Random Video Game Crap

I feel like we say "not up to today's standards" for so many games lately, that it's a pretty good sign that our standards are either too high, or most game companies have lowered theirs a lot in the last few years.
 
Had a discussion with a guy about speed runs in games. For example, the new DOOM. According to HowLongToBeat, the average speed run is about 4 hours. The guy said someone beat it in just over an hour.

His evidence? A speed run video with the time he said...except the player used several exploits like wall and floor clipping. And I'm sorry, but no. Why do people count those? You're not even playing the game at that point. You're taking advantage of little errors in the game code that the developer didn't intend. It's not the way the game is meant to be played. And yet people count it.
In the speed run community, they usually quantify the type of run, whether it's using known glitches or outside tools. So you'll have one time for people purposefully avoiding those glitches, one time for people who are using anything in the games engine as fair play, glitch or not, and a separate time for both if using tool assists.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I can deal with the speedrun glitch users, as long as they don't use tools.

The real bullshit is the "tool-assisted" speedrun guys. That's not even playing the game anymore.
 
I feel like we say "not up to today's standards" for so many games lately, that it's a pretty good sign that our standards are either too high, or most game companies have lowered theirs a lot in the last few years.
I think it's the latter. A lot of AAA games offer mechanics that are somehow clunkier than their predecessors for reasons that aren't apparent, or just fail to execute on ideas that other games deliver very well. Mass Effect Andromeda is a great example of this - somehow the facial animations are worse than Dragon Age Inquisition, the gear customization system is awkward to use, etc. Like you can see there's a great game somewhere in there, but the way it's presented and the tools at hand somehow hinder the experience rather than benefit it.

Essentially, there's no real excuse for a modern game fucking you with the camera, or having clipping issues, or being released with game-breaking bugs, or being launched with inadequate support, and yes I'm looking at you, Ubisoft.
 
The real bullshit is the "tool-assisted" speedrun guys. That's not even playing the game anymore.
They're doing the computer game equivalent of Core Wars, where you are programming one computer to beat another computer.
Personally I'm somewhere between Nick and Poe on this. I agree that there's a definite line between "skill" and "abusing game mechanics," even when some game mechanics require skill to effectively abuse. It's the difference between playing a game v. treating the game (code) itself as a challenge to be conquered.

And if you want a good example of the difference, you have only to look back in history to how certain people managed to do so INCREDIBLY well on the Halforums stock market game...

--Patrick
 
They're doing the computer game equivalent of Core Wars, where you are programming one computer to beat another computer.
Personally I'm somewhere between Nick and Poe on this. I agree that there's a definite line between "skill" and "abusing game mechanics," even when some game mechanics require skill to effectively abuse. It's the difference between playing a game v. treating the game (code) itself as a challenge to be conquered.

And if you want a good example of the difference, you have only to look back in history to how certain people managed to do so INCREDIBLY well on the Halforums stock market game...

--Patrick
I thought that was because they bought Netflix stock at the perfect time. >.>
 
I feel like we say "not up to today's standards" for so many games lately, that it's a pretty good sign that our standards are either too high, or most game companies have lowered theirs a lot in the last few years.
I just meant today's mechanics. Like, if Shovel Knight had a lives system.

Standards of quality, yeah, the industry has problems.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
I can deal with the speedrun glitch users, as long as they don't use tools.

The real bullshit is the "tool-assisted" speedrun guys. That's not even playing the game anymore.
No, it's not playing the game, but it can be quite an art of programming in itself, and it can result in some pretty crazy looking stuff. It's like the difference between speed-cubing and building a robot that can solve a puzzle cube. For all apparent similarity, the reasons each are impressive are completely different.


Personally, I like that there are a lot of different categories to speed runs. As long as people can clearly define the rules for each category, people should be able to play the game they way they want to. I may not understand why using arbitrary code execution to prematurely show "The End" on the screen counts as completing the game to some people, but if there are people who have fun competing to do that, they can spend all the time they want cheering each other on.

Play the game the way you want to play it. As long as it's single player, or everyone agrees to the rules in multiplayer, it's all good. Warp-less Mario run? Great. Reverse boss order Metroid? Hell yeah. All white mage run of Final Fantasy? Uh... okay, if that's what floats your boat. Play it glitched, low-percent, Japanese 1.0 code, blindfolded, with your toes, one person playing both characters in co-op... Just have fun playing.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I thought that was because they bought Netflix stock at the perfect time. >.>
No we bought stocks that were going to be reverse split. The software didn't account for that, so it looked like those stocks doubled in value but it didn't know to cut the amount you owned in half. And since they publish reverse splits in advance...
 
As long as it's single player, or everyone agrees to the rules in multiplayer, it's all good.
This right here is the kicker. There are too many people who keep glitches in their back pocket and use them to unbalance a competition, turning what would otherwise be a fair fight into a glorified bar bet.

--Patrick
 
I don't know if this game is worth getting yet, but by god, Jim was highly entertained by it. The real hilarity begins in the second battle, but everything is worth the price of admission for the video's last minute.

 
To come back to the "carry forward clunky stuff from a bygone era" for a second, while I doubt it's really applicable in this case, bear in mind that one man's clunkiness is another's preferred gameplay aspect. Some things that got "streamlined" out of games (series) make me sad, even if they got cheered on by thousands of others.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
I don't know if I've ever before seen clipping used as an actual cinematic device.
I was about to say "Ghost Dad, Quantum Leap, or any other movie or TV show where a character is a ghost or hologram." but then I realized you were talking about the video above. Which made me think of the opening credits for "A Different World" but that's not quite the same as panning through an object, even though the camera pans from room to room past walls. Though there have been a lot of cartoons who have done the whole "pan to an underground location, past dinosaur bones and other buried objects" gag.
 
Yeah. In movies/cartoons and such, it's a sort of X-Ray effect, but whoever made the video took advantage of the fact that the camera would clip into the vehicle in order to accomplish that X-Ray effect. Clever.

--Patrick
 
Oh no, this was weeks ago. The "bullshittery" video format takes AGES to produce.
Are you using animation paths/trackers? Or are you manually moving the stuff around the screen? It seems like creating a block of text and attaching it to a tracker would speed things up. A lot.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Are you using animation paths/trackers? Or are you manually moving the stuff around the screen? It seems like creating a block of text and attaching it to a tracker would speed things up. A lot.

--Patrick
Manually. I don't think my version of premiere does that level of motion tracking, and because premiere supports tweening and keyframes, it's not ALWAYS frame-by-frame. But that's only, like, 25% of the time sink. Most of what takes so long is rewatching 4+ hours of game footage to trim it down to 10 (or in this case, 15) minutes of entertaining clips. That can be excruciatingly tedious, and I find I can't stick to it for more than an hour at a time and have to go do something else to recharge after that :p
 

fade

Staff member
I never really understood what the goombas and koopas are supposed to be doing to Mario in order to kill him. I'm guessing the touch is supposed to represent something going on, and not an actual touch. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they're just highly toxic.
 
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