/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9391452]

They did it. Somehow, they did it.

They managed to check every single box on the objectively bad game design sheet with this motherfucker right here.

I'm speechless.

[Anonymous No.9391465]

>>9391452
When you step back and look at it most Western games are just designed arbitrarily, like there's no gameplay rhyme or gameplay reason shit just sort of happens randomly.

[Anonymous No.9391523]

sounds like skill issue

[Anonymous No.9391537]

i have watched many people stomp them in playthroughs so what's bad design about him?

[Anonymous No.9391554]

>>9391452
git gud

[Anonymous No.9391557]

Never had any problems with these guys. Don't understand the bitching

[Anonymous No.9391558]

>>9391452
Git Fucking Gud, bro. He's an intense cunt to fight, but he's also VERY vulnerable to the Flamethrower. When he's forcing you into cover with his deadly zaps, douse him down with some burning fuel, you should be able to track/lead and set him on fire within just five units of ammo. Then stay the fuck in cover to avoid his arcing lighting, and listen to him suffer as he burns away.

Done right, you may come away with just slight damage, if none at all.

>>9391537
Yeah, an instinct may be to blow up the bastards with a Panzerfaust because you want to blow him up instantly, but they're pretty quick so that can sometimes be hard to do. Fire is far easier.

[Anonymous No.9391563]

>>9391558
no i have seen people just gun them down as if they where not even a big deal to begin with

[Anonymous No.9391601]

>>9391452
I always thought that was kind of the point with him. He's such a threatening enemy when you first meet him that it's practically guaranteed to catch you off guard and kill you. It's a memorable moment for anyone playing it for the first time to go, "What the fuck was that?" before reloading the level and giving it another try. They're the ultimate "kill it as fast as fucking possible" kind of enemy. The ones that you first find in the SWF are especially menacing because for some reason their hp is slightly inflated compared the ones in the X-Labs, to the point where it can even tank a Panzerfaust which is admittedly kind of ridiculous and a little cheap, so I sympathize with your frustration. That's how these old FPS games went sometimes, where the designers would throw in all kinds of crazy shit to fuck with the player and give them a unique challenge. That's part of the fun of it.
Anyway, I still don't consider X-Creatures to be bad game design because I can go through the game and never take any damage from them. As long as there's teachable strategies the player can employ to consistently avoid all damage, I consider it fair game. Depending on the resources you have in the SWF level, you can:

1) hit them with a puff of flamethrower fuel, retreat to safety and let them die to afterburn
2) cornerpeek them with a Panzerfaust rocket and follow it up with a cooked grenade to finish them off, as the layout of the level benefits BJ being right-handed and having projectiles come out of the right side of the screen.
3) use the thick pillars given to the player as a way to get up in their faces and take care of them with your newly found Venom minigun

The ones you'll find later in the X-Labs are less spongey, and you can even bait them into an electrical wall to safely fry them in some cases which is fun to pull off.

[Anonymous No.9391694]

>>9391563
You can do that pretty reliably on easy, but on medium and higher they can power through and still zap you.
I guess you can kind of get in shots in their back if you maneuver as they turn around, but given how much they hurt, I'm inclined to keep myself out of range of their lightning.

[Anonymous No.9391697]

>>9391601
They're survivable the first time you meet them, but they can definitely kill you quick if you don't think and act fast.

I think the Lopers are excellently designed enemies. Look at this mean cyborg monster freak, look at his evil and twisted mug, befitting of being such a threatening and vile foe.

[Anonymous No.9391717]

>>9391452
we really should ban zoomers from this site.

[Anonymous No.9391725]

>>9391452
filtered general?

[Anonymous No.9391734]

Git gud.
Nah but seriously, fuck him.

[Anonymous No.9391739]

>>9391452
You're not funny

[Anonymous No.9392008]

>>9391452

[Anonymous No.9392043]

And what are those boxes exactly?

[Anonymous No.9392059]

newbies tend to die to them cause they are used to beating the levels with the sten and maybe the paratrooper rifle, but these monstrosities are only killable with the venom gun at close range, you simply have to go all out on them before they outdamage you.

[Anonymous No.9392063]

>>9391465
This does sound correct and explains why you can really like a certain western game and then the next release in the series feels completely different.

[Anonymous No.9392141]

>>9391452
The cutest nazis I've ever seen

[Anonymous No.9392240]

>>9391452
>the guy she likes

[Anonymous No.9392248]

I never had a problem with this enemy, they are just ugly to the point the first time you meet them you nope the fuck out

[Anonymous No.9392258]

>>9391465
Is this actually true? I've always felt that Japanese game design had way more polish and attention to detail. For stuff coming out in the 90s at least.

[Anonymous No.9392335]

>>9391465
Shamelessly retarded opinion.

>>9392063
There's like a million possible reasons for something like that to happen, and it's hardly unique to Western games. It could be as simple as the devs thinking something is a good idea/better than what they did before when it actually isn't, you see that all the time in the indie scene, which is why only a few indie games are actually interesting or noteworthy.
Sometimes a developer only has a couple good ideas in him and uses them on his first game, sometimes maybe they let fame get to their head and assume they're infallible, and that the other devs on the team saying "Dude, this is shit, we should change this." don't understand their supposed genius. Or maybe that's the entire development team in the worst case.

They have their share of inflated egoes, oddballs, and wonky auteurs in their industry.

>>9392258
There's certainly very differing perspectives between Eastern and Western game design philosophies, but retardation, one hit wonders, and cashgrabs, are universal. How many completely uninteresting or even bad Completely By The Numbers JRPGs are there in Japan? Legions of them, and they never make it over because they fail in their own market.

[Anonymous No.9392354]

>>9391465
Weeaboos are rarted.

[Anonymous No.9392358]

>>9391601
There's zero damage feedback besides a tiny puff of blood in this game. It's a really terribly designed game.

[Anonymous No.9392404]

>>9392358
Shut the fuck up you Melvin, every enemy has a flinch animation, it's just that the chance depends on the enemy in question (as well as your weapon, some weapons not affecting some enemies at all).
Unlike the human troopers you fight for most of that level, this is cyber-organic horror created as a weapon in a lab, it's fast, erratic, and tolerates a lot of pain, it's not supposed to flinch easily, it's supposed to be a difficult monster. Flinching is a key tactic for fighting the living dead in other segments of the game, there's lots of feedback involved.

The undead warrior is an excellent example of feedback, when he's not holding up his shield, gunshots will make blood splatter, and audibly, he'll flinch in pain if damaged sufficiently, but then he covers himself with his shield to advance against you, bullets will plain deflect from it audibly (and right back at you, keying you in strongly that shooting at his shield is NOT viable). When he swings his weapon at you, you can dodge out of the way to avoid injury, and this leaves him open to attacks again, your window for hitting him is even longer if he flinches.

He's also from medieval times, so he doesn't really recognize 1942 hand grenades, which you can use against him. Human enemies are not the same, they will avoid grenades, the Super Soldiers move slow but conjure up a storm of pain forcing you into cover, so grenades are a tempting approach, but they're smart enough to avoid them, or will even kick them towards you, so you have to use them smartly.

[Anonymous No.9392421]

>>9392335
>There's certainly very differing perspectives between Eastern and Western game design philosophies
Are there any articles written about this? It would be a pretty interesting read I feel.

[Anonymous No.9392462]

>>9392404
The flinch animations are fucking terrible and janky. It doesn't give you feedback whatsoever. Fucking wolf3D had feedback animations. Goldeneye and MoH had unique animations for each body part getting hit. Soldier of Fortune had way more detailed gore. These games are all much older than RtCW, its a fucking embarrassment. There is no realistic way for an enemy half the size of a meathead human not to get torn apart by a venom minigun or a panzerfaust.

[Anonymous No.9392474]

>>9392421
I can't think of any specific articles, but someone must have done a good writeup of it somewhere.

One of the things which sticks with me: FPS games have long been kind of slow to catch on in Japan, it's with 7th gen where it slowly began getting popular (in big part to later Fallout games and Skyrim). A big part of this is that in Japan the general perception is that computers aren't for having fun, consoles are, so FPS, which generally had the best control input on PC, and would only get more accessible setups on consoles in later years, suffered.
There's the little diehard groups of true nerds who do game on PC, and there you have Doom being regarded as a cult classic. They have a small scene of people who actually make their own levels for Doom, and some years back they came together to make Japanese Doom Community Project.

Perhaps it's the decades long language barrier where they're less exposed to what the western part of the community does, and the kind of theory and design which rules here is just less picked up on there, but the levels all feel noticeably different from how everyone else does maps. It's hard to put to words, and I should really try to analyze it some day to figure it out proper, but at least part of it is that they don't have the same enduring conventions from popular stuff like Alien Vendetta, Scythe, Plutonia 2, Valiant, etc.

[Anonymous No.9392512]

>>9392404
Enemy pain states in this game are also heavily influenced by the difficulty. It's a shame no one knows this, and the game doesn't tell you what the different difficulties change. Flinching on human enemies depends on the state they're in, because if they're in a strong stance or firing their weapon, they won't flinch, whereas if you catch them off-guard before they wind up, they will flinch. The lower the difficulty, the longer it takes for enemies to wind up, and therefore the more often they flinch. The people that can't get into this game because of the lack of damage feedback probably played on the hardest difficulty, whereas easy would've made for a much more enjoyable experience for them.
With that said, I still wouldn't say damage feedback is necessarily this game's strong suit, but it's not a dealbreaker because everything else is so well-done. Many multiplayer FPS games in particular have relatively terrible damage feedback, but the gameplay (strategy, movement, map design, combat encounter design, intensity) are more important to me. I'll always prefer enemies that aren't pushovers who are rendered useless by hitstun every shot.
>>9392462
They're not janky, they're were just going for a difference style of FPS. Wolfenstein 3D's enemies flinch on each shot because the game was balanced around high enemy counts. RTCW has fewer enemies with locational headshot damage and situational bodyshot flinching when certain conditions are met. Instead of adding more enemies on higher difficulties, enemy behavior is changed to be more aggressive. Replay the first level on Don't Hurt Me. The improved flinching will be noticeable, but still conditional and nowhere near Wolfenstein 3D's level because the game would be way too easy. The relative lack of pain states in RTCW's enemy design allows many other strategies to open up that wouldn't be possible if you could just aim your crosshair in an enemy's general direction and stop them in their tracks every time.

[Anonymous No.9392543]

>>9391452
I hate to say this, but.

Filtered.

[Anonymous No.9392548]

>>9392543
I think this is a matter of what you prioritize in design. Also, RTCW's weapon models and animations look pretty crude and shitty even by the standards of 2001, while HL2's look pretty good by the standards of 2004.

[Anonymous No.9392720]

>>9392512
>because the game would be way too easy
Increase the enemy amount or reduce the player health then. Counter Strike games aren't easy despite having much better damage feedback.

[Anonymous No.9392793]

>>9392720
fair enough, I'd enjoy a more "arcadey" version of RTCW like that

[Anonymous No.9392802]

>>9392474
>FPS games have long been kind of slow to catch on in Japan
You're completely disconnected and likely a Kotaku reader if you believe this to be the case. The genre has always been popular in Japan. PC gaming is as big in Japan as it is anywhere else and has had a more interesting and varied home computer gaming scene than the West ever did.

[Anonymous No.9392803]

>>9392512
>Flinching on human enemies depends on the state they're in, because if they're in a strong stance or firing their weapon, they won't flinch, whereas if you catch them off-guard before they wind up, they will flinch.
This feels like something I may have picked up on subconsciously or something, because I feel like that's something I may pay attention to without realizing why.

That, or I always get behind cover to reload when they open fire. Or both.

[Anonymous No.9392835]

>>9392803
>That, or I always get behind cover to reload when they open fire.
Yeah, that's part of the design for the hitscan combat in RTCW. BJ's default movement speed is very fast and allows you to reposition at will, moving from one form of cover to another when overwhelmed. When you break line of sight, enemies will either lower their gun and enter a "hitstunnable" state, or they'll retreat while reloading, which essentially gives you a few seconds to be aggressive and take them out. To really see this at play, load up a random level and turn on the "/notarget" cheat. None of the enemies will fire at you, and as a result, you'll send them into a hitstun animation every time you shoot them, with about a 5 second delay before you can get another flinching animation from the same enemy.

[Anonymous No.9393271]

>>9392802
What are you talking about, western PC gaming scene has always been huge. Indie scene died in the US throughout the 80s-90s but the 2000s saw its rejuvenation thanks to the popularity of the internet and gaming PC. Demoscene and indie PC gaming in Europe stayed huge, much bigger than japan's. Japan has dedicated hobbyists but PC gaming and indie scene weren't truly mainstream until recently. They mostly made doujin games for obese socially recluse coomers.

[Anonymous No.9393593]

>>9391601
Venom is seemingly made specifically for dealing with them. Otherwise, if you use it on others, you run out of ammo for it too quickly.

[Anonymous No.9394123]

>>9392548
Free finger movement seems like a pretty big deal animation-wise to me.
The problem is a lack of consistency. Important characters received a lot more detail.

[Anonymous No.9394145]

>>9391465
i believe that is called soul

[Anonymous No.9396352]

>>9391452
huh?