Games you just finished - 2012

Mushihimesama Futari (Arcade / 360)

This is easily one of my all-time favourite shmups. You play as a little girl riding a beetle or a little-boy-who-looks-like-a-little-girl riding a dragon, and fire needles and lasers at dinosaurs, fish, insects, spiders and dragons while they vomit purple bullets and explode into points. Art.

Graphics are nice but it was originally made for a 240x320 display so loses a lot of detail when scaled up. Seems less inspired by Nausicaa this time but the influences are obviously there. I think the music is great and really suits the game, with stage 3, stage 5 and the final boss being highlights. Death sound can be irritating but you can fix this by not dying.

There are six modes if you include black label (which you should), then also novice modes, 1.01 modes (the beta) and arrange modes, which are cute but not the real game. Gameplay is entirely streaming orientated; this means taking advantage of the fact all bullets are in some way player relative and dictating how they cut up the available area. I was going to go into the scoring systems here but I probably shouldn’t.

It lacks some of the more organic patterns of its predecessor but to be honest some of those patterns where a huge pain. Some of these persist on the stage 3 and 4 bosses; I think the randomness and increasing speed make them very, err, insecty.

Late Edit: My clear.

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Absolutely terrible for a Diablo game. The themes are gone, the story is god awful, the enemies are low poly cliché, the auction house, terrible drops, stupid difficulty curve, unimaginative player characters (what was wrong with necros and amazons?) terrible dialogue, too many stupid cut-scenes, no memorable music. This is what happens when you let WoW developers near a classic. I've paid £27 for it so I'm going to max to level 60 then throw it in the bin.

3/10

^this and i agree with pretty much everything. Why does so many love act 3? it's the most shit one by far. The setting might be exciting (it's not), but it's so repetitive, ridiculous (azmodan) and has horrible pacing. I feel like vomiting after the succubus tower.

and why is the writing so awful? I just don't understand. Is it because the guy who writes it (Metzen?) has been in Blizzard since forever, so he gets to do whatever he wants? or do they actually pay people to do this? isn't it difficult to get a job at blizzard? why would they hire someone who can't write? can someone explain?

bad writing in video games doesn't surprise me and usually doesn't bother me, but when it's this bad and it's coming from a company that could afford better...

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decent gameplay. starts getting very interesting story-wise about 1/5th in (after the white phosphorus attack).

Quote from csyver

^this and i agree with pretty much everything. Why does so many love act 3? it's the most shit one by far. The setting might be exciting (it's not), but it's so repetitive, ridiculous (azmodan) and has horrible pacing. I feel like vomiting after the succubus tower.and why is the writing so awful? I just don't understand. Is it because the guy who writes it (Metzen?) has been in Blizzard since forever, so he gets to do whatever he wants? or do they actually pay people to do this? isn't it difficult to get a job at blizzard? why would they hire someone who can't write? can someone explain?

bad writing in video games doesn't surprise me and usually doesn't bother me, but when it's this bad and it's coming from a company that could afford better...

After hating on D3 a lot myself I have come to the conclusion that the target market was intended to be ridiculously broad. They already knew that any Diablo fan would buy D3 so they wrote and tailored the game to new players and as far as story goes it feels like its intended for kids. I actually heard one of the guys on the Gamers with Jobs podcast say that he let his 8 year old son play it and his kid is having a blast with it; as though it were the coolest story ever. Which seems odd, because the game technically isn't for players under what 17? So yea, the writing sucks its meant for kids I think lol?

I've been playing Scrabble on Facebook.... lol... shoot me.

Wait no! I played Settlers of Catan Online: win.

I totally agree, Dux. D3 was good fun but nothing compared to the original/sequel.

It's such a shame, it had sooo much potential.

what you get when you put an RTS designer in charge of a hacknslash

D3 being the only Diablo I have played was the most underwhelming game of the year for me.

I played D3 nonstop for a whole weekend on a lan party and had a blast. definitively got my moneys worth (60€), compared to most other AAA titles that I just spend 5~8 hours completing and never touch again.

I dont know what you guys were expecting, but single player focused games these days usually don't last more than a week, let alone 3 months.

Quote from Marvin.Star

After hating on D3 a lot myself I have come to the conclusion that the target market was intended to be ridiculously broad. They already knew that any Diablo fan would buy D3 so they wrote and tailored the game to new players and as far as story goes it feels like its intended for kids. I actually heard one of the guys on the Gamers with Jobs podcast say that he let his 8 year old son play it and his kid is having a blast with it; as though it were the coolest story ever. Which seems odd, because the game technically isn't for players under what 17? So yea, the writing sucks its meant for kids I think lol?

Except its appeal isn't broad. The required farming in it prevents it from being casual or having mass appeal, Diablo 2 on the other hand had wide appeal. The farming in games like WoW is handled relatively well, in Diablo 3 it's plain retarded.

Yeah I agree. I never wanted to farm in D3. But I didn't in D2 either, so that doesn't surprise me.

I have no idea what the numbers are, but I would bet money on Diablo 3 having a broader appeal than Diablo 2 did back in the day. Especially considering the fact that there just sooo many more players around now and its just not made up of a select few hard core gamers anymore. At the time of launch D3 was jam packed with everyone but my mother. I even talked with some of my cousins (yes, plural lol) on b.net which I hadn't heard from in years. D3 sold a ton and got played a ton. It just didn't last because at the core its just a game about farming.

But so was Diablo 2. Only thing that has changed is that some gamers forgot that about the diablo series I guess

d2 was more than just farming; and even so, the farming aspect of it was deeper/more complex than anything in d3. the way items work in d2 work is amazing - just look at the different options you have for acquiring items and utilize the cube to create new stuff. people were constantly looking into the game to find new ways of acquiring whatever currency was dominant in the game. and even if items weren't your thing, levelling in itself to the highest level was a feat. in every way, d2 challenged you as a player, whereas d3 did not.

I actually thought D3 was pretty challenging. I really struggled, especially with the last three levels. No idea how you can justify saying that it wasnt challening when even Blizzard was forced to nerf the minions a lot (after I quit playing).

The horadric cube was just irritating. It was just something stuck forever in your backpack that could combine your gems. Might as well have been something they embedded in the UI.

And how exactly was the items deeper or more complex in d2?

Yeah the horadric cube was annoying and im sure if done again they would make it differently, I expect them to learn things like that, like picking up gold automatically, auto revealing rares, townportal button, etc.

But Sentura is entirely right, D2 was a challenge, from start to finish regardless of the difficulty, it was balanced.

D3 is piss easy for the first two difficulties then ramps stupidly, until you find 1 good weapon, then its piss again all the way to inferno, when it hits retard wall where you cant progress without the AH or shed loads of farming.

Its like comparing Morrowind and Skyrim, sure Skyrim has loads of great improvements, but it has no feeling of progression, whereas morrowind had an amazing feeling of progression.

Diablo 2 progression was not a linear graph of challenge in any way, shape or form. It was horribly broken if you didn't play the cookie cutter talent build that you either had to read up on yourself or you literally had play and restart your character multiple times before you figured out what talents worked and didn't work.

Ah the good old days without being able to reset talents. Such a great game lol (Dont get me wrong, diablo 2 was awesome and spectacular at the time, but it is not the holy grail of game design).

Personally found the progression to be pretty even, never hit a wall where I was like "fuck this" or any point where it was so easy I just rolled over everything.

PS Diablo in any form is far from the holy grail of game design

On harder difficulties when you’re navigating through fire, poison and lasers like a laggy game of Gradius, and deciding the best place to put yourself in regards to your condition and what you’re fighting, it does take some ability. Not much, but probably more dexterity than anything in Diablo 2.

Honestly if you haven’t played to Inferno you just don’t know, man. The whole thing turns into a facebook game where you grind for in-game currency or part with real cash to see another boss die for the fourth time, causing it to drop a singular rare with an item level of 55 that mainly specialises in health globe radius.

Health globe radius, the new Ethereal.

Quote from Skjalg

I actually thought D3 was pretty challenging. I really struggled, especially with the last three levels. No idea how you can justify saying that it wasnt challening when even Blizzard was forced to nerf the minions a lot (after I quit playing).

you're misunderstanding the whole concept of challenge in a game. challenge does not equate struggle, or the frustration that one would have with struggling through a game - that's just a product of bad game balance. challenge should be balanced so that it's easy when you're inexperienced, but gets harder once you get into it. challenge should also reward you appropriately for how much you push yourself.

an example would be how to make combos in street fighter - everyone can make simple combos, but the good ones take a lot of practice to nail down. in the case of d3, the difficulty goes from no challenge to pretty much instant death, with no point between. to call that a challenge would drastically undermine how hard it actually is. i stopped playing d3 because i struggled with the game to the point where it wasn't fun anymore, it just became pure frustration with no real reward. with how you described that you're not going back to it again it sounds like you've had a similar experience, except you bothered to push yourself through for whatever reason.

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The horadric cube was just irritating. It was just something stuck forever in your backpack that could combine your gems. Might as well have been something they embedded in the UI. And how exactly was the items deeper or more complex in d2?

i'm not arguing that the cube UI couldn't have been done better, i'm arguing that what you could use it for had extreme complexity. d2 fan pages had databases full of different combinations that you could use the cube for. and the game didn't actually instruct you to see these beyond the first few simple recipes. you'd have to explore that for yourself. this is game depth; that you can pull this sort of shit and still have players trying to figure out recipes YEARS after the game has been out.

as for the items - the amount of different items that were viable to use at any given point in the game was huge. uniques had their place, but so did rares and magic items. i remember at least two instances where people (especially in pvp) would choose gear that was magic/rare over uniques (teleportation amulet with +2 skill levels && magic elite greatsword with huge +max dmg bonus and IAS). but at the same time uniques were sought after as they provided a high standard of item quality (while not necessarily being the best); meaning they were STILL VIABLE. in d3 there are a lot less viable choices, and that removes the depth/complexity from items. as much as they have tried to replicate this system, magic items are rarely as good as rares, and do not have unique modifiers like they did in d2.

then comes the actual bonuses the items could give, such as auras and procs (neither of which exist on items in d3), as well as the balance of magic find to items that were more rare, which definitely does not exist in d3. jay wilson (the lead designer on d3) stated himself that this was his idea, and that the other designers on the game actually talked him out of it, so there would be a patch where items would get better droprates.

in closing i just want to say: i don't understand what sort of fanatical loyalty drives you to praise or defend blizzard for whatever they do. is it really so hard to believe that a company can make mistakes, despite being critically and publicly acclaimed? i fucking love valve, but that doesn't mean i will defend all their games to death; i personally think how they handled left 4 dead 2 was a huge mistake, and in general i think left 4 dead is boring as fuck. man up and start thinking critically instead of just giving out blind praise because of reputation/track record/personal loyalty.

First of all, I'm not misunderstanding the word challenge. You're just making up shit to fit your argument.

I do agree that good game design is making it easy in the start. Which is why the first ~two chapters are easy. Especially for experience Diablo players such as ourselves. But I had friends at that lan party who started out playing games with WoW (and they were really good at that, and now dota/hon/lol) and they died so many times during the first chapter it was ridiculous. Maybe you just felt like you hit a wall because you got so used to owning everything because you were already experienced with the diablo games, and then later on when it didnt and you hadnt stacked enough hp or resistances then you suddenly died. You probably went all out damage and no survivability until it didn't work anymore and then you start dying. A lot.

I'm not going back to Diablo 3, same reason as I'm not going back to Diablo 2. Once I hit max level I'm out. I've never liked grinding even a little bit.

Also, you are comparing Diablo 3 to Diablo 2 LOD, which isn't fair. You should try to install vanilla Diablo 2 and see how full of depth that game is. It was fucking brutal I tell you. And yeah I love blizzard games, and sure this one wasn't what everyone wanted it to be. But that doesn't change the fact that people had really high expectations of a game that is built on farming, then when it came out a vocal minority started hating on the farming and the RMAH. I am not saying D3 is the best diablo game ever, all I'm saying is that it is not deserving of the hate train that it is receiving.

And since you're starting to hand out life advice now, I guess you can handle something I've been wanting to tell you for a long time. My humble suggestion to you is to start liking things a bit more instead of being such cynical hater. You're always quick to jump on the hate train no matter what it is about. If you start to recognize that you are doing this and try to change you eventually will. I was just like you all through high school; hating on everything. "New movie comes out? Yeah its gonna suck." "New game coming out? Yeah I read a review and they said its gonna be shit so its definitively gonna be worst game of the century." I know how it is to be in that mindset and I recognize that so easily with almost every post you write here. But, eventually, if you manage to really understand that you are a hater and that you need to change, and then you do. Then you'll find that you'll be happier a more relaxed person. You'll suddenly be open to all kinds of new shit that will please the fuck out of you. And you'll get more work done in the end and not feel like shit all the time.

But best of all; people will start to like you. And they will want to be with you non stop. You'll have people calling to wake you up almost every day because they want to spend time with you.

After that you can still participate in these humorous debates on the internets as an anti-hater