONTAINS." Well, too bad I am never going to see that, because I am not enough of an autist to do anything as utterly ridiculous as that"

That's a shame :(

Anyway, sorry for writing such a long reply. It seems that the reason we play action games and the way we see the genre is fundamentally different. I doubt we can see eye to eye on these issues, but I just thought you'd appreciate me clarifying my stance since you seemed puzzled by it.

I am only going to concentrate on this, because it's the main thing you are getting wrong, and all your other mistakes essentially stem from it:

"not to get good at pushing plastic buttons according to the dictates of obscure algorithms."

Except... that actually is indeed the reason.

That is something only a cripple would say, if you think about it for a moment -- and I am fairly sure you are not a cripple, so you're making a big mistake here. I explained this in a 36-page essay in my first book, titled "On Why Scoring Sucks And Those Who defend It Are Aspies". Someone's ripped the essay and put it online, so if you don't mind the crappy image quality you can read it here:

http://imgur.com/a/q6BUr

And then check the 4-page thread on my forum in which I offer some clarifications:

http://culture.vg/forum/topic?f=16&t=3854

If you are still not getting it after all this... you probably never will. Just as you (and Shepton) don't seem to get that the "graphics" part of a game is inextricably connected to the aesthetic, and that resolution, number of polygons and colors etc. is under no circumstances something separate from art quality -- as you explicitly state in your Nocturne review. In all these issues, you have not searched deep enough, you have not thought deeply enough, and your ideas on them could seriously have come from a random gamefaqs poster. In a way it's cute, but in another way it's sad too, considering that, even though you've spent so many hours with videogames, you still can't seem to grasp anything fundamental about them. It's not about the button-pressing, man -- it has never been about that. Don't let your somewhat lower aesthetic standards blind you to something so obvious, yet so important, as that. Art is, and has always been -- and will always be -- about beauty. And if you don't think that videogames are art you need to read this:

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_the_ge ... art_games/

BUT, to get back to the lower-level issue of whether or not you should talk a lot about aesthetic aspects in an action game review -- obviously, as you say, you shouldn't talk about anything you don't feel like talking about, because if you did it would of course be bullshit. So, from my perspective, there's nothing wrong with you concetrating on the mechanical aspect. I cannot call such a review a review, as I explained, but I can take your mechanical analysis -- which will indeed be superior to mine -- and add it to my superior aesthetic analysis, and get an overall superior review -- an overall superior analysis of the game. So, regardless of what you make of all these essays I linked to you, I am perfectly capable of appreciating and profiting from what you have to bring to the table as regards the analysis of videogames -- and then whether or not we agree on higher theoretical issues becomes ultimately something of a moot point.

[icycalm]

That is where our email exchange currently stands, and I am continuing to answer his points here:

The reason why I don't mention artwork, graphics, setting or stage designs in my Ninja Gaiden 3 and Bayonetta reviews is because these aspects are so, so, so secondary to my enjoyment of action games that I barely even find them worth mentioning (after reading your DMC3 review I know how important they are to you, and it's kind of funny just how different we are and how the way we treat these games is almost diametrically opposed).

Actually, we treat these games EXTREMELY similarly, as you would see if you took a few dozen steps back from the current discussion, and viewed our thoughts on the genre as a whole. I mean, it's not as if I am saying that No More Heroes or Arkham Asylum are the best 3D action games ever! You are saying DMC3, and I am saying Ninja Gaiden, with DMC1 second (and you would probably stick Ninja Gaiden second, or somewhere near enough). If you take a few steps back you'll see how close our views actually are. They are not EXACTLY identical, of course, but ask any two wine connoisseurs to tell you their favorite wines, and you won't get identical answers either. On the other hand, none of them will tell you some shitty 5-dollar wine that comes in a carton box at the local supermarket. So there IS variation among experts, but on the other hand their tastes are generally close and by no means utterly arbitrary and random -- let alone "diametrically opposed".

Sure, it's definitely nice if an action game has good art, setting and whatnot, but to me this is just icing on the cake. It is not the reason I play these games

It is PRECISELY the reason you play these games. If not, how about a hack of DMC3 in which Dante looks like this:



and in which your enemies are 6-year-old girls which you violate and rape by comboing them as usual, all mechanics remaining exactly as they were? Everything is displayed in basically life-like definition, with the little girls crying, etc., blood flowing everywhere, as this monstrous abomination goes around raping them? And if you like your girls young (as I do in fact; though I prefer mine around 15 to 16), then replace my example with ANY kind of monstrous example you'd find so revolting that you wouldn't even be able to bear looking at the screen. Fagots sodomising each other, Saddam torture victims -- anything, anything at all. We could even get Itagaki, Mikami and Kamiya to collaborate on improving the mechanics to such an extent that ABOMINABLE RAPIST 3 would make DMC3's mechanics look like Spacewar compared to Senko no Ronde Duo -- but how would you play that game and enjoy its mechanics if you can't even bring yourself to look into the fucking screen?

You might say "oh but your example is extreme, etc. etc. etc." -- but how ELSE would I manage to bring you to see what other people, who are more aesthetically sensitive than you, can see with far less extreme examples? If you are trying to get through to a deaf man you'll have to do some shouting -- there's just no way to get around this, I am afraid, so extreme example it has to be.

Yes it is. It's a masterpiece of the genre and the greatest action game of all time :)

The greatest action game of all time is a game which can be beaten while basically button-mashing 80% of the time. Compare to Ninja Gaiden, in which button-mashing will probably not even get you past the first stage (and don't mention the Izuna Drop again -- even with it you need to do a lot of crowd control to survive, whereas the crowd control aspect of DMC, even the first one, is extremely minor, since most enemies are effectively zombies who shuffle around waiting for you to combo them). But you are so absorbed by contemplation of some numbers on some menu screen AFTER the action is over, that the most glaring flaws DURING the action utterly escape you.

You played DMC3 once over the span of a couple of nights, I played it... maybe 8, 10 times over the span of hundreds and hundreds of hours?

And a rat will happily spin on its wheel until it dies of starvation, but that is not an argument in favor of spinning on a wheel forever -- except if you are a rat.

I don't mean to be offensive -- I really don't. But if I have any chance at all of getting anything through to you, it's through this kind of exaggeration.

To me, playing an action game only once is completely missing the point of the game.

This is precisely what those losers who've spent their whole lives playing Donkey Kong believe. You can read more about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_o ... f_Quarters

How many times is enough to replay a game in your estimation? In mine it's zero. In yours, I don't know, maybe 20 or 30 or 100. In the estimation of these losers it's ∞. So, you are by no means as much of a loser as they are, but neither are you as awesome as me.

>What's wrong with DMC3 is basically everything except the battle system (90+% of which was anyway inherited from Kamiya...)

If I read this I basically interpret it as saying that the game is awesome.

No you don't because it might be referring to the rapist game which you can't play because you can't bring yourself to even look at the screen.

Do you remember the Bloody Palace? If not, it was a mode which consisted of nothing but 100 identical arenas (or rooms, if you prefer) full of enemies to fight. You defeated the enemies and then progressed to the next room, where a new set of enemies awaited you. So on and so on for 100 rooms. Every 20 rooms or so there'd be a boss. That was it, and it was great. So no, I wouldn't mind. The game would be just as good. Maybe even better, since then they wouldn't have to waste resources on story, level design, characters and other unimportant stuff that isn't even that good in the first place and could concentrate on making the stuff that matters better, such as the controls, the moves, the enemies, the balance, and presenting worthwhile challenges to the player. In fact, you just gave me a great idea: what if there really was a DMC3 game that was nothing but 100 identical bare rooms each with its own set of difficult enemy challenges, all properly and meticulously balanced (because they wouldn't be wasting resources on other stuff), and to be able to advance to the next challenge you'd have to get an SS rank on the previous one? That game would be awesome. I would play it and love it. It would be kind of like the Trauma Center games which consist of nothing but individual stages to get XS rank on (although the most recent one ruined that a little by putting more emphasis on the story instead of the challenges). But again, you would probably hate it.

Indeed. And if this design philosophy of yours had been adopted from the very beginning of the artform, none of us would be into videogames today, and DMC3 wouldn't even exist, since Kamiya (the man who made such gorgeous games as DMC1, Viewtiful Joe and Okami!) would not have been attracted to games to make DMC1 in order for Capcom to take it away from him and give to Itsuno. Your ideas are self-destructive -- thank god it would never even occur to game designers to adopt them! Even you would end up hating the result!

And I think we can all agree that DMC, Bayonetta and Ninja Gaiden fall under the pure action game label.

I don't know about Bayonetta because I haven't played it, but DMC is 90% action and 10 adventure, and Ninja Gaiden pure action. Onimusha (DMC's predecessor) was 70/30, Dino Crisis (Onimusha's predecessor) was about 40/60, and Biohazard (Dino Crisis' predecessor) was about 30/70 -- but I will explain all this at length in my DMC review. The main point here anyway is that Ninja Gaiden is a purer action game than DMC.

I would agree that the design of the dungeons is of great, and perhaps even paramount, importance. But that's because it's a different genre.

Dungeons suck. They are just a way to avoid designing lots of varied areas. And I stand behind my assertion about the paramount importance of stage- (i.e. environment) design in ALL kinds of games. This has nothing to do with genre, it has to do with the fundamental nature of art, which is TO TRANSPORT YOU SOMEWHERE ELSE. Simple as that. If it doesn't transport you anywhere, and you remain conscious that you are just some dude sitting on a couch and pressing buttons to try and get an "S-rank" in button-pressing, there's no art involved and we are back to a rat spinning on a wheel because he's a rat and that's what rats do.

>"It's like, at first I tried to vary my moves and mix them up a bit, because that's how you're supposed to enjoy DMC's fights, but since the mixing up is not necessary to defeat the enemies...for whom an "S" rank on a screen that's essentially situated OUTSIDE the game has any meaning."

What? How can you say that? The S rank is clearly a challenge that is situated inside the game.

The name of the game is DEVIL MAY CRY, not MENU SCREEN MAY WATCH. People buy it to run around exploring cool locations while killing hordes of enemies, not to look at menu screens and try to manipulate some numbers. The back of the box says:

ENTER THE WORLD OF DEVIL MAY CRY AS YOU ASSUME THE ROLE OF THE HALF-DEMON GUNSLINGING SWORDMAN SUPERHERO DANTE AS HE EXPLORES THE ENCHANTED TOWER OF TEMEN-NI-GRU AND SQUARES OFF AGAINST THE HORDES OF MONSTERS THAT INFEST IT IN A QUEST TO CONFRONT HIS LONG-LOST BROTHER AND SAVE A MYSTERIOUS AND BEAUTIFUL GIRL.

not

ENTER THE WORLD OF THE SPECIAL OLYMPICS OF BUTTON-PRESSING AS YOU ASSUME THE ROLE OF AN EXPERT BUTTON PUSHER AS HE SITS ON HIS COUCH ALL FUCKING DAY LONG AND PUSHES BUTTONS. THRILL AS THE BUTTON PUSHER SPENDS 2OO HOURS IN HIS FUCKING COUCH TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT EXACT SEQUENCE OF BUTTON-PRESSES WILL SATISFY THE DIGITAL CODE'S OBSCURE ALGORITHM SO AS TO REWARD HIM WITH A CONFIGURATION OF PIXELS ON HIS LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY THAT SPELL THE LETTER "S"!

I am playing the first game, you are playing the second. Of course the first game and the second are the same game, but the difference lies in what each of us takes away from it, and here you can see the difference between us:

http://insomnia.ac/essays/on_criticism/

How different a painting looks when seen in a good light, as compared with some dark corner! Just in the same way, the impression made by a masterpiece varies with the capacity of the mind to understand it.

You take away from these games the button-pushing, and I take the illusion; and like I said in my review, the button-pushing is part of the illusion, but by no means the greater part, never mind the only. And your "S-rank", which is situated on some menu screen outside the illusion, and of which Dante and the creatures in his world know nothing, is detrimental to, and ultimately destroys the illusion, since the point of the game is not to become a "good player" but Dante. And like I said in my 36-page essay on scoring, this has nothing to do with difficulty. Make the extreme complexity of the mechanics MANDATORY for Dante to progress, and not only will I sit down to fully master them, but I will even become better at them than you. If I can drop 20 foot cliffs on snowbowards and mountain bikes and surf 10 foot waves -- activities requiring orders of magnitute greater physical coordination and perseverance than some retarded button-pushing -- I can certainly master a few combos in some goddamn videogame. But I am not going to do it in order to get A NUMBER ON A MENU SCREEN (which is the textbook definition of autism--), I am going to do it IF DANTE HAS TO DO IT. I am going to do it not for me, BUT FOR DANTE.

And it goes without saying that I won't do it if the adventure the devs had designed for Dante consists of him being in a room forever while enemies rush him indefinitely, just as I wouldn't watch a Batman movie with the same scenario. It's not because of my weakness, or my dislike of the mechanics -- it's because the illusion there would be boring and retarded, and I wouldn't want to have anything to do with it. But I would keep an eye out for some brilliant dev who would copy these mechanics and insert them into a worthwhile illusion -- which is to say a worthwhile videogame.

[Diamond Dawg]

No, I wouldn't mind. Do you remember the Bloody Palace? If not, it was a mode which consisted of nothing but 100 identical arenas (or rooms, if you prefer) full of enemies to fight. You defeated the enemies and then progressed to the next room, where a new set of enemies awaited you. So on and so on for 100 rooms. Every 20 rooms or so there'd be a boss. That was it, and it was great.

Bloody Palace was really boring. It wasn't until the final third of BP that the enemies grew tough enough to survive more than just a few hits. It was basically just mindless button mashing for a good thirty minutes beforehand. Also, the identical part isn't true. As you progressed through Bloody Palace, the way the rooms looked changed.

Actually those shadow cats are just regular enemies, not mini bosses.

This is also wrong. The Shadows are the most powerful enemy in the game that isn't a fully-fledged boss, they're often given their own separate room to be fought in, and there's even a small puzzle leading up to the introduction of the very first one. Yes, it's possible for you to fight more than one at a time later on, but that isn't until either a SECRET mission or one of the later missions on the HARDEST DIFFICULTY MODE.

What about DMD/Master Ninja mode? What about SS ranking DMD? You're missing out on 80% of the fun. I guarantee you that SS ranking DMD in DMC3 is unbelievably hard.

SS Ranking DMD actually comes down to grinding. Even played perfectly, many of the missions require you to walk in and out of the same room to respawn enemies over and over, since you won't be able to get enough orbs for an S-ranking from simply progressing through the missions otherwise. The ranking system in DMC3 was a completely broken, half-assed afterthought.

and you don't see the genius of the style meter and how it improves the game, or great additions to the genre such as the ability to dodge three times in rapid succession before a recovery period (which Bayonetta later adopted and increased it to 5 times) and air dodges (which Bayonetta also adopted), or the slew of amazing combo potential opened up by the implementation of jump canceling.

What was the genius of the style meter? You could cycle through the same three or four moves over and over again and maintain the maximum rank indefinitely. In fact, with the Royal Guard style, you only needed two moves. Compared to the style meter in DMC1, DMC3's was a joke.

Secondly, every single one of those "great additions to the genre" were already in DMC1. Not only that, but the triple dash of Trickster style was ALL BUT USELESS because only the first dodge actually protected you from damage. The other two were entirely for mobility.

[icycalm]

In short (to continue my tirade) if videogame developers had taken your game design advice we'd still be playing Pong today. We wouldn't even have had 3D games at all, and it was because developers have always known that graphics are more important that we have them. And it is because they STILL believe in graphics above all else that we will soon have 4D games, and then 5D and 6D ones (I am not joking -- you heard it here first). Developers have to ignore your advice in order to create the future, ergo your advice is bad advice.

Because in the future there'll be no button-pressing.

In the future, there'll be no third-person perspective (which you repeatedly state in your reviews that you prefer to the first-person...)

In the future, not only will the graphics not "not matter", they will be the only thing that matters (see here).

And the games we will be playing will be infinitely more enjoyable, and thus healthier, than the ones we are playing today, just as Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden are infinitely more enjoyable, and thus healthier, than that Donkey Kong piece of shit that those retarded losers are still trying to "master". Your ideas on game design -- the ultimate insights to be gleaned from all the criticism you've written -- are all ignorant, naive and retrogressive.

Which naturally enough does not render your lower insights ignorant and naive, only the higher ones. Your lower insights -- as to whether, for example, Mass Effect 2 is better than 1 -- are generally very well-informed, well thought-out and nuanced. But when you try to extrapolate from them to the theoretical level -- to general insights that apply to all games, to videogames as a whole -- we get the kind of stuff I've been debunking here.

[icycalm]

P.S. Melty, can you please get an avatar so that no one reading this thread, with my triple- quadruple- etc. -posting, will confuse your post for one of mine?

This goes for everyone. Please get an avatar if you want to post, and make it a good one because I don't want you making my site look ugly.

[icycalm]

Just consider how astonishingly retrogressive is his preference for a Space Invaders- and Asteroids-type of DMC game. The shooting genre was able to progress and reach the heights of a Ketsui or a Battle Garegga or an Ikaruga PRECISELY BECAUSE developers and players did not remain satisfied with throwing endless waves of enemies at the player, but demanded more in terms of environment and stage progression. NO ONE today who plays this genre, INCLUDING all the beastly top players, would be silly and tasteless enough to suggest that the genre would improve if we went back to the shitty old days of vector graphics, endless waves of enemies, and single-room action -- except perhaps some old fart who played Space Invaders in his blooming, youthful years, and who has subconsciously connected that game with those years, and therefore uses it as a device to return to them. Everyone else agrees that stage progression was a HUGE improvement, and a large majority would even QUIT the genre (or at least its newer, degenerate descendants) if we went back to the old days (just as I would quit if things went the way Renegade wants them to go).

Devil May Cry, meanwhile, and all games of this nature, arrived AFTER stage progression had become UNIVERSALLY entrenched IN ALL GENRES of the artform, hence they INHERITED this design aspect, and never questioned its inclusion -- and justifiably so. And here we are all these years later, while the entire industry (barring some "indie" bums who can't design shit worth a shit, and some retrogressive shit on XBLA like Trigonometry Wars etc.) is moving in the direction of ENHANCING the environmental and stage-progression aspect IN ALL GENRES -- here we are having S.A. Renegade telling us that he prefers to regress back to 1979 lol.