"How Cover Sytems Ruined Shooters..."

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I posted those videos to show I tried, not to have you hound me for a year. I wouldn't ignore someone's criticisms of Max Payne 3 just because they aren't good at it. The mechanics don't impress me.

Some criticisms are just plain wrong and due to not fully grasping game mechanics.

I know Vanquish's mechanics, the main ones. Just because I didn't practice them as you deemed adequate doesn't mean I wasn't aware of them. You haven't proven my criticisms wrong. You can't. Much of the rest of what I talked about the last year is of things you apparently don't value and won't acknowledge, so no point in even discussing with you anymore. Boring game.

I've proven many of your gameplay criticisms wrong like said ones in this very thread. The fact that you think regen health causes a game to be slower paced says it all as regen health literally quickens game pace not slows it, which I linked to a video awhile back showing exactly that (a Mark Brown video in fact). Regen health also plays well with the game's other mechanics like the melee system along with Sam's amazing defensive capabilities that makes him similar to a glass cannon rogue; dex through the roof, hard to hit but squishy when hit, with high ass DPS. How are you going to make hard-to-hit, high DPS character while having them not be squishy and retain any semblance of a challenge? A character can't be great at everything if you want the game to be challenging. Lots of thought went into all the mechanics of the game and they all interplay well with each other; it just wasn't that they put in health regen because everyone else was doing it. Yes, you may know of the game's mechanics as separate entities but not how they all work together. I question that you know all the mechanics because you didn't get how some of the guns even worked and even complained about the rocket launcher being underpowered somehow, that don't make sense.

I'm not going to try to prove your subjective criticisms wrong like not liking animations or the world or the story. However, I still don't get how you took any part of the game as having a serious tone, that boggles the mind (unless you somehow played without that english dub where everyone was hamming it up like Liquid Ocelot).

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Some people prefer cover shooters, some people prefer run-n-guns.
Some cover shooters are fun, some run-n-guns are fun.
It's not fucking rocket science.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

False. With health items and health recovery by delivering damage, you don't need to wait. You can continually rush right towards the threat if you're good. When you ARE actually low on health and recovery items, it's more meaningful, because you need to play more carefully. Level design is also of more importance. Even so, I couldn't have done any of my MP3 speedruns as quickly with health regen, because it's just a slower system that frequently forces you to wait. I don't know who Mark Brown is and I don't give a damn. You're wrong.

It has always worked fine for hack and slash games. They reward you with health for playing well and don't steal almost all your hit points with one hit, which is often a requirement with an infinite health system like health regen. I think Bloodborne does this too. You get a little health with each hit, like in a game of tug of war. That's similar to how I'd do a health system in a fantasy or sci-fi game, give the player the opportunity to sometimes harvest the enemies' health when they're incapacitated or dead. In a brawler, I'd use health pickups, as that worked pretty well in Streets of Rage 2. As for the stamina being depleted with one hit, I would maybe reduce it by half and also reduce the damage delivered. I don't wanna be forced to run slowly after delivering one hit. I would give the player the ability to sprint and replace the dumb rocket slide with a more temporary slide.

If the intent was entirely satire, it wasn't funny at all. The fake voice acting wasn't funny, it was bad. It WAS a serious situation, even if some of the delivery was intentionally hammed up. The storytelling was poor.


This video, the first result when searching "Vanquish gameplay" on Google, got high ratings, but I just see them playing it as a cover shooter, like most people did. Boring as fuck for beginners, some of whom (me) will be too disappointed to ever play it again.

Different game mechanics exist because they work in different situations and circumstances along with just plain personal taste. You seem to find one set of mechanics you like in a shooter or hack and slash and want every game to follow suit because those are the "right" mechanics. Then, you get every game with melee combat being the same like how every game seemed to adopt Arkham combat from Sleeping Dogs to Uncharted 3 to Mad Max.

"You can continually rush right towards the threat if you're good." You can do that in Vanquish, your point? Just maybe one character that is slower and easier to hit should have a higher health pull than fast and nimble character. Funny how you want beginners to have fun, health regen keeps the flow more steady for new players allowing for more risky play and experimentation. Also, the main challenge of a Souls game comes from the fact you have a small health pool, the fact that any enemy can 2-3 hit kill you and that your mistakes are punished far more than most games. It's why the game is put on such a pedestal as if god himself made the game to rescue gaming from being defeat by the "casuals" that require constant hand holding. When in reality, that just made playing careful the optimum way to play. You should check out hbomberguy's Bloodborne video, he makes a lot great points about Bloodborne's "play conditioning" vs the other Souls games starting somewhere around the 12-14 minute point and lasting about 10-15 minutes (in extreme summary, the real villain of the Souls games is the shield).

Making the melee in Vanquish only use up half energy/stamina (I believe that's what you're proposing) would break the game because then you could just melee-roll-melee-roll-melee ad infinitum then you'd link to a video of someone doing that like "your boy" running through the tutorial mini-mission of Dishonored saying the game sucks because there's no challenge. Melee takes up all your energy/stamina for that very specific reason. And, power sliding >>>>> sprinting, not to mention FASTER! Vanquish isn't satire, it's making fun of tropes like say Deadpool or Cabin in the Woods (not on those levels but entertaining enough especially when 90% of games have the blandest of the bland stories).

How does posting a video of someone playing a game boringly prove the game is bad for new players? I can find plenty of people playing MP3 even more boringly than that, does that prove MP3 is bad for new players? Does Dark Souls suck because there's videos of hardcore turtle-ing?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The idea that health regen is as fast as manual healing is simply wrong. Vanquish would be faster if you harvested enemy health and picked up healing items. How would I rush all those Max Payne 3 levels if instead of swallowing pills I had to wait in safety every few minutes. But you're not even gonna admit the obvious.

Sure pressing a button to use a painkiller/health pack is literally faster than health regen as you are objectively getting health back at a faster pace. But you're not looking at all the other situations where it's not faster like when you're out of health packs with low health and have to play carefully or just the additional time to find said health packs. I'm not very high on health regen as a mechanic (I loathe it in multiplayer), but it can work depending on the game. It has its pros like keeping the pace more steady and it does encourage player experimentation much more. MP3 and Vanquish are different games needing different mechanics. Vanquish you can rush all the enemies all the time because you have to tools to not take damage whereas Max doesn't have those tools so each game needs different health systems.