Disappointments of the Year - The Bear and Badger

WorKid

Lack of super-cheap digital distribution has been a major disappointment.

Let the high-street die. Amazon/shopto or download for me. Download being the preference but I refuse to pay more for the privilege.

Chief

And all those working in those high-street stores?

WorKid

Should find another job quickly.

Brooks

davyK wrote:

Indie games have so far been fairly uninspiring I'm sorry to say. And that's coming from one who would love to see a huge breakthrough from that part of gaming as mainstream is all but dead to me.

There are definitely superbeings out there - Increpare is closest-to-hand example - but there's this wretched problem that most are necessarily presentation-ally and so atmospherically stuck in retro idioms, because anything else is materially overexpensive, and the aggregate experience of anyone who's been at videogames for as long as we have was used to cosmetics striding with game-design. So even when a well designed small-studio thing happens, we're still wanting it to have all THE GRAFFIX and this just isn't feasible.

My theory, anyway. There are definitely good counterexamples but they never really have a chance to lance the discourse because most of the potentially interested are still hooked into AAA awfulness, and so are all their mates, and peer influence is absolutely the mightiest determinant of cultural import.

Vela

mistercrayon wrote:

Vela wrote:

Diluted Dante wrote:

You'd think platform holders would be dead keen on same room multiplayer, to shift 4 ridiculously expensive pads to each console owner.

Don't the new consoles support up to 7 players with the controllers being bluetooth? Not that any game will ever test that. Although Wii U does 8p with Smash.

Ps4 has gone down to 4 from ps3's 7

Wow, didn't expect that. I guess Fifa/PES aside, no game would be made to support 8p local.

I guess it doesn't matter now anyway now that Hudson and by extension Bomberman, is defunct. Fuck you, konami.

Chief

WorKid wrote:

Should find another job quickly.

Bit of a heartless way of thinking, no?

Bollockoff

They can work in one of the warehouses that'l spring up to meet demand.

regmcfly

Get the plebs back in the factories I hear Ya bollo

davyK

Brooks wrote:

Indie games have so far been fairly uninspiring I'm sorry to say. And that's coming from one who would love to see a huge breakthrough from that part of gaming as mainstream is all but dead to me.

There are definitely superbeings out there - Increpare is closest-to-hand example - but there's this wretched problem that most are necessarily presentation-ally and so atmospherically stuck in retro idioms, because anything else is materially overexpensive, and the aggregate experience of anyone who's been at videogames for as long as we have was used to cosmetics striding with game-design. So even when a well designed small-studio thing happens, we're still wanting it to have all THE GRAFFIX and this just isn't feasible. My theory, anyway. There are definitely good counterexamples but they never really have a chance to lance the discourse because most of the potentially interested are still hooked into AAA awfulness, and so are all their mates, and peer influence is absolutely the mightiest determinant of cultural import.

Being an old retro head graphics really don't matter too much with me as long as the design is fine. I'm also fairly resistant to narrative and any attempt at recreation or scene setting and have a love of the abstract. That means there isn't a huge number of games around that match my tastes.

The design choice of Super Meat Boy put me right off for example. Quite liked Cave Story and VVVVVVV but that's probably because of them being throwbacks to NES and DOS respectively. Cave Story reminded me too much of Metroid though and I didn't stay the course. Must get back to VVVVVVV - but I'm not a fan of playing games on the PC.

The basic problem is finding something among the huge pile - any recommendations welcome.

WorKid

Chief wrote:

WorKid wrote:

Should find another job quickly.

Bit of a heartless way of thinking, no?

Not really. Game won't be around in 5 years time, at least not in the same quantities.

Just like there's no Radio Rentals anymore.

davyK

GAME is a soulless place - the Belfast branch is a sorry sight - more or less a showroom for skylanders and preowned smartphones and tablets.

At best it is simply a box shifter for current mainstream games and it has no sense of where it came from. Bloody awful.

davyK

Brooks wrote:

There are definitely good counterexamples but they never really have a chance to lance the discourse because most of the potentially interested are still hooked into AAA awfulness, and so are all their mates, and peer influence is absolutely the mightiest determinant of cultural import.

One hopes that there will be an Emperor's New Clothes moment in the near future. On the industry side - it doesn't only have to chase the business of the sort of people its trying to please at present.

Escape

krs said it best about indies (to paraphrase): 'For all of their supposed freedoms, they go and make a bunch of platformers.'

I played Hotline Miami without sound a few days ago, and it was just a Flat Stanley edition of Loaded. Loaded itself was - graphics aside - seriously dated in '95, and I dismissed it as unworthy of showcasing the PlayStation at its best. I liked it, but it felt like a five-year-old A1200 game.

In recent years, however, its vintage is near-enough-proximal to its arcade forebears from the late-'70s and early-'80s. It holds up.

Hotline Miami has some great music and (not for you, Brooks) a stylish aesthetic. As noted, many other indie games have IF-inspired narratives. These three things are the cornerstones of indie (Trihardforce). It's a chase for the Zeitgeist, not design evolution, the latter a concessional route to the former by way of gravity tweaks and such. For all of the blustering, dev-demo hoo-ha, the current indie scene contents itself with regurgitations of the Bug!s and Clockwork Knights of the gaming-era sphere.

That lesser-wanted aspect of action-gaming, narrative, sprinkled like pepper from the hand an overzealous kid on the grinder. (Or me. It's a satisfying sound.)

Tempy

There are plenty of non-platformer indies. The term has become a bit of a catchall though, something like Dungeon of the Endless is a unique rogue-cum-tower defence with a dash of management in there too, but it's by a relatively big studio, however it's a minor side project to nestle alongside the full fat Endless Legend. There's absolutely more vibrancy packed into the "indie" sphere than there is in AAA titles these days. The pixel aesthetic is getting a bit worn, but it's a better starting pad for lots of people than 3D stuff, I can understand why so many people go for it. If you can stomach it and support the creators, they will reward you:

Thomas Was Alone

Volume

Though Bithell himself flirts with discussion over the terminology - is Volume truly indie, or is it A, or AA - it's certainly a well funded studio endeavour, even if it's only a handful of people working on it.

Anyway, some non platformer indies for you:
FTL
Dungeon of the Endless
Crypt of the Necrodancer
Olli Olli
Race the Sun
Those We Love Alive
Transistor
Kentucky Route Zero
Gang Beasts
Ziggurat
The Binding of Isaac
Sunless Sea
Amnesia: Dark Descent/A Machine for Pigs
Jazzpunk
This War of Mine
Papers, Please
Teleglitch
Monaco
Frozen Synapse
Door Kickers
Kerbal Space Program
Space Engineers
Prison Architect

And some still to come:
Tangiers
Routine
The Witness
Quadrilateral Cowboy
No Man's Sky
Soma
The Obra Din

Although there are a vast amount of novel-ish platformers out there, it's totally disingenuous to say that's all there is. Even the platformers tend to be like Fez, Braid, Super Meat Boy, The Swapper, and Gunpoint, where there's stuff in there that would be stripped out of bigger releases (Fez's deeper puzzles) or never even thought about (Gunpoints accidental but reworked jump mechanic.

Diluted Dante

Harmonix are indie again too.

Escape

What about My Favourite Indie Game?

My Favourite Indie Game does three things slightly differently to the way any other game has done them ever before.

Much love, Tempos, but I saw that counter coming.

Tempy wrote:

There's absolutely more vibrancy packed into the "indie" sphere than there is in AAA titles these days.

Arguably, indeed, but how much is that saying? I mean, tripplay itself has been hijacked (rendered, whatever) to describe big-ocean money-baskers. Ain't no seal of quality.

Expensive games that sell well != AAA by default. That's a silly term for suits, it's not for us.

Brooks

Again, I think there's an expectation that design novelty doesn't really 'count' unless it comes with the maximum presentational oomph most consumers can actually conceive of, and that's still set by the big studio stuff. Spectacle-creep is huge part of it, but there's also history in the sense that it wasn't too long ago that teh gfxx and teh gameplayz weren't as apparently irrelevant to eachother as seems to be the current norm.

I suspect this is why Nintendo still get an undue level of praise, insofar as their shit definitely looks Polished but also has, if only faint, a musk of putting design first. Platinum are the same, actually. I mean even I want to give Captain Toad a whirl.

Brooks

In general though I think Temp's list up there is pretty decent.

AAA has always been a label to mean "the hugest amounts of investment", it's never been about actual quality. It describes a particular production attitude, one that's looking ever more fucking bankrupt.

Escape

Brooks wrote:

design novelty doesn't really 'count' unless it comes with the maximum presentational oomph.

I'd argue that the latter begets the depth of the former. I wouldn't use 'presentational' for this line of thinking, though.

Drake's animations, say. MacGyverisms. A really well-animated 2D character could achieve almost as much. Hardware cost is lesser to care and attention; which is still money, but a subtly different kind.

Escape

Nintendo Musk. Base notes of disappointment.

Primo design.

Brooks

Sweaty plastic.

Escape

Pour homme, Fils-Aime.

JonB

Escape wrote:

For all of the blustering, dev-demo hoo-ha, the current indie scene contents itself with regurgitations of the Bug!s and Clockwork Knights of the gaming-era sphere.

I'm not sure you could be more wrong. Two examples that were bog standard genre pieces trying to get a boost over their peers by using the latest hardware. Indie stuff is often the exact opposite - not hiding behind the tech and having to do something different with the game itself. You're comparing a time where the platform game was dying under the weight of derivative characters in derivative games (before Mario 64 gave it a brief resurgence) to a time where it's more vibrant and diverse than ever, almost entirely because of relatively low budget downloadable games.

I always felt that 2D gaming basically got shelved once the PS1/N64 era came along, because of course everyone wanted to try the new 3D, but with the SNES/MD it had just reached an interesting point where the visuals were up to scratch and the game styles had been refined. The next step was to start experimenting, but we never saw much of that, at least not until this new indie scene came around.

Tempy

Escape wrote:

What about My Favourite Indie Game?

My Favourite Indie Game does three things slightly differently to the way any other game has done them ever before.

Much love, Tempos, but I saw that counter coming.

Well good-o I guess? I totally expected dismissal by people who hadn't touched or were aware of half of the titles too, so bully for us.

DoE is about as far from a favourite as you can get, but pointing out the "they're all just novelty platformers" shite that constantly gets trotted out about indies is just plain wrong.

Stuff like FTL gets buckets of praise but the term indie seems to be reserved to disparage. Yeah, I'd rather play a better presented FTL, but then again these days I'd rather play a boardgame than a Videogame because they're far better at representing the pure designs, ideas and concepts of their creators. Indies to me are the next step, closer to realising the absolutes of what their designers intended. Any further up the food chain and you're getting the spectacle-creep, something that Transistor exhibits that many more in that list do no not.

It's all pointless anyway. They've got the taint, if you like them and express that instead of lining up to nod at a big console release you're contrary. Or you're an apologist because the scene isn't delivering on its non existent promises or something. It's dumb. That list of 27 games up there is full of stuff bigger studio or product would court, and people wilfully avoiding them can carry on, but they're missing out.

regmcfly

Scapo? Have you really just dismissed Temps' argument by obfuscating it around "I was aware you'd make that argument therefore this argument is wrong?"

That's a rather cheeky thing to say, particularly given the absolute lack of diversity in your "tripplay" first / third run shoot drivers.

Oh and sports games. Nevr 4get

WorKid

Good games are good games.

When I think of how much enjoyment I got out of the 16-bit era, or Amiga software, it should be clear power isn't required to deliver a good experience.

FTL (say) probably could have come out at any point in the last 15 years without looking or playing any differently. But I presume the tools which enable it to be built - and more importantly, distributed effectively - are newer constructs.

regmcfly

W - much more in line with you - argument should be about removing budgetary numbers fae the convo. How much a Deb has spent on a game carries no fucks with me if that game is smooth vanilla (hello planet based shooter.)

Likewise, only last night reinstalled Deafly Prem onto PS3 because there is a joy in the shonk.

The H film of the year, Boyhood was made with no real cash, but more importantly, a cru who were dedicated to what they did and did it with love. Far more kosher.

Tempy

I should add any interest in A status of game is just down to how blurred the line is becoming. You could easily look at any number of Paradox Studio games and think they were dedicated indie attempts at a big sweeping strategy game, but paradox are huge. Similarly Volume straddles all sorts of arbitrary lines - something you'll ken from the Two Ians / 2A HAG 4lyfe

Brooks

Sidepoint but I do think it's pretty great that we're seeing things like Icepick Lodge's Pathologic going for a higher-def remake via Kickfucker money.

Bollockoff

The challenge will be making the English translation just shit enough again to retain that much of the charm.

Every new year I say to myself "I'm going to play The Void all the way through this year" and then I get to the first 20 minute boss fight.

Howdy, Stranger!

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