Caltrops - Gamerasutra - of boners, combos, and regret

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by FABIO 10/24/2005, 10:28am PDT

Creexul :( wrote:

Fussbett (6:41:53 AM): And they seemed to really care about big numbers. Like 430 MAX COMBO and 500 KILLS
Fussbett (6:42:03 AM): What am I, Japanese?
Fussbett (6:42:09 AM): I don't care about THE DATA.

A big boner killer in The Two Towers was the breaking of the illusion that you were a totally awesome swordmaster pulling off skilled moves by flashing the name of the special move in the corner right when you activated it, telling you and everyone watching, "the following is in fact, a canned move and should not be mistaken for crazy skillz". Then they made it even more obnoxious in Return of the King by having the move name appear in the center of the screen in giant font so it could block your view of the action to boot.

The whole combo system based solely on the number of hits (resetting back to zero if you go one second without hitting an enemy) has to go. All it does is encourage you to do the same one or two attacks (weak, but fast attacks) over and over and over again, where skill isn't so much a factor as how many enemies the game decided to throw at you at once. Ninja Gaiden, God of War, and Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks need to take note of Devil May Cry 3's combo system, which is based entirely on how varied and AWESOME looking your moves look and doesn't reset your 5 minute run back to zero just because the game decided to wait two seconds before respawning more enemies for you; it was possible to fill the meter to max just off of a single enemy if you were good enough. Instead of numerical data representing your success, you got triple S to D ranks all in the form of surfer lingo.

Juh-howh Cable (7:03:58 AM): To make it more realistic, there's no cancel button or anything once you're in the menu.
Juh-howh Cable (7:04:10 AM): If you select the menu you have to commit to it.
Juh-howh Cable (7:04:27 AM): To show that you consider the option and follow through because you want to have a strong will, but then later regret it.
Juh-howh Cable (7:04:32 AM): It forces the regret part on you. :(

David Cage, lead designer of Fahrenheit (renamed Indigo Prophecy for the U.S. so people wouldn't get it confused with Fahrenheit 911?!!) agrees with you.

David Cage wrote:

an Indigo fan wrote:

In a lot of games with good story, you get tired of playing the same map over again, due to all the things you have to do. And many of them are impossible (to me) to play twice. The good story dies when you know it, if you uderstand. What have you done to keep people playing more than 1 time?
Having people playing ten times Fahrenheit is not my goal. I would like people to play it once and never know what would have happened if they had played differently (like in real life...).