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Post by Garamoth on Dec 1, 2009 20:13:52 GMT -5
I'm sure you guys love to have your souls crushed, so here's a few more stories: Soldier's Sword Weapon History : A sword forged using secret techniques known only to one family. The family's secret was jealously guarded, and no stranger was allowed to learn it. Hoping to discover how the sword was made, a soldier from an enemy kingdom joined the family. His plan was to steal the secret and return it to his own country. But the young soldier fell in love with the family's daughter, and he could not bear to part from her. He confessed his plot, and begged her to flee with him back to his country. But when the daughter heard his scheme, she murdered the soldier and then took her own life. And so was the secret of the sword kept within the family. Carrion Maker Weapon History : The iron club was placed at the corner of the torture chamber. After prisoners had been subjects to every conceivable form of torture, it would make an appearance. With their bodies in mutilated ruins, victims longed for the iron club?s fatal blow, and an end to the pain. From toothless mouths, they would wail, "The club! The club! Please, show me the club!" And, like a bloody angel, the iron club would come to answer their prayer. The weapon turned its victim into meat with a single crushing blow, then waited in silence for the next prayer. Caked in flesh and blood, it came to resemble the bodies it violated. Broken Iron Weapon History : What was once hailed as the largest blade in the world, striking fear into the hearts of men, now bore no trace of its former glory. Only a shattered heap of iron remained. Back when this heap was still a sword, its owner had tried to fuse it with unimaginable variety of objects. His mania for modifying the weapon had seen its titanic form incorporate armor, other swords and even the bones of the dead. Mighty though it already was he was obsessed by the idea that it could be made yet stronger. The blade slowly began to change color, turning crimson towards its edge. The gradation seemed to symbolize its place on the boundary between this world and the next. Certainly, it had been the difference between life and death to many a friend and foe in the past. But when its owner tried to fuse it with a baby, its blade finally shattered. Discarded as a failed experiment, the sword longed for the days, when it had terrified men with its fearsome form... So it searched for an owner who could forge its blade afresh. And they are all like this... they're like little literary masterpieces of the macabre.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2009 20:36:15 GMT -5
He's referring to the Xbox game, but this should serve a good point: is the Xbox one more similar to the arcade game (beat-em-up) or NES game (action platformer)? Dynasty Warriors is another variation of a beat-em-up, just put on a larger scale - separate from DMC and the like, but it draws from the same stock. Drakengard is more or less like Dynasty Warriors, hence the comparison. I'd say modern NG is very much an action platformer. Combat is the majority of the experience, but I'd be hard pressed to think of a single beat 'em up that featured a "puzzle" of any sort. Also, Dynasty Warriors almost deserves its own genre. Unfortunately, no one's found a convenient way to condense "kill thousands of enemies with the same two moves" into a catchy title. There also aren't very many games like it. In my eyes, that's a good thing, but we gamers are an odd lot. We play things that aren't fun all the time.
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Post by derboo on Dec 1, 2009 21:01:46 GMT -5
I'd say modern NG is very much an action platformer. NG is, NG2 is not. Unfortunately, no one's found a convenient way to condense "kill thousands of enemies with the same two moves" into a catchy title. "Thousands" might be a bit of an exaggeration there, but I don't see why that shouldn't fit in with the likes of Final Fight and Streets of Rage. I find it also kinda odd to call the evolution of a genre / addition of elements the death of said genre. RPGs aren't dead just because turn-based combat is dead, or because single-dungeon-crawling is dead.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2009 21:12:41 GMT -5
True, there's a lot less platforming to NG2 than its predecessor. That was one of the biggest improvements it made, really. Still, it seems like quite a stretch to say that DMC or NG are beat 'em ups.
As far as Dynasty Warriors goes, the "thousands" comes in relation to how many are on screen at a time. You might get 8 - 10 guys at most coming at you in a beat 'em up, but DW typically has dozens of enemies that you have to cut a swath through. The combat is also much, much more basic compared to something like Final Fight.
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Post by derboo on Dec 1, 2009 21:24:04 GMT -5
True, there's a lot less platforming to NG2 than its predecessor. That was one of the biggest improvements it made, really. Still, it seems like quite a stretch to say that DMC or NG are beat 'em ups. How about Action-Adventure-Beat 'em ups? The combat is also much, much more basic compared to something like Final Fight. Here was I thinking the combat in Final Fight was just as basic as the human mind can conceive... Does Dynasty Warrior feature somehow less than one attack button?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 1, 2009 21:50:31 GMT -5
How about Action-Adventure-Beat 'em ups? The combat is also much, much more basic compared to something like Final Fight. Here was I thinking the combat in Final Fight was just as basic as the human mind can conceive... Does Dynasty Warrior feature somehow less than one attack button? Eh, can't say I agree with melding the two names into one word, but whatever floats your boat. I consider NG to be an action series, but it's a free country. As for DW, I take it you've never played one of those games. The combat really is more simplistic than even Final Fight. You essentially just mash one button in the DW games and sit there, "entertained" by the notion of killing thousands of random, faceless enemies. Final Fight, by contrast, allows you to pick up enemy weapons, do throws and grapple moves, jump kicks, etc. There are seriously only like one or two moves per character in a DW game.
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Post by Revolver Ocelot on Dec 2, 2009 2:11:39 GMT -5
If you took away the puzzles and level design, DMC and all the games like it would be identical to Dynasty Warriors. The puzzles in the DMC/GoW/NG strain are so minimalist that suggesting they belong in a different genre just because of that is absurd. The focus is still on combat. No one played NG because the door to the underground catacombs opens when you place a book on an altar. They played it because of tits and the fact that you can slash a dude 15 times in mid-air and then spinning-ninja-pile-driver his ass back to the ground.
The only real difference between games like Drakengard and Godhand are that there's no real pretense involved. They know what kind of games they are and don't try to cover that up by throwing a random key-finding quest in there, but because of that lack of pretense, style and cinematic element to the gameplay, they're not as popular and get poor review scores because people don't like the level of "repetition" even though the bigger budget brethren of these games contain the same level of repetition thinly masked by extremely base elements of exploration and puzzle solving. No one takes beat'em ups seriously anymore even though they were the foundation of what a lot of today's biggest titles were built on. That was the point I was trying to get across.
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Post by akumajobelmont on Dec 2, 2009 5:23:29 GMT -5
What a fucking EPIC soundtrack. If it weren't for this article, I would probably never have heard of this soundtrack. I know the game by name, but cannot profess to have played it, or even considered playing it. But the soundtrack to the first game goes PERFECTLY with my Silent Hill sleepy-time playlist. Awesome!!! The soundtrack to the first Drakengard is what it would sound like if Akira Yamaoka and John Lennon (and Yoko Ono) had a baby. This is like "Revolution9 - The Album: P.S. I Love You". ... I LOVE shit like this...
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Post by kal on Dec 3, 2009 7:14:54 GMT -5
In specific regards to the article. It's a fairly good article and there's only a couple of minor issues with it. First a non-issue is that for those who haven't played it the article can never encumbrance just how completely batshit insane Arioch is. She really is possibly one the most insane *allied* characters in any game ever. Playing as her and listening to her talk is just unnerving.
Secondly I think the article should mention that enemies do not move around which is in stark comparison to other massive beat'em ups where your opponents feel like they have a will of their own. Missions where your characters is ostentatiously attacking a moving column of soldiers only to have them standing around waiting for your character to attack them kills the mood. The enemies not moving would be my number one complaint of the game.
I'm wondering if the minor *story* interactive scenes bear mention. The kind of neat side scrolling scenes where all the enemies die in a single hit - kind of reminds me of old Microprose Sword of the Samurai games top down battles.
Unrelated to the article - Jason X if you can't track the evolution of beat'em ups through to games like Dynasty Warrior/DMC I don't know what to say to convince you. Within the recent titles you've got combos, life up items strewn about by defeated enemies or in nodescript boxes, foes who are happy to let you beat on their friends while they wait their turn and these are identical features without going in to subject evolutions like combos progressing into the DMC style stuns (One only has to look at Alien Vs Predator to see some crazy beat'em combos). Hell this isn't even mention the Beat'em Ups based on The Romance of the 3 Kingdoms where there are games that are essentially Dynasty Warrior 2d (Not the very recent games, we're talking the mid 80s/90s titles).
And none of this is taking into account that these sorts of titles have borrowed from films/animes and *recreated* the various action scenes in playable form.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 3, 2009 11:44:36 GMT -5
I feel equally vehement about the fact that Dynasty Warriors is not a beat 'em up. In contrast, I'm not too concerned with getting you to see things my way. It's a free country.
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Post by Revolver Ocelot on Dec 3, 2009 14:06:38 GMT -5
Secondly I think the article should mention that enemies do not move around which is in stark comparison to other massive beat'em ups where your opponents feel like they have a will of their own. Missions where your characters is ostentatiously attacking a moving column of soldiers only to have them standing around waiting for your character to attack them kills the mood. The enemies not moving would be my number one complaint of the game. That depends on the enemy unit. The standard grunt soldiers tend to just stand there, but archers are really hard to catch up to (and IMMENSELY fucking annoying, especially since their arrows can practically shoot around fucking corners). The big fat guys also have a tendency to circle around you. I know I got lit up by those dudes in huge combos of spinning slashes more than a few times. Chapter 6, Verse 2 is comprised almost entirely of those dudes and I remember having a hell of a time clearing that stage.
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Post by kal on Dec 3, 2009 19:49:30 GMT -5
What I meant Revolver is that unlike the Dynasty Warrior/Other Massive Beat'em Ups - where the enemies have a goal of some description (opens gates, raid a camp, kill a general) the ones in Drakengard have *Stand around until Caim is nearby* as their only instruction as I remember. Once engaged they have an AI routine thankfully.
One of the things I liked about DW was that you felt like you were standing in the middle of a large engagement where as in Drakengard everyone's there purely for your benefit except despite this they don't really care that you're around. Also it bothered me that you never (barely?) have on screen allies especially during the first fight...Caim fights the entire union war largely by himself...so strange.
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Post by loempiavreter on Dec 3, 2009 20:50:10 GMT -5
Beat'em up... wasn't the japanese name for it Belt Scrolling Grapplers? (or maybe it's fighters since translator program also said Grapplers instead of Fighters).
If GOW or DMC are Beat'em ups... can't be arsed they sure don't enjoy me the way classic belt scrollers do. Or real modern takes as God Hand.
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kainy
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Post by kainy on Dec 5, 2009 9:59:19 GMT -5
Well, this being one of the series I was considering balls-ing up and writing an article on myself, I'm glad to see it was well-done.
I almost feel like a list of the endings of Drakengard 1 should be included, as they are quite illustrative to how fucked up a plot it had.
For Drakengard 2, did you play through all of the difficulties? The story changes each time, IIRC. I haven't yet, because I enjoyed it a lot less than 1, but it's one of those back-burner things I've had sitting around for a long time.
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Post by personman on Dec 7, 2009 19:34:07 GMT -5
I listened to the ost for about and hour and actually found I couldn't stand listening anymore. Not because I didn't like it... but like the article said its more meant to kind of shake you up, bother you a little, I can see myself loving to hear it while playing the game itself, but damn this doesn't help me build assets, hah. Its does its job real well!
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