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Post by alphex on Oct 4, 2017 18:20:44 GMT -5
Really? I mean, it's super subjective, but back in the day, the big hyped up RTS of 1998 was Tuberian Sun. Starcraft beat it to the punch, and people were wondering how Westwood would one-up Blizzard - and when the game was released, it turned out the graphics were doctored for preview videos and it didn't have anywhere near the staying power of Starcraft. Just how hyped the game was can be pretty much proven by the fact that at least in Germany the game was ~50€ everywhere when games usually were between 30 and 40 bucks back then. EA _knew_ they had a surefire hit on their hands - and the hype was certainly bigger than the acclaim.
Red Alert 2 came considerably quicker, but had already way less hype. It just seems that C&C kinda stopped being a spectacle series where every release was a huge event, plus they kept bringing back Kane and all that, kinda cementing the core appeal of the series early on.
(Like I said, speaking from a legacy perspective here - I enjoyed RA2 a lot.)
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Post by JoeQ on Oct 4, 2017 18:28:28 GMT -5
Dark Souls 2. Overshadowed by other Soulsborne games and has the weakest level and enemy design, but it has numerous gameplay improvements (many of which BB and DS3 ignored) and is probably still the best one for PVP, particularly invading.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Oct 5, 2017 5:15:28 GMT -5
Donkey Kong Country 3. It was my favorite DKC as a kid, so I was really surprised when I learned that people online thought 2 was way better. DKC3 is the first one that comes to mind with topics like these. Just like DKC2 it introduces many new stage gimmicks and has super solid level design with pretty much every stage being unique. It's weird that people seem to have no problem with, for example, a whole bunch of Megaman games in the same style, but DKC2+3 is already too much for people. If it was released before DKC2, everyone would be talking about it instead of 2. |
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Post by magic89 on Oct 5, 2017 6:21:27 GMT -5
Skyrim was nice but most The Elder Scrolls fans prefer Morrowind.
While Oblivion are totally forgotten.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Oct 5, 2017 6:33:11 GMT -5
I don't think DKC3 was more of the same though. My comment after beating it a few years back:
This one was a bit of a disappointment. While there are some great, creative levels (and bosses) in the game, they appear as exceptions among levels requiring exploration, learning new gimmicks through trial and error, and time consuming puzzle solving that mostly just serve to highlight the problems with the DKC engine (which is identical to the previous game as far as I can tell) - fairly large sprites combined with low resolution, inconsistent hit detection and loose scrolling. The last levels before the final boss are particularly nasty and seem designed just to piss you off rather than offering a legitimate challenge based on what you've learned thus far.
The great flow found throughout most of the prequels can still be achieved in a good number of the stages, but the process of mastery is interrupted by intrusive and clumsy JRPG design, forcing backtracking and an even larger emphasis on collecting than before. At its worst, the game reveals its biggest secret (the location of a hidden 'lost world' with a set of very challenging levels) with zero effort from the player, then puts up roadblocks in between each of these stages which cost 15 of a certain, rare coin to be demolished. You're gonna have to look up in which levels these are if you want to finish the game fully.
In terms of atmosphere DKC3 is also a mixed bag - Backgrounds are highly detailed and the change of setting is refreshing, while the NPC- and some of the boss/enemy designs seem unfitting and uninspired. Wrinkly Kong (Cranky's wife), sort of takes Cranky's place but has almost nothing of interest to say and most of the time is just sleeping in front of her TV. There's also some references to other Nintendo franchises and product placement of the N64, which came off as cynical to me.
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Post by Bumpyroad on Oct 5, 2017 6:46:22 GMT -5
Skyrim was nice but most The Elder Scrolls fans prefer Morrowind. While Oblivion are totally forgotten. Yeah, The Elder Scrolls fans presumably were slapped pretty hard with Oblivion. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2017 7:34:10 GMT -5
Dark Souls 2. Overshadowed by other Soulsborne games and has the weakest level and enemy design, but it has numerous gameplay improvements (many of which BB and DS3 ignored) and is probably still the best one for PVP, particularly invading. Taken on its own it is fine / average and as you said the PvP is fun. The enemy/boss/level design really is incredibly disappointing in comparison to the rest of the series though. That Iron King DLC is pure tedium too! 😓 |
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Post by Owlman on Oct 5, 2017 8:46:57 GMT -5
Really? I mean, it's super subjective, but back in the day, the big hyped up RTS of 1998 was Tuberian Sun. Starcraft beat it to the punch, and people were wondering how Westwood would one-up Blizzard - and when the game was released, it turned out the graphics were doctored for preview videos and it didn't have anywhere near the staying power of Starcraft. Just how hyped the game was can be pretty much proven by the fact that at least in Germany the game was ~50€ everywhere when games usually were between 30 and 40 bucks back then. EA _knew_ they had a surefire hit on their hands - and the hype was certainly bigger than the acclaim. Red Alert 2 came considerably quicker, but had already way less hype. It just seems that C&C kinda stopped being a spectacle series where every release was a huge event, plus they kept bringing back Kane and all that, kinda cementing the core appeal of the series early on. (Like I said, speaking from a legacy perspective here - I enjoyed RA2 a lot.) It's difficult to say. With regard to graphics - and this is just my opinion at the time - I actually preferred Tiberian Sun. SC1 was locked at 640x480, which was quite frankly pathetic, even for the time. A lot of people already had monitors with a 1024x768 resolution, sometimes even more than that. TS supports any resolution out of the box (even 4K if you really want it, though no consumer had such a monitor at the time, naturally), SC1 was too zoomed in pixelated. |
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Oct 5, 2017 9:38:12 GMT -5
I don't think DKC3 was more of the same though. My comment after beating it a few years back: This one was a bit of a disappointment. While there are some great, creative levels (and bosses) in the game, they appear as exceptions among levels requiring exploration, learning new gimmicks through trial and error, and time consuming puzzle solving that mostly just serve to highlight the problems with the DKC engine (which is identical to the previous game as far as I can tell) - fairly large sprites combined with low resolution, inconsistent hit detection and loose scrolling. The last levels before the final boss are particularly nasty and seem designed just to piss you off rather than offering a legitimate challenge based on what you've learned thus far. The great flow found throughout most of the prequels can still be achieved in a good number of the stages, but the process of mastery is interrupted by intrusive and clumsy JRPG design, forcing backtracking and an even larger emphasis on collecting than before. At its worst, the game reveals its biggest secret (the location of a hidden 'lost world' with a set of very challenging levels) with zero effort from the player, then puts up roadblocks in between each of these stages which cost 15 of a certain, rare coin to be demolished. You're gonna have to look up in which levels these are if you want to finish the game fully. I mean, you're literally describing DKC2 here. I'm playing the DKC SNES trilogy back-to-back, so I'm nearly finished with 3 and wrapped 2 up a few days ago, and it's literally the same approach to level design. Just swap out the DKC2 themes and gimmicks with the DKC3 themes and gimmicks. In fact, the final world (not counting the Lost World) is much harder in DKC2, since most stages put some kind of pressure on you, like the rising toxic in the Toxic Tower. Whereas I'm breezing through it in DKC3. And actually, the game tells you what coins you've found and what you still need. If you've found both of the coins in a stage, an exclamation point will be added next to the stage name. Just like DKC2. It's actually worse in DKC2 because they are often hidden in complete BS spots - plus, in DKC3 it's always 2 per stage so you know how many you still need, and you can replay the bonus stages immediately if you fail 99% of the time. The payment (15 coins) is also the same as DKC2. Basically, all that is wrong with DKC3 can also be found in 2, and in a lot of areas, DKC3 fixes things (like for example how you can now save everywhere). |
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Post by alphex on Oct 5, 2017 9:50:11 GMT -5
In fact, the final world (not counting the Lost World) is much harder in DKC2, since most stages put some kind of pressure on you, like the rising toxic in the Toxic Tower. Whereas I'm breezing through it in DKC3. Toxic Tower is not in the final world, that level where you're Squawks and have to race the black bird is. That's the only level other than the K. Rool battle in that world, and yes, it's hard. Still, gotta disagree with you here. DKC3 is basically gimmicks only after the halfway point, which pissed me off quite a bit. I actually enjoyed the GB version / DK Land 3 more because it had a lot more straight up platforming. And "my" video game magazine from back in the day, Total!, also claimed DKC2 to be superior when DKC3 had just been released. So it's not like this is a perspective clouded by nostalgia. My personal fav DKC is still part 1, due to the atmosphere and setting, but 2 is easily the more refined game. 3 to me has a bit too much fat and kinda lost focus. |
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Oct 5, 2017 9:56:12 GMT -5
I don't see, personally, how DKC2 isn't gimmicks, but DKC3 is. There might be a few stages that aren't gimmick-heavy that introduce a stage theme, but DKC3 does that too. The last stage that isn't gimmick-heavy in DKC2 is probably Stage 2-1.
Maybe people just like the gimmicks in DKC2 more, but I found a lot of them downright annoying.
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Oct 5, 2017 10:03:01 GMT -5
That's like saying the ghost houses and other levels have the same approach to level design in SMW. The more exploration and puzzle oriented design in DKC3 is more time consuming than tricky though, which is worse.
I don't recall collecting being mandatory in DKC2? That and more slowly moving around on a map and talking to boring NPCs also sets DKC3 apart from the prequels. I'll have to look at the coin counter thing if I play it again, didn't make any effort to collect more than I needed.
Being able to save more often isn't really a proper fix to trial & error heavy level design.. though the level of it is about the same in DKC2, sure.
I also like the first one the best, for the most part.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Oct 5, 2017 10:17:55 GMT -5
That's like saying the ghost houses and other levels have the same approach to level design in SMW. The more exploration and puzzle oriented design in DKC3 is more time consuming than tricky though, which is worse. I don't recall collecting being mandatory in DKC2? That and more slowly moving around on a map and talking to boring NPCs also sets DKC3 apart from the prequels. I'll have to look at the coin counter thing if I play it again, didn't make any effort to collect more than I needed. Being able to save more often isn't really a proper fix to trial & error heavy level design.. though the level of it is about the same in DKC2, sure. I also like the first one the best, for the most part. I don't see any puzzles or exploration in the DKC3 stages. The only stages where things are slightly less straight-foward are the stages where you swim or fly (just like DKC2). And in the case of the water stages in this game, they at least don't require you to go through random walls, nor are they mazelike. So that's actually better than in DKC2. Apart from that there's only a stage called Low-G Labyrinth, but not only is the point of that stage a labyrinth, it's not even really a labyrinth. And in fact the bonus barrels are often found in extremely obvious detours whereas in DKC2 they can be hidden in completely random and terrible locations. The difference in DKC3 is more that they can be tricky to get to, whereas in DKC2 they can be hidden out of sight completely. This is also why DKC2 offers hints, because (even with those hints) some of the locations of hidden collectibles is just awful. A lot of the hints point to more obvious bonus barrels, or even to bananas or regular coins. I do kinda miss them in DKC3 though, as useless as most of them were. And you needed all bonus coins in DKC2 and you need all of them in DKC3 to unlock all the stages. The bears and the overworld having other things besides stages is rather pointless, but you can actually travel back at all times, and again, save at all times, so it's worth the extra ten minutes or so you spend on it. I mean, most of the bears only have anything to do with finding banana birds, and there's not a lot of those, so it's barely even noticable IMO. |
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Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Oct 5, 2017 11:12:53 GMT -5
What else would you call the sawmill gimmicks for example? My point was that they generally aren't interesting enough to warrant slowing you down. You also walk into a bunch of these detours where you have to perform some sort of special move playing normally and even if mostly optional you'll feel like you're missing a bunch of the game not going for the bonus items. As I said it's been a while but I didn't feel it as much from the prequels going by my memory of them.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Oct 5, 2017 11:25:57 GMT -5
Valid complaints if that annoys you, but again, this describes DKC2 as well. You need the team-up throw way more often in DKC2, and you have to use Dixie's hair glide quite often as well.
In DKC3 the hair glide returns, and Kiddy has his weight to slam through floors and a water-bounce you have to use once or twice, but overall, you need their techniques way less, and it generally doesn't matter if you have two kongs or one, or in the case of the latter who it is.
I just don't see what slows you down in DKC3 compared to DKC2.
I mean, it's fine if you don't like 3 as much, but I don't see a different approach to level design in 3. And again, I'm playing through them back-to-back so DKC2 is as fresh in my mind as it could possibly be as I'm playing 3.
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