#Game Feel

[redeyeflyguy]

Wonderful Things That May or May Not Be Wonderful!!! Charge moves are a class of fighting game special attack where you hold one direction (usually down or backward) for a brief window of time before pressing the opposite direction along with a button in order to preform it. I I love these things as a lot of time I feel they have grant a supreme level of game feel. They convey the idea that you are "charging up", waiting for the right moment to strike, and unleashing all that stored power. A perfect example (though not the most archetypical) is Axl Low's Rensen Geki or Sickle Flash. Hold back or down back on the D-Pad, wait a couple seconds, press forward and slash, and watch as the time traveling brit's chain sickle glows bright and rips up everything in its path. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! If you press up during the attack, Axl performs a follow-up where he flicks the sickle upward creating an enormous half-moon arc that catches anyone who tried to jump over the initial attack. BUT WAIT, THERE IS EVEN MORE! You can also press down to perform another follow up where you spin the chain like a tornado great for knockdowns and damage in the corner. Sure, you may only be doing a loose approximation of these actions on a hunk of plastic and computer chips, but in the moment when the world melts away, you feel as if you are performing the technique and it feels so wonderful to do so. Plus, it's just a really useful tool in Axl's move set.

#wonderful #axl low #guilty gear #the missing link #xx #xrd #strive #charge motions #fighting games #rensen geki #sickle flash #video game techniques #game feel #immersion #chain sickle #kusarigama #zoning

[goombasa]

Banjo-Tooie and The Problem with "Bigger = Better"

I love Banjo-Kazooie.

At least, I love the first one. I wouldn't just call it one of my favorite Nintendo 64 games of all time, I would call it one of my favorite games of all time, full stop. To me, Banjo-Kazooie took the layout of the 3D collect-a-thon platformer that Super Mario 64 pioneered, and perfected it. It is not a perfect game (there is no such thing) but any negatives that I see in the game are so minor when compared to the litany of positives that they barely register to me, and it is one of those games that I know front to back and up to down.

And when Banjo-Tooie was announced, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.

And then I played it. And I really, really liked it.

But I didn't love it.

Don't get me wrong, I did think that Banjo-Tooie was a good game, and to this day, I maintain that opinion. It's a good collect-a-thon, but even when it was brand new, something felt off about it compared to the original. It wasn't the tone, though the game's somewhat darker storyline and character interpretation compared to the whimsical, fairy-tale like excuse plot of the first game was a bit of a change-up. No, it was more in the gameplay. And a few years afterwards, I realized what it was, at least for me.

The game was just too damn big.

Look, Banjo Tooie was released pretty late into the N64's life span and it really pushed the system to its limits. I'm not going to pretend that it is not super impressive what they managed to shove onto a tiny, tiny cartridge. But you can tell they were running up against issues just by the fact that the game does not run great on original hardware, even when there's not a huge amount of stuff happening. But it still runs well enough to be played, and of course if you're playing the Xbox remaster, it runs perfectly fine, and that's how I'd recommend it be played. But when you get down to it, in terms of its design, the game is just way too big for its own good.

Banjo-Kazooie, even when its words were on the larger side, were not terribly big by comparison. They were very carefully broken down into manageable chunks that made navigating them really easy. You always knew where you were in relation to everything else in the world. Even more wide open worlds like, say Mad Monster Mansion, each area of the mansion and the grounds stands on its own so well that navigating around and getting from place to place is really easy to do.

Banjo-Kazooie doesn't really have that. Don't get me wrong, its maps are peppered with recognizable landmarks and most of them are also broken up into chunks. I think Witchy World gets the closest out of all of its worlds to the design of the first game, as its basically designed as a compass with a distinct area of the theme park at each of the cardinal directions, and the big top in the center. Of course, each of these cardinal areas have several sub areas inside of them, but the point is, its design is very easy to follow and navigate. But it's one of the few worlds that are designed like this. Most of the worlds in Tooie are made up of massive areas that don't really flow into one another. There's not as distinct a break between one area as there is another. There are landmarks everywhere, and yet they don't help you navigate nearly as well as you would think.

This is made worse by the fact that, especially in later worlds, navigating is just… just such a chore. There's a reason they had to add warp pads in the second game so that you can more easily navigate from one part of the world to the other, but that doesn't help at all when the game deliberately limits your movement options, which feels pretty horrible, especially your first time through. The absolute nadir of this particular problem is definitely Grunty Industries, which makes getting around its multi-floor factory an absolute nightmare, and considering how many of the puzzles require you to jump from floor to floor, sometimes in multiple forms (with each form needing to utilize a different means of getting around the different floors, and having to UNLOCK those means beforehand), you spend a LOT of time wandering around not doing anything because you can't figure out where anything is.

Even the hub world is more tedious to traverse. The first game had the cramped tunnels and chambers of Gruntilda's lair as its main hub, and it was mostly a linear ride from one area to the next, with some offshoots for extra stuff or to solve puzzles to go deeper into the lair or find secrets here and there, but it was purposefully built to lead the player around in a quick and easy manner. In Tooie, since you're wandering around an entire island, every new section of the island is like a miniature level to explore, chock full of things to look over and figure out, and it can get overwhelming. And again, warp points were introduced to make traveling the thing more palatable.

It's not just the level design that feels too big or bloated. The game kind of assumes you've already played the previous game, and as such, it feels like it's designed to pick up right after that. You already have your full moveset from the last game. Now, the last game stopped teaching you new moves a little ways past the halfway point. But the sequel has you learn at least one new move in every single level, or at least upgrading some sort of aspect about your characters, such as giving you a ton of new egg types to use like fire, ice, and grenades.

But most of the new moves that you get kind of feel… unnecessary? There are some good ones in there. The ability to split Banjo and Kazooie up and use them both independently of one another, but most of the new moves are either highly situational, like Kazooie's hatch ability or the beak bayonette attack, straight upgrades to pre-existing abilities, like the drill pound or the first-person egg aiming, and then first person aiming in the air or underwater, all of which are considered separate moves by the by, or so incredibly situational that it feels like they were added in at the last minute and they couldn't figure out a lot of interesting ways to use them, like most of Banjo's backpack abilities.

Not saying that some of the moves in the original weren't situational as well, but it felt like they were used a lot more often than some of the moves in Tooie, and since you stop getting new moves after like world six or so, you have time to get a bit more use out of each move you've learned, rather than only using a move for one or two specific uses during the last couple of worlds… or in the case of the beak bayonette, using it for one challenge. In the second world. Right next to the room you learn it in, and then never again.

I don't want to sound like this ruined the game for me though. The wide, large, sprawling maps do lend themselves to a lot of interesting puzzles, many of them spanning multiple worlds, and all those worlds are often, in some way, interconnected with one another. I like these ideas on paper, but in practice it leads to a lot more busy-work, a lot more backtracking, and a lot of dead air between all the different challenges. There was a single instance in Banjo Kazooie where backtracking for a challenge was mandatory, but in Tooie, every world except for the final one requires you to backtrack to complete at least one challenge. On the plus side, since the backtracking is designed into the framework of the game, it doesn't feel as out of place as it did in the first game.

This does lead into a very interesting feeling. When you do finally complete one of these very long-running challenges, there's no doubt that it does feel good, like you've triumphed over a major obstacle, but at times in between, it really feels like you're spinning your wheels. I really just feel like this game might have been a bit better if they had just taken what already existed and just refined it, and then walked back some of the ‘more’ that they were putting into the game. There are plenty of ways they could have substituted the duo's existing moveset for things that you learn in the second game, and the fact that it insists on you learning the duo's basic attack moves when they're separated as their own individual moves (even forcing you to not be able to learn them unless you're playing as only the necessary character when you find the molehill) does bother me. It really feels like padding meant to make it feel like you're finding new moves with every place.

Again, I find the game fun to play, but it's a game that feels so, so draining to play for long periods of time, because it takes so long to feel like you're accomplishing anything. I just can't marathon this game like I can with the first. The positive feedback and the progress in the original Banjo Kazooie feels constant, it's invigorating. With Tooie, that feeling takes longer, the time between triumphs is much, much slower, and I've had whole sessions with the game where I didn't do much of anything because I was just wandering around, trying to figure things out, and yet I never managed to get to the point where I'm moving towards the goals that I've set for myself.

This is a bit of a running theme with other collect-a-thons, even with Rare. The amount of collectibles or the distance between them is just superfluously large. The gameplay is solid, it's sound, but the game just had to get bigger. And if all of these massive, open worlds in games these days are any indication, bigger isn't always better, especially when it hinders an otherwise very well designed game.

#Banjo Kazooie #Banjo Tooie #Open World #Too Big for its own good #Game Design #Game Feel #Collectathon #I just want a new banjo kazooie game #Like I really want it #But I don't want to see what it'd look like as a modern game #Especially since Rare is well past their glory days

[mirax96]

Street Fighter 6 has an immaculate game feel

I haven't relatively played too much of it yet (only ~20 hours), but it's... Just too good.

I've never had a game make me feel so... Connected with the other player. I just feel like we're having a conversation while battling.

The fact that it's also so welcoming for newcomers helps, the new characters target combos remind me a lot of Dragon Ball FighterZ auto-combos, where you can cancel the final hit into a special.

I've played thousands of hours in Smash Bros and FighterZ (and dozens in Strive), so I'm used to true inputs, but I still prefer to play with Modern (as of now) just because I like choosing to do true-input-Supers mid-combo, while doing the shortcut for punish. Even if it means -20% damage, having no executional barrier is such a strong component in these moments.

I always liked to look at stuff like charts that compared different fighting games' skill floors. Usually, Smash is at the lower extreme while most FGs are at the other and FighterZ is closer to Smash.

I'd say that SF6's one is a bit higher than FighterZ, but not by a long shot. You really feel like you're starting to learn stuff and make decisions from the very first moment.

Also, this doesn't even need to be addressed, but the art is top notch. All the character look beautiful, this time the men look unironically attractive, not only the women, ALL of the new characters have good looks and personalities (which is a new in SF at least for me), almost ALL of the veterans have brave yet beautiful redesigns. The attacks REALLY feel like they hurt, especially the Level 3s.

I've reached the point where I'm either playing the game or looking forward to play it.

Winning is ecstatic, losing is... Fun!? Like, when I lose in this game, I never feel frustrated and more like "Damn, I'll get 'em good next time!!"

They used literal black magic for the netcode. I get it that it's rollback, but I would've never expected to see myself playing online with someone from another continent while using my phone as a router and STILL having a better experience compared to other aforementioned games played in Lan.

I want to have a long journey... With all these characters. ✨

#Street Fighter 6 #Street Fighter #Super Smash Bros #Dragon Ball FighterZ #Game Feel #Game Design #Videogames #Fighting Games #fighting game community #FGC #Super Smash Bros Ultimate #Rollback #rollback netcode #This game is just too good and if you're neurodivergent enough to be reading here then trust me you'll love it #video games

[alkaliii]

Jul 13, 2021

posting videos on tumblr seems to be a billion times more enjoyable than trying to post them on twitter. oh and yea now the characters move a bit when they do stuff.

#tumblr has really good ux #seriously this site shouldn't be almost dead #gamedev #indiedev #jrpg #rpg #godot engine #game feel

[qrowpilled]

hate when you find a character whose so infuriatingly Your Type that its embarrassing like yeahg no one is gonna be surprised when i announce this is my new Guy Of The Month

#shush jesse #this post abt astarion #hes just so painfully on brand for me #i know so little about him though is the thing but i still feel insane #but i cant play the game and i dont want to watch anyone play it and i dont want spoilers #so like.....secondhand blorbo right now

[onefey]

you're going about your normal day when, suddenly, surprise! you've been pokémon mystery dungeon'd!

unfortunately, due to budget cuts, the pokémon assigning quiz has been canceled. instead, you must spin THE WHEEL, assigning you a random, unevolved, non-legendary and non-mythical pokémon. you must now go on some sort of world-saving adventure as this pokémon. good luck!

tell me in the tags what you rolled, and how you feel about it - for bonus points, you can spin the wheel again for (or just take your pick of) a pokémon to be your partner.

bonus rules:

you're not shiny unless the wheel tells you you're shiny

take your pick of regional forms and evolutions (for example, if you roll vulpix, it's up to you whether that means normal or alolan vulpix)

apply whatever logic you like with regards to gender

have fun and be yourself!

#pokemon #pkmn #pokemon mystery dungeon #pmd #tag games #someone might've done this concept already but i had a worm in my brain you know. #i thought itd be fun to list all the unevolved pokemon... now i know there's only around 400 evolution lines total! #.. not counting mythicals legendaries ultra beasts or paradoxes #by the way! alongside the shiny result there are two other bonus results: an obligatory pikachu and... a surprise!!! #finally feel free to let me know if i misspelled something or accidentally included an evolved mon (other than pikachu) #sorry long tags ha 😅 i'm done now

[brick-brooke]

#bg3 #bg3 memes #baldur's gate 3 #i feel like everytime i start a new game i need to make memes for it lol #anyway i love every companion so far #i'm sorry jaheira and minsc i have not gotten that far yet :( and i know nothing about minthara lol

[captainjonnitkessler]

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

#there is not a third option. it is either trump OR biden #and one of those will be much MUCH worse for palestine #i'm really really sorry that these are the options. i wish they weren't. #but WHAT third option are you trying to take here? what on earth is your proposed outcome #that will actually make things better for palestine? #because letting trump win the election is NOT going to help them #i'm sorry but you need to set aside your feelings and take the option that will lead to less harm to palestine in the long run #you talk such a big game about how people need to be willing to make sacrifices to help palestine #but you yourself aren't even willing to hold your nose and vote to stop things from getting worse? #or did you think 'sacrifice' only meant not getting mcdonalds for a few months? #us politics

[voltaical-art]

HE WAS SEVENTEEN. AGHHH ULDER WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU

#bg3 #wyll ravengard #baldur's gate 3 #ulder ravengard #i am having so many Thoughts and Feelings about wyll and his fucking father #his dialogue abt him is so heartbreaking 'Did he ever miss me?' RAGHHH #man the game this would be if they actually explored this with wyll>>>> #whatever ill just do it myself

[setaflow]

Gay pride happens in June and gay wrath happens whenever hbomberguy drops a 3+ hour video essay about a specific topic

#hbomberguy #Just watched the full 4 hour plagiarism video and go OFF you funky bisexual king #Also I feel like people casually mention that Internet Historian and that Blare chick should've gotten mentioned more but honestly #Good on him for taking down Luke Stephens too-- who is now afaik a huge channel for video game news #So anyway video good go watch it and go support queer content creators who are not James Somerton :) #See y'all in 2024 when he drops a 5 hour essay on Onion farming or whatever #Seta speaks #top posts #5k #10k

[ink-the-artist]

Video game I saw in a dream. It was in this low poly style like an older video game. You play as this character I think was meant to be a lamb, or maybe a weird mix of a lamb a mouse and a rabbit, (while not really looking like any of those things) and you’re running away from a wolf. Your objective is to last as long as possible before the wolf catches and eats you.

The house you’re running in is endless and bizarrely put together like most building interiors in dreams are (like the infinite toilet dream dimension on Reddit lol) the layout of the house is pretty detailed, you can stop and hide in places like closets or bins while the wolf looks for you, you can go up and down stairs and into rooms etc.

You never actually know where the wolf is or how close it is to you until it appears in your line of sight, it makes no noise and the game gives you no way of knowing where it is, and it’s pretty unpredictable it doesnt move at a consistent pace. When the wolf catches you there’s an animation showing it eating your character

#the actual animation of the wolf eating your character wasnt scary he kind of just cartoonishly swallows the character whole lol #the scary part is being pursued by him and never knowing how close he is #i remember being surprised when i first saw the game bc it was presented to me as #a fun addictive sort of game kinda like a mobile app game #and then i see it and its a horror game and the creators are just completely oblivious to it lmao #dream art #<- thats my tag for all my dream-inspired art #art #gif #photomanipulation #digital art #liminal #weirdcore #used a mix of ai photos and regular photos for this one #the ai stuff is sooooo good for recreating what a dream looks and feels like #but i didnt use it too much bc i wasnt able to get the specific photos i wanted :/ #hmmmm this is vore isn’t it

[quixoticclown]

Yes, these Muppets have taken Manhattan. The question now is can they HOLD it

#tywin lannister #asoif/got #asoiaf #game of thrones #lannister #westeros #the muppets #muppets #muppets take manhattan #the muppets take manhattan #kermit #gonzo #fozzie bear #miss piggy #a song of ice and fire #a song of ice and feels #house lannister #storm of swords

[kithj]

good games i've played on itchio lately:

please tell me you love me - chat with your guild members for the last time before the game's servers are shut down

GIRLKILLER (covet) - there is a girl who looks like you, and today you're going to kill her

cover me in leaves - stuck in your small hometown, you get your first tattoo. and then a few more, and more, and more

don't rock the boat - play through the different perspectives of a women's crew team as they are stalked by something in the water

GUTLESS - you are the captain of a deep sea vessel. your mission doesn't go well

so, about last night... - you wake up sick and weirdly hungry after hooking up with someone at a party. you spend the next night trying to find her.

close the window, my love - short bitsy poem about closing the window. sound on! this creator has a lot of short bitsy works i recommend.

there is a beautiful star - just a short, cute side scroller. lots of short, lighthearted games from them, definitely recommend for a mood booster.

#these are all p short except for so about last night gutless and rock the boat #still not super long tho #these are all on my itch page too but whatever lmfao #also cringe i feel so awkward writing descriptions but i dont really have a lot to say personally #except. Good Game 👍 #also sorry recommending gutless a second time sue me #i think girlkiller is my favorite atm... i like the ambiguity in that one and two different endings #games

[cityandking]

oc asks: not-so-nice edition

alone: How does your OC deal with loneliness? Have they ever been completely alone before? How do they act when there's no one around to see them?

betrayal: Has your OC ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust? Has your OC ever betrayed someone who trusted them?

bound: Has your OC ever been imprisoned or captured? What happened? How did they get out? Did the experience leave any scars?

break: What would cause your OC to break down completely? What do they look like when that happens? Has anyone ever seen them at their lowest?

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

failure: What's your OC's greatest failure? Have they been able to move past it? Does anyone else know about it?

fear: What is your OC's greatest fear? What do they do when confronted with it? Are they open with their fear, or do they hide it away?

future: What's the worst possible future for your OC? Are they taking steps to avoid that outcome? Are they even aware it's a possibility?

ghost: Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?

guilt: What is your OC guilty about? How do they handle their guilt? Do they try to avoid guilt, or do they accept it?

hate: What does your OC hate? Why? How do they act towards the object of their hatred?

heartbreak: Have they ever had a relationship that ended badly? Experienced some other kind of heartbreak? What happened?

hide: What does your OC hide? Why do they hide it?

hunt: Who or what is your OC hunted by? A person, a feeling, a past mistake? Is your OC able to let their guard down, or are they constantly alert?

mask: Does your OC wear a mask, literally or figuratively? What goes on beneath it? Is there anyone in their life who gets to see who they are under the mask?

midnight: What keeps your OC up at night? Do they have nightmares? Fears? Anxieties? What do they do in the small hours of the morning when they should be sleeping?

mistake: What's the worst mistake your OC ever made? What led to them making it? Have they been able to fix it? How have they moved on?

monster: Is your OC monstrous in any way? Is there something that makes them monstrous? Are they aware of their own monstrosity? Do they accept it or reject it?

nightmare: What does your OC have nightmares about? How do they deal with their nightmares? Do they tell people, or keep it to themself?

pain: What's the worst pain your OC has ever felt? Do they have a high pain tolerance?

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them?

skin: How comfortable is your OC in their skin? Do they grapple with anything that lives inside them—a beast, a curse, a failure, a monster? How do they face the smallest, weakest, most horrible version of themself? Are they able to acknowledge it at all?

torture: Has your OC ever been tortured? Would your OC ever torture someone else?

wound: How does your OC handle being wounded? Are their wounds mostly physical? Mental? Emotional? What's the worst wound your OC has ever experienced?

#whump #whump ask #oc asks #oc ask game #oc ask prompts #oc ask meme #ask meme #ask game #character asks #character development #mine; ask meme #meme resource #please feel free and encouraged to reblog! or to send asks but I probably won’t get to them til next week #now with minor edits for clarity!

[glassrooibos]

FABIAN DON’T DO THAT. THAT’S SCARY.

#dimension 20 #fantasy high #adaine abernant #fabian seacaster #fantasy high junior year #illustration #this was so fun #adaine… is this kristens room? #and the immediate DREAD #YOU FEEL #love it love it #Lou plays a great spooky game. #baron from the baronies #honestly? slay from baron #they seem cool actually #let em join the bad kids I think #they’re serving looks #they have the cunty curly wig #love it #Adaine also not catching a BREAK!!!

[edelwoodsouls]

thinking about the fact that they made a point to tell us that there are no cameras in the vents. like- lucy gray is a performer, she is always performing, it is her calling and her survival mechanism and when we meet her she literally cannot stop performing because she is always on camera or being perceived- by coriolanus, by the capital, by her fellow tributes and the folks back at 12. but for that one, awful moment, in the vents, watching dill drink the poisoned water she laid as a trap- for that one moment in the whole entire movie, lucy gray isn’t being observed. that is the only moment in the entire movie she isn’t performing for someone else, and she uses it to grieve

#im having THOUGHTS and FEELINGS #the tbosas brainrot is so real #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #the hunger games #tbosas #lucy gray baird #coriolanus snow #tbosas spoilers #the ballad of songbirds and snakes spoilers #5k