21st September 2004, 2:29 PM
Quote:Why is DJ trying to become a part of this conversation when she can't even see most of my posts?
Girls...
Because DJ is interested but not interested enough to un-ban you for?
Quote:Okay let me put it this way. A 2D overhead space shooter (ala Raptor or Ikaraga (or however that's spelled) has limited controls. You can go forward, backward, left, right, and fire your weapons. It's simplistic, but there it is. A 3D shooter, ala Panzar Dragoon (sans Saga), or Star Fox (sans Adventures, except some of it) has much more control, allowing you to sorta go where you may. A 3D shooter with free movement (the previous are on-rails games) allows you to actually leave the path and fly around where you want, within the borders, ala Fury 3 or Wing Commander.
I love Raptor... I'm trying to beat the game by starting a new game in hard mode and beating each sector whole (all 9 levels) without saving, but I haven't made it yet. Hard! :) But it's pitifully easy even with a new game on hard if you save, because once you get used to it the game isn't very hard at all, so it's really a good hard... even if it is really frusterating playing level one five million times. :) I think the best I've done is level six or seven. With my good game (best weapon, 8 million money, etc) I'm trying it on the third campaign but last time I was really stupid and died in mission 7... I know I can do better though. :)
... I was just playing Raptor for like an hour or two. Before that I played the last half hour or hour of King's Quest VII (great game, with a few flaws... namely, one big plot hole and some frusterating puzzles. Not the longest game, but some of those puzzles are really tough... as for the plot hole, have you played it? About halfway through. The two main characters seem like they are essentially switching locations, on the one path that goes between those points, at the same time, without seeing eachother! It makes NO SENSE! Anyway, other than that it was pretty good...).
After playing Raptor I started King's Quest I (the text-input system here isn't nearly as bad as it is in QFGII. Why? Because it's simple. Two words usually. In QFGII it is much more complex, specifically in conversations. I'll explain. In KQ you say 'Talk King'. In QFGII you say 'tell abu (or whatever his name is, QFGII is in an Arabian setting...) about yourself' or 'ask abu about Shapeir (the land)'. You have to ask SPECIFIC QUESTIONS. Without knowing WHAT YOU CAN ASK. You have to take guess by asking about things that they said in their last message... Oh, and as I suggested, in QFGII (not in I, but also in III and IV (though made easier with the graphical interface), you have to remember to greet people first. This is made tricky in the graphical games because to TELL you have to click on yourself. You're trained by adventure games to walk up to people and click on them so having to walk up to people and click on YOURSELF to be polite and raise your Communication rating takes a lot of adjusting... and then to click on them and ask questions, unless you have something to tell them or if you want to say Goodbye. Yeah, it's complex.
And in QFGII you have to do it with no list of topics to choose from. Which means that you'll miss a lot of them. Not fun, not fun at all. KQ may be a bit irritating with text-input in the way that Hugo's House of Horrors was, but it's got nothing on QFG.
As for QFGI for text-input, it's got the same problem with guessing questions but at least there isn't the aspect of having to remember about raising your Communication skill by being polite -- that was a new stat added in QFGII. :)
Er... the point. DJ, you know that you took a page to make a post you could have made in a paragraph?
Quote:Anyway, the thing about it is, the fun of an on-rails shooter, that is, what makes it fun despite it not having all the freedom of "all-range mode" through the whole game, is, in it's ENTIRETY, the limitation of your controls. For that matter, there are times when I would RATHER play a 2D shooter than a 3D. It's not that they are better, per-say, but it's a different play experience. So, I'll play Raptor because it's a very fun game in it's own right, even if it doesn't let me move up and down. In fact, if it did, it could very well ruin the game.
Going on, Metroid Prime compaired to the 2D Metroid games. I wouldn't say 3D is some inherantly better format. Prime is a great game, one of my fave in the series, but to rule out 2D completely just because you can't move Samus around in 3 dimentions, limiting your controls, would be foolish.
Now, I went through all THAT to also prove a point. Meaning, there was a goal in saying that. It was also not to talk about 3D vs 2D, because ABF, I know fully well you love 2D. Rather it was to-
I like both 2d and 3d... but I absolutely would say that each has their place and is better in some circumstances and worse in others. Like direct vs. indirect controls.
Quote:Saying every game should allow full control would completely destroy a huge part of standard RPG battle systems. It's actually HARDER to design an RPG battle system than to just allow someone to run around and hit the attack button, they went OUT OF THEIR WAY to strip you of control and make you give commands to your characters.
And now the final analogy. To remove the whole RPG battle system from RPGs because every game should allow full control of muscle movement so every single game will always be the same sort of hack and slash combat is to say "Chess sucks because it's all turn-based and you don't have full control, let's just make it FULL CONTACT CHESS" *Some idiot proceeds to throw the chess pieces at the other chess pieces.*
As you say here and said before, console RPGs give you direct control but not because there is a great reason for it... they simply do it because you are using a gamepad. If the Japanese had used computers instead of consoles in the late '80s we'd have Japanese RPGs that would be very, very similar except that they'd use mice instead. You wouldn't have to change much at all in Japanese RPGs to make them indirectly controlled, and as we've both said it would have no negative gameplay implications...
And you are absolutely correct beyond any doubt that direct control in all RPG combat would be horrible and would destroy the gameplay systems of most all RPGs that have ever been made. No question there. "Full Contact Chess" is a good analogy... :)