This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
So many comments about how it is meant to artificially extend gameplay, or motivate the player to continue.
Could it not be as simple as the game cartridge only holds 1MB of game data max, and restarting the level from 0 when you die uses less valuable storage space?
I'd go as far as to even implement a 1-Up mushroom cash-shop, $1 for five 1-Ups
Anon invents arcade cabinets
"Green Mario" because the kind of people who have these ideas should fear his true name.
Gr8 b8 m8
I r8 8/8
Now that takes me back.
Please. Please please please please PLEASE be satire.
*enshittifies
I used to play this game when I was like 10 I don't remember it being particularly frustrating it wasn't easy but I don't remember it being impossibly difficult.
A game is something that has a goal within certain bounds/rules. You accept that when you play and tedium isn't relivent except as maybe a thing you don't like, just like you might not like how a piece feels or character looks or a particular rule.
A toy is something you play with for "fun".
I think people that want a toy accidentally start playing a game then get upset that it isnt a toy.
Why can't/shouldn't a game be both? Plenty of games have easy modes and cheat consoles.
They CAN be, but they are not obligated to be.
Fair enough.
During COVID I beat smb1 for the first time. On Switch. Where you could rewind 😓
I beat this game back in the 80's and I still don't know how
In the 90s I beat smw so hard, all the dragon coins, all the secret exits, tubular, the palette change, etc. it took years. I was convinced there was still more to find in that game even when the gba version came out and I finally had access to walkthroughs. I’m pretty sure I consulted Nintendo power on a few things though
I recently watched a guy play through the nes Bart vs the space mutants though and that was legitimately a like “no kid ever beat this”
I use save states fuck that paywall BS
Emulators are great. Just found a Family Guy Game iso for PPSSPP after my original PSP died years ago. Now I can play with my favorite controller.
Back in the day games were hard (often in unfair ways) to stretch out the game, because there was only like 4 levels and if it was easy you'd be finished in a single afternoon.
Now games are thousands of hours long and they hold your hand every step of the way to make sure you actually see all that content; and then the majority of players quit after completing only about 1/4th of the total game.
This is probably why I love Soulslikes so fucking much. I grew up with the first kind, and have suffered long enough with the latter kind. Soulslikes are the perfect blend of new and old school design philosophy (when done right). Tough, but also not short. They don't hold your hand, but they don't exactly keep you entirely in the dark on how to play. They reward community action not just in the game with the message systems, but also because it doesn't spoon-feed you everything, certain deeper ideas are discovered more from talking to other players who found things you missed; which is something we did back in the day before the internet.
I'd agree with you mostly except that nobody out there making a "soulslike" actually seems to understand what makes Dark Souls so good. There are so, so many garbage soulslikes out there, and exceptionally few good ones.
To be fair, there are also a ton of games using the term "souls like" just because they have a respawn system and checkpoints. I don't include these, personally.
Some of the good ones not made by From soft, IMO, include Lies of P which is probably the closest to form, and The Surge, but 1 over 2 for level design, and 2 over 1 for boss design.
Mortal Shell could be good if it wasn't so buggy that enemies only actually appear once they're in your face. It's got atmosphere and the weighty combat part pretty good.
Another Crab's Treasure nails everything while having a totally different, satirical take on the concept.
I haven't tried Entoria, but the reviews don't look good. I was hoping it would be at least to the level of Lies.
I've played all these and agree that Lies of P is one of the few good ones. The Surge is actually one I had in mind when I wrote my response. I think it's absolute trash. The limb targeting gimmick and the forced quicktime finishers constantly stopping the action are just awful. I agree with your assessment of the others.
At the end of the day I'd almost always rather just play Dark Souls (yes, even Dark Souls 2) again rather than any of the crappy copycats out there.
I know OP is joking (at least I hope he is), but it reminded me of this thread about Soulslikes:
https://old.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/oc1w7g/separating_difficulty_from_drudgery_or_why/
Time-wasting respawns/progress loss seems like a very blunt tool with which to motivate the player to keep playing. It's some 1988 arcade coin-op shit that we really ought to leave in the past.
Time-wasting respawns/progress loss seems like a very blunt tool with which to motivate the player to keep playing.
Tried playing a game of tennis with my friends. 0, 15, 30, 40, Point. Then if you're two scores ahead the game resets. Wtf! Why did the game reset? I was 30-40 and now I'm back to 0? I should be allowed to keep my 30 into the next game.
Now I'm being induced into playing more tennis! I hate this.
And tennis has so few maps! Almost everywhere I go is concrete. Very luck to find a clay court anywhere. You need to buy the DLC to find grass, and only if you're really lucky.
Its repetitive. Its exhausting. The rules barely make sense. And the match-making is completely fucked. I'm either playing people I trounce or getting my ass handed to me almost every time I go to a court.
I think I'm going to try and pick up chess instead. Does anyone know where I can go to upgrade my pawns to queens, though?
My favorite part of playing tennis is the commute back to the court after every time my opponent scores. I really get to savor and look forward to the next time I'll get to swing my racket. It also makes victory that much more meaningful knowing that not only am I an expert at swinging the racket, reading my opponents moves, and responding, I've also memorized every crack, crevice, and nuance of conversation along the route to the court. That meaningless repetition of unrelated action is what makes games fun!
It's not quite the same though, souls still keeps the items you dropped, its just up to you to retrieve them.
You can't claim you climbed a mountain, if each time you fell you just resumed from where you lost grip. Falling and reclimbing with renewed tenacity means that when you finally conquer the mountain, the view is all the more sweeter for the huge experience you've gained along the way.
I think soulslikes are appealing to a certain type of player. Personally I love Dark Souls it's my favorite game.
But I like playing with stakes. I remember stumbling around in the forest, down to my last scrap of health, with no more heals, desperately trying to reach the next bonfire. That for me is fun. Is it frustrating to lose your progress? Sure. But the only "penalty" is you have to try again or change your approach and try something else. And really, is being forced to replay a section inherently punishing? If the game itself is fun, you should still be having fun fighting and exploring even if you aren't progressing.
I am slowly recognizing what I don't like about modern gaming.
Is it the lack of people recognizing how great you are and how much money you have to spend?
How about every dollar you spend a twitch streamer will be forced to say your name?
You good now?
Okay? I was before, but I am now, too, thanks.
Don't forget to add mounts and pets.
Some kind of plucky green dinosaur would fit in well.
we need that Yoshi armor dlc
streamlining
you mean instead of playing the game, i could pay you to not play the game i'm playing instead?
sign me up
For the love of God Gen Z is gonna kill us with sighs
Kids have it too easy. Back in my day we did it the hard way! (using Game Genie)
Nintendo is way ahead of these guys. The last few mario games let you pick a character that can't be hurt or killed. And if that's too hard for you, they'll even show you exactly how to play the level.
Mario Wonder both had a “baby mode” mechanic and yet also had some genuinely interesting and challenging levels.
Celeste is extremely difficult yet also has a baby mode feature.
Many games have a “tell me a story” difficulty level which is more or less the same idea.
Games having an easy difficulty without detracting from the game’s main challenge and balance is not a problem IMO.
I can at least support baby mode for, like, extremely small kids and maybe co-op with that one person who's never touched a video game in their life but wants to play along with the other three. You know, the kids are over at grandpa's, and he wants to feel like he's playing and having fun with them instead of just setting and forgetting them on the magic dopamine box, but he's no good at it, so he takes the invincible character. I think that's reasonable, inclusive game design.
What I take issue with is when baby mode drags down the difficulty of the rest of the game modes. For example, you as a game designer benchmark "normal mode" against "being literally invulnerable", and so you now have to play hard mode to even vaguely feel any sort of tension.