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Episode 27: Bloody Veins All Over My Screen  is live! YouTube version will be up tomorrow.

Can you guess what the episode title is referring to before listening to the show?

TOMORROW?!  >:(

Better watch out, or I'll Rush-pun this thread into submission, too!

I SWEAR TO EON I'LL DO IT!!!

[img width=336 height=400]http://www.myteespot.com/images/Images_d/img_S5eXHr.jpg[/img]

Processing on YouTube now, so a little while longer...

I [img width=400 height=400]http://cdn.meme.am/images/5514414.jpg[/img] 4 Bil

Btw people always butcher my last name for some reason.  Even friends I've had for 15 years still cant pronounce it correctly.  I think they do it on purpose now just to be a troll.

"If I were on a deserted island..." it would have to be 2d platforming/adventure games.  I couldnt live without Super Metroid or Zelda 2.

Manually ramping up the difficulty makes a huge difference in the fun factor.  For example Gears of War....it was a decent game on Normal, but on Hard it was way better.  The AI was much smarter so beating it was that much more satisfying.

"Groundhog Day games" I *dead* I hate *dead* I hate groundhog *dead* I hate groundhog day *dead* I hate groundhog day games *VICTORY!! A WINNER IS YOU!!  Having said that, I love shmups.  Arent those kinda Groundhogg-y?

Length: Quality vs. Quantity.  IMO the length of a game as determined by the difficulty depends on a couple things.  Is it dynamic?  Does the difficulty ramp up as the game progresses, constantly introducing new mechanics that are easy to learn but tough to master?  Or does the game have simply one or two cumbersome mechanics that never change or evolve, leaving you to trudge through a 60 hour game?  You see, making a good game is like a recipe for a stew.  It takes a lot to make a stew, a pinch of spice and laughter too.  But too many cooks can spoil the broth...

Achievements:  I tried being an achievement guy for a bit, but pretty quickly they turned into chores.  If I have no desire to continue a game achievements arent going to extend its lifespan for  me anymore.

Gamergate:  Gamergate seems so contrived to me.  Nepotism is not a new concept.  People/groups have been in bed with each other (both literally and figuratively) to get a leg up (no pun intended) on competition since the beginning of business.  Why are people so shocked about this "scandal"?  The only people who are really invested in this crap has to be younger gamers, right?

Super Meat Boy's difficulty is a perfect example of like if you screw up its your fault, not the games' fault.

Great 'sode guys.

But you would have to live without one, because my question stated what system AND what genre. Take that Space Coyote!

For me, it'd be my trusty Genesis and its large assortment of shoot em ups. Maybe I'd finally beat half of them.

Ok then, I'll choose the Retron 5 :-)

CHOOSE A PC. CHOOSE A PC.

Looks like the Youtube video is up.

YouTube is for our parents to send us funny videos of rapping parakeets. And be like, "Show this to the kids."

And to listen to the show while at work in incognito mode

I'd go with a Retron 5 too.

Listened to roughly half of the episode so far. Really enjoying it.

I'd say bullet hell shooters are definitely this way, which is not my favorite type of shooters. Many others rely more on you knowing the mechanics well and being prepared. Those are my favorites.


I agree. I really found that I didn't have to really utilize the battle mechanics in the Mass Effect games very much until Insanity. At that point you have to understand the systems well, and use them to their full advantage. It does slow things down a bit, so I can understand why others choose to play on lower difficulty.

Thanks for the kind words guys. Hopefully we'll Crabbo back soon.

Love the discussion.  I have found a few "punishingly" difficult games I really enjoy like Cloudberry Kingdom and 1001 Spikes.  One that's not really punishing but you must have perfect timing for is the Bit.Trip Runner games.  I loved those games and you could pick difficulty levels.  I played on Just Right and had a great time while my friend played on Rather Hard and still beat 90 out of 100 levels. 

Bil on an island alone with all the 4X games?  With no clock or person to tell him to stop and eat some food or do...  other stuff?  How long can a person live without food or water?  I'd give him less than a week to live, personally.  "One more turn and I'll eat."  Whatever.

First, some quick hit answers:

Stuck on a desert island:  I'll put the PC aside, because it's obviously the right answer, and choose the SNES.  Despite prefering the aesthetic of the NES more, the SNES has the greatest range of games I'd want to play.  Beat 'em ups, RPGs, platformers, action-RPGs.  I'd never get bored.

Challenging game that I liked: Sword Master for the NES.  An obscure action-platformer with great graphics and very interesting combat mechanics.  The game is punishingly difficult, but very quick and fun to play.

Challenging game that I disliked: Putting aside flat out bad games (like X-Men for NES), I would lump most shoot 'em ups in this camp.  I don't have the twitchy skills to get through these games, so I mostly ignore them.

Too easy games:  This is tough, as I'm no game whiz.  However, WWF Wrestlemania for the NES is so short, with so little to actually do, that's it's easy to spam your way to victory over the CPU.  Once you've won, the only thing left is to to do it all again or find a friend/relative to play with.



It's not just new games that hide gameplay behind difficulty gates.  The much-maligned  16-bit beat 'em up genre did the same thing.  Developers set the "Normal" difficulty in many of these games far too low, allowing players to button-mash their way through long enough to get bored and stop playing.

However, if you set the difficulty to "High" or higher, the real meat, it's bloody veins, are exposed.   Enemy AI becomes more responsive while enemy placement/spawning becomes more devilish.  In response, you have to up your game.  You have to master the techniques the game affords you, like the "punch-punch-throw" combo in Final Fight or the air recovery in Streets of Rage 2.  The game draws you in more because you're more engaged and, thus, having more fun.

Playing beat 'em ups at high difficulty makes them more resemble their fraternal twin genre the shoot 'em up, a genre known for punishing difficulty and exciting game play.  Difficulty was the key to engaging play in shoot 'em ups, which was kept in the jump to home consoles.  Beat 'em ups lost their difficulty when ported to home consoles.  This simple difference in presentation is one of the key reasons why shoot 'em ups are still seen as relevant, engaging games and beat 'em ups are almost a lost genre.



This is one aspect of retro games (especially NES games) that I do not miss at all.  When I go back to play my old games, They'll feel totally familiar and I'll breeze through them... up until I reach the point I couldn't beat as a kid.   Then it's like being dropped in a whole new game.  I really was not great at video games as a kid, and the fact that lives and continues and my time were limited effected how far I could get in the games I owned.

This is why I have always been a very avid cheater.  I had a Game Genie for my NES as a kid, and I have one for nearly all my systems now, not to mention using save states and cheats on my Retron 5.  I understand the use of lives and continues as challenge in games.  What I never understood was why they were limited.  Sure, in some games, especially the Super Mario games, part of the game was earning enough 1-Ups to avoid the dreaded Game Over. 

However, not all games had the option of earning new lives.  Some had a very fixed amounts of lives.  This always frustrated me.  It seemed like nothing more than a waste of my time.  Sure, playing through early levels over and over would make me better at them, but, no matter how many lives I could save up, I would watch them drain away in an instant upon reaching a new hurdle.  Then I had to replay those early levels for a chance to practice what had killed me before.

I have no problem whatsoever breaking down these false barriers put down between me and enjoying my games.  Rhythm is very important in playing games, and I am against anything that breaks that rhythm.  I love Final Fight 2, to bring it back to beat 'em ups, but its continue system is broken.  Arcade-style beat 'em ups rely on keeping you in the thick of the fight no matter how often you die, but when you continue in Final Fight 2, it sends you back to a previous spot in the level.  I just turn on infinite lives and cruise right past that hurdle.

@Wempster: I haven't played any of those. I'm taking it that they are PC games?

@Ikariniku: I really miss Beat 'em ups. It's a genre that deserves some more entries, although I am probably part of the problem as I haven't purchased any of the recent ones like Scott Pilgrim and Double Dragon Neon.

Now that I think about it, I am surprised Bil didn't bring up Super Hexagon in regards to difficult games.

That old Desert Island setup, eh?  PC.  I would either bring all the Space Sims or just a ton of CRPG games in the vein of Baldur's Gate.  Just me, an awesome rig pulling about 2000 watts out of the coconut generators, and a smoking hot HOTAS flight stick setup.  And of course I would become stranded after Star Citizen and Elite:Dangerous come out. 

I'd take PC since you can load it up with emulators and every type of ROM and ISO file imaginable, it won't be perfect but you'll be able to play anything and everything you can think of, in theory. There's also the exclusive library.

Everyone's forgetting the one genre part. Let's play the game a little different, your limit is a console and a genre.

SNES, beat 'em ups.  It's that easy.

Also, Duke, the PC space has become a haven for new beat 'em ups both professionally made and fan made.  They vary in quality, but I try to support them in hopes of reigniting the genre. 

If you just want some fun beat 'em ups to play, don't be afraid to mine the past.  There's tons of beat 'em ups out there.  The golden age of them may have been brief, but it was fruitful.  Some personal recommendations of mine for overlooked beat 'em ups are the Rushing Beat series (Rival Turf, Brawl Brothers, and the Peace Keepers here), and Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon R on Super Famicom.  If you've got deep pockets, pick up Sailor Moon for the Mega Drive.

Great show. This one is a very nice general topic that should have broad appeal.

I'm like Bil's friend who plays everything on easy. The only thing I would add is that if I open a game and there is an options menu, I will go there first and set it to easy if I can. Then, when the game starts I'll see if I can change the difficulty. If I can, I'll set it to normal or medium or whatever. Being able to change the difficulty mid-game is a huge feature for me.

EDIT:  Also my desert island would of course have a PS2 and my genre if I had to pick one would RPGs (playing through all the Shin Megami Tensei games alone would kill a ton of time), and if I could cheat and add all the PS1 games, forget about it!

Or, you could cheat with a 60GB backwards compatible PS3 in that matter.

Yeah that would be great. Often I have thought about doing that in real life.

What a great topic. So sad I missed out on this one :(

When you were talking about passing the controller around until someone was able to beat a certain section, that describes my gaming very much in the last year. I have a few buddies that we do exactly that with. Because of the environment we've created giving up is not an option. We play to beat the games and use opportunities when players lose to throw a few friendly jabs around. For example when we played Mega Man (the first one) last time we typically pass the controller when you beat a level or run out of lives and need to continue. We started purposely dying and trying to beat the stage with one life left so that when you pass the controller the next player has a big handicap and we can ridicule them if they die (thus continuing) during the next stage. This occasionally backfired of course and because you wasted all your lives you might need to continue and then be ridiculed mercilessly.

@Bil - Apparently your playthrough of Batman didn't sink it like I think it was meant to. As you play you unlock new abilities (mainly take downs) and master the fighting skills you should be able to more efficiently beat larger groups of baddies. Sure they throw 20 enemies at you later in the game, but with your new techniques/skills a group of 20 can be defeated in the same time that it used to take you to finish 5 guys. Its also necessary to build big combos which in turn means more EXP.

Its been a long time since I played Heavy Rain, but I seem to recall that the entire achievement list was locked so you could never see what to do to unlock things. That meant that you had to go out of your way to look them up if you wanted to ruin your playthrough and the game itself didn't encourage that. I did it and you are completely right that it makes your game significantly worse. I played Beyond "properly" and enjoyed it soooooo much.

I know that's how it was for people who are good at brawlers.  I am not, so the combat was never as exciting for me as it was for everyone else.  I had a hard time stringing combos together.  I just hit people until I had to dodge or flip over the electricity stick guy.  The fighting felt like more of a chore than fun.  The areas where I had to use my surroundings to take a room of enemies out were much more interesting to me than fighting 30 dudes.  Now that I write that, it sounds very similar to the reasons that I like the combat in The Last of Us and Far Cry.  Analyze the area, plan your course of action, execute.

Lol, Im the opposite. I cant wait to be done the stealthy sections. When I went for the achievments I had a blast doing the combat missions and loathed the stealth sections.

Hooray for diversity!

Sorry it took so long to respond to this, I was in a Civ V game...

They are on Steam but I played them on the Wii U eShop.  Great cheap titles for your new wii u Duke!

That game is difficult for you? ;)

Competitive gaming is different than normal gaming. You put a lot of time and effort into your "craft" so its tense as internally you have a lot invested in your match. Its like watching an NHL game. None of the players looks like they are having fun......until one team scores/wins. You are concentrating and intensely focusing on the task at hand. No time for fun until you've achieved your goal.

I'm a bit sad you guys didn't spend any time talking about highscores as part of difficulty. Achievements covers that a little bit, but making a game difficult by trying to perfect something or reach a certain goal can be awesome. I love Guitar Hero so much and played it quite competitively when it was big placing top 3 at several local events. Being able to string together or long streaks or master proper star power usage after hours of practice was a point of great pride. I cannot play Rockband because it feels like the "baby" version to me now. I don't mean that in a derogatory way either. Its meant to be more accessible and was far more successful because of that. Its the reason games like Pac Man, Donkey Kong and Burger Time were so amazing. They were purposely challenging to reward those that spent the time learning and mastering the game.

And I'm definitely not an NES savant. The videos on my youtube channel are often the final product of many hours of practicing. Games like Time Lord or Dragon's Lair look short and easy when just looking at the uploaded video, but are just the final result of days of playing. Those two in particular are like 15 minutes on youtube, but are the product of over 40 hours of play time. It took a lot of effort to master those 15 minutes on my part. A Savant would pick things up much quicker. I'm just persistent ;)

Here is the Daigo link Bil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS5peqApgUA

Original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS7hkwbKmBM

Moment 37 Reloaded, the 10th Anniversary of that video (named after the title of the video), was an event that was being held to promote playing some of the older fighting games. They decided to have a rematch of that event, and here's what happened:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iUchMj3ff0

Thanks for posting that Shadow. I've wanted to watch it every time I hear about it but was always too lazy to look it up or wasn't thinking about it. Had to watch it twice to understand what was going on, but I get it now. Super cool stuff.

Well, maybe if you were available to cohost the CollectorCast and not goofing off doing whatever, you probably would've been able to bring that subject up and discuss it.  :P


I know a guy like that:

[img width=540 height=405]http://cdn.tutsplus.com/gamedev/authors/david-arcila/nintendohard_arino1.jpg[/img]

ANYway, sorry I'm way late on responding. I just listened to the first half of the show last night, and was struck by Bil's insight on what constitutes a "guilty pleasure." I never really thought of it that way before, good sir. Thank you for your take on it.

Other than that... ummm... I'm drawing a blank. Maybe I'll come back with more to say after I've listened to the second half.

'Late