FlowerSunRain
Contributor
What the fuck? Two awesome cards I kinda want to run with the same ridiculously restrictive casting cost?
Sets [KTK] Khans of Tarkir Spoilers
- Thread starter anotak
- Start date
God damn I love this discussion.
Video games are notoriously terrible at telling a good story. Unfortunately, a lot of the "classics" that became famous because of their story just don't hold up for me anymore. I hate to say this, because I'm a huge Zelda fan, but modern Zelda games are a perfect example of how awful a game can be at telling a story.
KOTOR is an exception in that it had the exact opposite problem that Zelda had: a really engaging and incredible story with memorable characters, and a combat system that I simply could not stand. Do not make me frantically tab through menus in real-time combat. It is stressful, detaching, and not fun. Mass Effect handled that much better. But it worked well enough to keep me playing for the entirety of an undergrad January break.
I've found that most games dependent on telling a linear storyline just don't really do it for me anymore (though not when I was younger). I'd rather just go read a book or watch a movie where the characters are likely more interesting and multi-dimensional, and be done with it in a tenth of the time. It seems that somewhere along the way they discarded that holy grail of video games: YOU get to be the character, YOU get to make the decisions that determine your future, and YOU forge the story yourself. Video game stories ought to be what Choose Your Own Adventure books always wished they could be. See Super Metroid, original Legend of Zelda, etc. Games like those still have the capacity to inspire wonder.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against linear gameplay. I just don't think video games are a great medium for telling stories in that manner. I'd rather they just can the story in that case, Mega Man/Castlevania style.
It's like you're inside my head! This sums up nicely how I feel towards games today.
Video games are notoriously terrible at telling a good story. Unfortunately, a lot of the "classics" that became famous because of their story just don't hold up for me anymore. I hate to say this, because I'm a huge Zelda fan, but modern Zelda games are a perfect example of how awful a game can be at telling a story.
KOTOR is an exception in that it had the exact opposite problem that Zelda had: a really engaging and incredible story with memorable characters, and a combat system that I simply could not stand. Do not make me frantically tab through menus in real-time combat. It is stressful, detaching, and not fun. Mass Effect handled that much better. But it worked well enough to keep me playing for the entirety of an undergrad January break.
I've found that most games dependent on telling a linear storyline just don't really do it for me anymore (though not when I was younger). I'd rather just go read a book or watch a movie where the characters are likely more interesting and multi-dimensional, and be done with it in a tenth of the time. It seems that somewhere along the way they discarded that holy grail of video games: YOU get to be the character, YOU get to make the decisions that determine your future, and YOU forge the story yourself. Video game stories ought to be what Choose Your Own Adventure books always wished they could be. See Super Metroid, original Legend of Zelda, etc. Games like those still have the capacity to inspire wonder.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against linear gameplay. I just don't think video games are a great medium for telling stories in that manner. I'd rather they just can the story in that case, Mega Man/Castlevania style.
Grillo_Parlante
Contributor
fyi you can pause combat in KOTOR and KOTOR 2, than assign commands. In KOTOR 1, the min/max thing to do is to keep force speed on and spam flurry while wielding a double bladed light saber. In KOTOR 2, just spam force lightning.
I actually thought both systems were reasonable to min/max, but suffered from being inaccessible.
DA:O was great, though the combat was a little repetitive at times.
I've also grown increasingly frustrated with the limits of video game story telling. I feel like they hit upon something special in the snes and ps1 era with the way they told stories, and then it just fizzled.
I actually thought both systems were reasonable to min/max, but suffered from being inaccessible.
DA:O was great, though the combat was a little repetitive at times.
I've also grown increasingly frustrated with the limits of video game story telling. I feel like they hit upon something special in the snes and ps1 era with the way they told stories, and then it just fizzled.
Wow. I hear you totally on all this. You hit on a few things that resonate deeply with me.
1. I love old Zelda games (I've passed all of them) but I am not a fan of the new ones. Skyward Sword was TERIBAD. The one before that was only less bad (the one where you become a wolf, can't think of the name right now). I hate saying that kind of stuff about my favorite franchise of all time, but OMG was I disappointed with both of these. I wasn't sure if I had finally just outgrown the game (and maybe that's part of it), but the franchise has lost something.
2. That comment about just preferring to watch a movie and get it over with in 1/10 the time. LOL. I couldn't agree more with this comment. Honestly. It's how I feel about most games I play and it's why I never finish the vast majority of them. You as a game designer really need to do something special if you expect me to give you 40 hours of my free time to play through your game. I need to get sucked in by story, gameplay... probably more than one thing. Otherwise it will be over before it started. Case in point, I tried to play both Witcher games. Loved the lore, graphics were amazing in the second one, story was very good in the first one. But both games suffered from too many things for me. Not saying either game is/was bad, just that it is very easy for me to become disengaged from a game if and when that starts to happen, it's over for me.
3. Fully agreed on KOTOR. The story was awesome but the gameplay was tedious. I got about halfway. Between the stupid turn based thing and the straight D20 mechanic rip off (which never even made sense to me for a Star Wars game). All the min/max stupidity. I just couldn't deal. I had my friend tell me the story start to finish, I was really impressed with the twist at the end, and I moved on with my life.
4. Choose your own adventure books... I was a huge fan as a kid. I had so many of those and I'd re-read them through until I had figured out how to get to all the endings (only working backwards when I got to the last couple).
For me, table top RPG's (D&D, et all) have never been and will never be eclipsed by video games because they are entirely based on imagination (rule sets are just guides, nothing more). I don't care how much time a group of developers puts into a video game or how open world they try to make it, it will never be as open world and limitless as my imagination.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Interesting. thats a broodmate dragon I'd be okay playing with!
Also kinda gains you some life sometimes? Interesting!
Why is that mythic? Regardless of rarity it looks like I get to start replacing oppressive things with merely good things.
FlowerSunRain
Contributor
That's a lot of flying power on the board.
That card looks very strong. I hope people on the other boards keep dismissing it so I can pick them up cheap. Dodges tons of burn, gives you two evasive bodies, blinkable, gains life, it really does it all.
Oh man should I not be commenting now. I've been drinking and someone has brought up both bioware and new magic cards.
Short version:
I feel like bioware has done some fine work in recent years, but probably it's best work (or the legacy that has spawned its teams) was probably in the isometric era of rpgs. (omg there are way more posts on here that I can deal with right now, just know that I am opinionated as always lol)
I really wanted to like mass effect, and I did, but it felt really hollow and wanting to me. And this is coming from a person who prefers SF to fantasy.
Azban enchantment seems like the good one, but it still seems totes awks. Looks like a really fun card to incorporate, but then, with the narrowness, you have to deal with the classic conflicts involved in making an archetype viable and attractive by supporting it too hard or at the expense of other things.
My hopes are up for this set. I wanted BUG to be nuanced and exciting so badly, and I'm losing hope. Buuut it's managed to distract me from those fears with general interest. I don't have to play standard, so this set will probably just contribute to sweet heavy handed design directions
Short version:
I feel like bioware has done some fine work in recent years, but probably it's best work (or the legacy that has spawned its teams) was probably in the isometric era of rpgs. (omg there are way more posts on here that I can deal with right now, just know that I am opinionated as always lol)
I really wanted to like mass effect, and I did, but it felt really hollow and wanting to me. And this is coming from a person who prefers SF to fantasy.
Azban enchantment seems like the good one, but it still seems totes awks. Looks like a really fun card to incorporate, but then, with the narrowness, you have to deal with the classic conflicts involved in making an archetype viable and attractive by supporting it too hard or at the expense of other things.
My hopes are up for this set. I wanted BUG to be nuanced and exciting so badly, and I'm losing hope. Buuut it's managed to distract me from those fears with general interest. I don't have to play standard, so this set will probably just contribute to sweet heavy handed design directions
Probably too good to show up in retail limited as a regular rare. 5 mana Broodmate + lifegain bird seems pretty strong.
Bah, dragons and angels have been rares and uncommons for years. It would be a good rare, sure, but it's not nearly broadly powerful (Archangel of Thune) or clearly oppressive (baneslayer) as other mythics.
While I think players would rather have resto angel a lot of the time, I like it in place of things like geist-honored monk or scion of vitu-ghazi, which have both been pretty mediocre here.
Am I wrong or are birds usually not 5 CMC?
As for games that have stood the test of time, Super Smash Bros. Melee has been remarkably resilient. I mean, I guess it's "only" been 12 years but man that game still delivers.
CML
Contributor
yeah wadds that and starcraft
re. King Dedede: i dunno what "too good to be rare in retail limited" means, it's probably a bitching constructed card they wanted to jack up the price of. this is good news for the Cloudgoat Ranger contingent on this board
about birds you are correct, they usually are not 5 (though the printing of supply-line cranes has effected a great shift in flavor comparable to people's diets shifting from pheasant and carrier pigeon to chicken and quail). back in onslaught block, for example they cost 7. here are some dodos from back then:
re. King Dedede: i dunno what "too good to be rare in retail limited" means, it's probably a bitching constructed card they wanted to jack up the price of. this is good news for the Cloudgoat Ranger contingent on this board
about birds you are correct, they usually are not 5 (though the printing of supply-line cranes has effected a great shift in flavor comparable to people's diets shifting from pheasant and carrier pigeon to chicken and quail). back in onslaught block, for example they cost 7. here are some dodos from back then:
CML
Contributor
weighing in:
the gameplay is pretty terrible, it's just an aesthetic statement that i love because the narrative embodies more or less every nerd fantasy. the metanarrative stuff has filled me with delight from childhood to my first acid trip. viewed in this way, the simplistic and easy gameplay is OK, because it reduces the tedium of advancing the plot (compare to a game like FF3). around two years ago I set about replaying CT (this was the last time I did it) and while doing so stumbled across a page which had a literal translation of the Japanese alongside Ted Woolsey's masterpiece. his translation is at the top of my childhood-storytime pantheon, and by pantheon i mean not turtenwald/duke/jensen but "things worthy of praise and consideration." also my "corridors of time" piano arrangement is pretty great, if i do say so myself
you are right. we had this discussion the other day at my stoner friend's house and the consensus was (a) new games are too easy (b) the games that have aged the best are the ones that are hard. Chrono Trigger's gameplay has aged poorly, no doubt because it is too easy -- it just feels dated, too, and things that chart the course of an art form's history, literature and TV and videogames chiefly, are of great interest to me; certain works, or certain aspects of all works, will waste away, while others will not. i thought of this digression because I've been reading Don Quixote for the first time, and it is the best book about idiots who read fantasy novels. hundreds of years before Trekkies and Galaxy Quest, there was Don Quixote, whose titular character has exactly the same trajectory of every PTQ grinder. everyone with a free thirty hours should not play an old classic game, but read Don Quixote.
anyway, Super Metroid is hard. Zombies Ate My Neighbors was unbelievably hard. i don't like single-player games that punish you for missteps so brutally as Zombies but Super Metroid was more or less ideal in terms of difficulty -- like a good RareWare game, it rewarded you for going out of your way and evincing some creativity. even CT had this, and the wikipedia article says the sidequests at the end were revolutionary. in that vein, I am also a fan of SNES Zelda and Donkey Kong Country 2
the gameplay is pretty terrible, it's just an aesthetic statement that i love because the narrative embodies more or less every nerd fantasy. the metanarrative stuff has filled me with delight from childhood to my first acid trip. viewed in this way, the simplistic and easy gameplay is OK, because it reduces the tedium of advancing the plot (compare to a game like FF3). around two years ago I set about replaying CT (this was the last time I did it) and while doing so stumbled across a page which had a literal translation of the Japanese alongside Ted Woolsey's masterpiece. his translation is at the top of my childhood-storytime pantheon, and by pantheon i mean not turtenwald/duke/jensen but "things worthy of praise and consideration." also my "corridors of time" piano arrangement is pretty great, if i do say so myself
you are right. we had this discussion the other day at my stoner friend's house and the consensus was (a) new games are too easy (b) the games that have aged the best are the ones that are hard. Chrono Trigger's gameplay has aged poorly, no doubt because it is too easy -- it just feels dated, too, and things that chart the course of an art form's history, literature and TV and videogames chiefly, are of great interest to me; certain works, or certain aspects of all works, will waste away, while others will not. i thought of this digression because I've been reading Don Quixote for the first time, and it is the best book about idiots who read fantasy novels. hundreds of years before Trekkies and Galaxy Quest, there was Don Quixote, whose titular character has exactly the same trajectory of every PTQ grinder. everyone with a free thirty hours should not play an old classic game, but read Don Quixote.
anyway, Super Metroid is hard. Zombies Ate My Neighbors was unbelievably hard. i don't like single-player games that punish you for missteps so brutally as Zombies but Super Metroid was more or less ideal in terms of difficulty -- like a good RareWare game, it rewarded you for going out of your way and evincing some creativity. even CT had this, and the wikipedia article says the sidequests at the end were revolutionary. in that vein, I am also a fan of SNES Zelda and Donkey Kong Country 2
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
This is replacing Archangel of Thune in my cube! It promotes interactive gameplay through Raid and it interacts with both the lifegain subtheme and the blink subtheme. Love it!
Also, I played the crap out of Sierra's Albion and still think it's one of the best "rpg's" out there. Man that world (and story) was so incredibly awesome. I wish someone would revisit it because I would be all over a remake/sequel with non-sucky graphics.
iirc they had a kickstarter-ish thing for their current project. And Obsidian had a kickstarter for an isometric-view game, I think?
As someone who plays almost no RPGs, I play Paper Mario with my young cousin every year (he turned 11 this year). The minor yet constant interaction during battles makes a lot more difference than it should to me- just makes it feel a lot more "gamey" than typical turn-based FF/Dragon Warrior stuff. And while I wouldn't say it's hard by any means, there are a few tricky or scaled-up fights you have to prepare a lot for.
World of warcraft is ten years old now. Ten years and still going strong. I forget where I saw it on YouTube, but I remember hearing a summary of their business strategy that allowed them to pull off this great success.
Anyone want to make a prediction on if WoW will ever die and when said death will occur?
Anyone want to make a prediction on if WoW will ever die and when said death will occur?
between this and the ugin thing can we just confirm eldrazi and/or zendikar are back
L Cancelling
Chris Taylor
Contributor
between this and the ugin thing can we just confirm eldrazi and/or zendikar are back
L Cancelling
Well also morphs
Well also morphs
My god, that's very clever...
Kind of a shame Chandra is pretty much guaranteed not showing up since Sarkhan is mono red. She IS the one who managed to recreate Ugin's signature ghostfire, right?