Proper stealth sims like Thief 1-3. No x-ray vision or teleporting. Combat is risky. Guards can see 10 feet above them. Multiple points of entry and egress. Verticality in level design. Detailed sound modeling.
Tatical turn based games with a deep strategic layer, like Jagged Alliance 2 and X-Com, made for both PC and consoles with at least AA level production.
Shinobi 3 and Streets 2 are the prizes in this collection. Shinobi 3 is a very good action game that wasn't as big as it should have been. It would have blown up if it were on SNES too.
Yes and the comparisons to those other mediums are frankly misguided, imo. Games are competitive by nature. Fail states are inherent to the form, whether soft or hard losses. Games that don't have this are the vast minority. And you are right that there are levels to those other things too.
Those are smart changes Blake. Definitely compliment the existant design better than changing HP values or turning down aggression.
Ok, there will never be a time where every single game is for everyone. At the end of the day, it's developers choice what they do or don't do, according to their desires for content and expression, and revenue. There seems to be the underlying assumption that maximum possible sales is the major goal of every person working on anything, anywhere, ever. No reasonable, logical, knowledgable, experience business person thinks this way. This is why concepts like shotgun vs. rifle marketing and "serve a niche" exist. Some people want to get their product in every hand, and will make the necessary compromises to do so, others want to serve an area that is not being served. From Software is a company that traditionally has made games that are specialist products. Not always difficult, but usually appealing to specific tastes within certain genres. They are not going to make an Overwatch, WoW, GTA, etc.
People need to research before the buy. We kept telling them what DkS was like, they didn't listen. The tears are theirs, not ours or From's
Yeah I'll get Hollow Knight when it's on sale. It sounds a lot deeper and more ambitious. than other similar games.
Here's the area where metroidvanias and Metroid-likes (Axiom Verge. This game has no Castlevania in it, at all, people!) have failed to equal or surpass SM: level construction. Specifically, the number of hidden alternage passages that you can find through bombing and shooting certain blocks. Most of these games don't ha ve any hidden passages at all, let alone as many as SM. The level layouts ofShadow Complex, the IGAvanias on DS, Guacemelee (no to mention this games horrendously lazy use of colored blocks as "gates") Ori, Strider, etc are all disappointingly straightforward in comparison. Even other Metroid games fall short.
That's my mini rant about so called Metroid inspired games. Super is still the king. Maybe HK can prove a worthy contender to the throne.
Hollow Knight...mostly superficial reasons. I just don't like the art. There is a lot you can do with the concept of 'insect world', visually, and HK went a way that isn't compelling to me, namely with character design. Environments look very nice, but then there is the monochrome palette a lot of them have. I know, I'm picky. I'll probably get around to it though since it's received a lot of praise.
Ocarina, Perfect Dark, and Doom64 were my favorites. I didn't like any of the 3D platformers on there. Actually Ratchet and Clank are the only ones on any platform I dug.
I was going to ask if Celeste was on that thing. I missed you mentioning it. I'm not interested in Hollow Knight, but it did
remind me about some other indie platformers I was looking at, Celeste being one of them. Dead Cells looks totally bland to me.
I'm interest in RE2 remake, but I don't like over the shoulder. The FoV sucks and I don't like how characters dominate the frame, especially in a horror game where you should feel like you are the one who is dominated by the environment. Other than that I'm interested in how they will reimagine all the scenarios from the original.
Of course I'm interested in Cyberpunk, since it's one of my favorite pen and paper RPGs. I'm not naive enough to expect a big budget game to fully recreate the intricacies of a tabletop RPG, but I hope it's not too watered down.
Devil May Cry 5. I'm a mark for this series. Capcom has the best monster animation in the business, so I'm looking forward to the bosses. And it feels a long time we've had a proper new DMC to look forward to.
I had the Coleco Vision version. It too had missing stages. Still played the shit out of it. There is nothing like playing DK on an arcade cabinet though. Something I've been wanting is Donkey Kong given the Pac-Man Championship Edition treatment. Imagine different graphics/sprite modes, new play tweaks, etc. Like Pac-Man, DK is a slice of classic perfection. Arguably the two greatest arcade games of all time.
