@@diydylana3151 I feel that Mario 64's more sandbox-y gameplay was more of an intentional design choice and not a result of hardware limitations, otherwise all of the levels would be designed like the Bowser levels or Crash Bandicoot. Sandbox-style games in general, whether it's a 3D open-world adventure or a top-down 2D game(especially if you have ALttP-style screen scrolling) are hard to design and even a lot of Mario 64 romhacks now really limit how much freedom you have so you have to engage with everything the game hands to you. I'd say the best approach to sandbox enemy design is to design them in a way that plays to that genre's strength, like maybe add an element of randomness that forces you to play dynamically and not just follow a script. Most games will usually have strong enemy aggro or some sort of enemy magnetism so you can't just run past them, but I'm admittedly not a huge fan of that approach because you end up getting a lot of forced one-on-one encounters.
I've often thought that the main thing that makes action games interesting is the amount of mental stack they engage at higher levels of play. Part of the reason I can no longer find much enjoyment in Souls games (and the majority of their derivatives), for example, is because the best offensive response in almost every situation is the same, same with defensive responses - not helped by the limited movesets. I feel similarly about most character action games released in the past few years.
Yea for me its not a recent problem at all its just char action games as a whole, and you even saw it become an issue in 2D beat em ups - a huge focus on giving the player mobility and options, not enough focus on how theyd all come together to create tactical gameplay. Resident Evil 5 mercs has been more enjoyable to play as a beat em up for me than just about any char action game thats not God Hand or NG2 since it captures a lot of the interesting dynamics of bmups through TPS mechanics
Showing off Galaxy Force II as the first example in the Rail Shooters segment is kinda funny because among Rail Shooters it's actually pretty unique GFII starts you off with a set amount of Energy that slowly decreases over time, getting hit will decrease this amount (and you'll lose even more if you've lost your shield, naturally) but you get refueled at the end of each level and during certain checkpoints. However, the amount that you get refueled depends on how many enemies you manage to hit. On top of that, you can actually speed up and slow down the throttle at any given moment. Speeding up means you'll reach the checkpoints sooner, but you'll also miss potential targets and you're more liable to run into bullets or terrain if you're not careful (especially since terrain obstacles are a lot more prevalent in GFII than in many other Rail Shooters) It turns the game from what would be a normal rail shooter into almost a checkpoint racer, where you're always trying to push forwards as quickly as you can while dancing around obstacles in an attempt to destroy targets and reap big rewards. There's more to focus on than just avoiding oncoming bullets and locking onto enemies which makes it very fun and aggressive, though it's far from typical for the genre lmao
Yea I mostly included it just so people wonder "woah wtf is this" and hopefully check it out 😎 That said, it's a good example of what I said towards the end of the vid - it's improtant to focus on the immediate combat dynamics, rather than more meta stuff like meter management (or even scoring) because all that meta stuff can exist even with fleshed out combat. A good example for me would be DMC1 - it has very simplistic barebones interactions with enemies, a lot of them don't even play by the normal rules of the game and either take no damage from melee (shadows), reduced damage from most stuff (frosts), cannot be juggled/knocked down (scissors), etc. *But* the game has devil trigger which you build by attacking enemies and in DMD is an important tool for doing damage, along with scoring which does reward quick kills along with style (via orbs). So the enemy encounters *are* connected & snowball via these system mechanics, even if the natural combat when taken on its own lacks them. The better you're able to build meter, the more damage you'll do, the more damage you do the easier you'll be able to hit the orb + speed requirements for S rank. If applied to racing specifically, IMO it's more interesting to look at how incredibly snowbally sim racer mechanics are where every input not only affects your car but every other input as well in many different contextual ways making them very deep, rather than looking at how the games reward speed/lack of it.
@@boghogSTG That's a good point yeah, GFII still lacks something in the immediate space because it ends up putting more focus on the meta aspect of needing enough energy. It puts the game in an odd spot where it's got aspects of a racer but also lacks a lot of the more immediate challenges of controlling momentum, speed, entry/exit points thru turns, etc. Not to say that's bad of course since the game isn't entirely built around that, but it still doesn't really solve the problem of rail shooters being (often) lacking in immediate snowballing, haha Very fascinating and interesting way of thinking about design, very cool to examine especially action games in this lens
Great video, it's sick seeing someone break down the importance of feedback loops in a lot of action game design on such a moment-to-moment level when they're often overlooked in discussion. The beat-em-up example is really interesting, especially considering that even as far back as Renegade the meaning of space and enemy placement was already so well applied (forward vs. back attacks, running, the works). I think the way rail shooters are framed is a bit dismissive though, mostly because it doesn't acknowledge that most rail shooters make up for the lost tension from movement in other ways (moments limited on a time axis like deflecting projectiles or saving allies, hitting environmental targets, or testing your ability to quickly gauge whether/how to shoot something) that beat-em-ups and shmups often don't have and don't need.
Thanks! Also hey I did say "many" didn't I hehe, just imagine your fav rail shooters are exceptions I do love some rail/cabal shooters like Sin & Punishment (limited movement + lots of projectiles that come from above or explode when reaching the play area + lots of targets + fun multitasking sections like the platformer part in 1) but overall the genre feels a lot like a somewhat lame middle ground between shmups (for reasons I mentioned) and light gun shooters like Time Crisis/HOTD because it doesn't really test fast precise aiming or target prioritization to the same extent for the most part. There's nothing inherent about it holding it back though, just need more games really pushing that stuff. Still gotta play Starfox Zero more, maybe its scoring will be the secret ingredient....
Solid Video, and I like how you reframe "competitiveness" as a general design principle for single player games as well. However, in the spirit of your last statement, "no rules, only tools" , saying situational and functional design are those that you disagree with seems counterproductive. ( by the way there is a gdc talk called "action without borders" by platinum that talks about it in more detail ) . Games can invoke different design perspectives and create engaging experiences, whether it be from mechanics, situations, functions, action etc. I sure you know this though. Yours is just a different perspective. What you seem to be advocating for is Depth, decision making per second, dynamics, and positional play, with risk reward dynamics that have consequences. (im not just throwing out terms these are studied academically depth, game feel, interesting decisions etc) This emphasizes player skill and enhances depth. There is much more here than can be just reduced to competitiveness though, and so as useful as the heuristic is, it can also be reductive. hence the importance off taking a pluralistic and open minded approach to design perspectives and analysis In my opinion. Not all games are designed to optimize for these things, and thats fine, calling them bad because of this seems unnecessary, they are bad through the prism of this design philosophy...but that isn't the goal of many of those games. This also doesn't mean there arent bad games of course. Regardless, I enjoyed the video.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed the vid! I don't think I called them bad did I ;))) Seriously though, you're right - it's not really a fair nor comprehensive vid (nor is it fully honest, some games I love don't use this design AT ALL) but rather a vid attempting to advocate for a type of design I generally value a lot, that's kinda being lost, by distilling it into a simple heuristic. The big problem with breaking it down into components is that, in my experience, component-driven analysis is just too complicated when you're making games - it works retroactively and in isolation as kind of detailed toy models. But during dev, it's such an inuitive in-the-moment process that having these kinda clear punchy heuristics is extremely important. I can either sit there drooling while going through depth, dynamics, decision making, and all those abstract principles & piecing them together in my head...or I can ask myself "what's the enemy trying to accomplish with this attack?" and snap out of it.
@@boghogSTG My bad that I misrepresented you calling those games bad. Also very interesting counterpoint about the practicalities of theory in the context of actually designing games. That would be an interesting essay topic lol It makes sense why simple heuristics are necessary. The reason i'm perhaps being pedantic about clarity in design perspectives is we can often conflate our preferences with good and bad design.
@@playfulmusings6190 Oh yeah now that you mention it, it'd definitely be interesting to explore, though I think the best format for that would be a series of short dev interviews or something. I think a more heavily theory-based approach would be more useful in really tightly designed turn based strategy games (SRPG's, chess-style tactics games like Into The Breach, etc), because there you can actually visualize the possibility space a lot clearer, and there's no "this series of inputs feels kinda awkward" physical crap distracting you. Action games are just really damn chaotic, and there's even devs I've spoken to who outright say that design theory's useless for anything but fun and just go by pure intuitions. I'm not sure I 100% buy that but yeah, it's definitely very hard to transfer the things you think about when you're not designing games to the actual design process IMO... Yea I wish people got over holding up specific style of design as The Objective Standard™, it doesn't even make any sense since design's functional and its quality can only ever be judged relative to what goals you're trying to accomplish. I tried to mostly avoid making value judgements but I guess the whole "these dynamics BREAK DOWN" thing and that one section towards the ends where I talk about what I consider to be the worst action games give a different impression. For the latter I was just hoping that it'd be an agreeable exaggerated enough example that almost everyone could get behind it LOL even used a shitty part of an otherwise excellent game 💀
Nice video! I liked your take on action games as a competition in general. To add my two pence onto the rail shooter point, you acknowledged gravity but I think the focus on making physical structures hazards can help keep up the pressure though I can't say how much these games did much with this. It reminds me a bit of how Mega Man Legends shifted more of a bomb focused design as far as your artillery and the enemies (enemies still often have contact damage - you can zone them more easily in 3D).
They did a fair bit with it especially stuff like Star Fox 64, the hardest parts tend to be really restricted. Its definitely one of the better ways to go for the genre
As much as I appreciate your viewpoint on what makes a good action game, it feels like you're trying to fit a square in a circle shaped hole in some segments of the video. I will probably add comments below when I come up with a more precise critique.
Go for it! In terms of what though, the analysis not working or the analysis working but "missing the point"? Would love to hear the former but the latter isnt that interesting to me since at the end of the day what you get or want to get out of games is subjective
I made a rant post about NieR Automata having no interesting enemy to hit, too much threatless level design, difficulty that just changes damage and health, questionable enemy placement, parry fest combo, etc on some random group and I suddenly get attacked in the comment section. It is sad that I can't talk much about gameplay in this "so called" masterpiece. Also, what do you think of Assault Spy? I am considering on getting that game since its cheap.... if I do have extra left.
Yeah a lot of char action game players don't like people attacking their sacred cow. I really hated Automata for those exact reasons, it's a collection of the worst design tendencies Platinum has in one game... I haven't played Assault Spy that much, didn't like it at all based on first impressions. Seems basically the same ol Platinum inspired stuff
Lovely video! With this new point of view it's easy to see why some games that didn't particularily click with me failed to do so. Enemy design for action games seems like an extremely difficult challenge, and this video raises some very interesting points.
Awesome, glad it was helpful! Yea the vid was inspired by me not liking newer character action games/beat em ups myself, feeling they're hollowed out, and trying to figure out why cuz I love older games in the genres
Oh you bet. The nice thing about it is that it's that perfect mix of being really fundamentals driven while still being "modern" with really high intensity & an emphasis on throws/aggression
Damn thats good. Like really good. I enjoyed it so much I didnt even expect a Glenn Villpu reference in the ending. XD Prolly even the best game design video for action games and specially arcade games. Thank you this'll help my game development for sure. Big help even for a decade old professional like me.
I'm impressed both by the tug of war perspective you presented, as well how much and thorough you respond and discuss in the comments. I subscribe and look forward to your other videos.
Hell yea, thanks a bunch! Not sure when I'll make another vid but ye, basically just gotta wait until something starts living in my head rent free for a couple of months
Great job articulating your kind of action game. But I think your mindset of "'beat em up' = 'action game'" leads you down a similar path to people who think "character action" means something: an oddly narrow view of action games. I can get you want to honor the genre's history and influences, but you end up viewing games that stray from those influences as wrong for doing so on some level. But action games shouldn't have to be like arcade beat em ups, beat em ups are like beat em ups. Action games can be anything focused on action combat. Strategy centric musou, Punch Out/Bop-It style Sekiro, combo sandbox DMC, boring basic combat cuz it's a movie game, or actual beat em ups whether 2D or 3D, like Final Fight or Die Hard. They all have unique appeal. Yes many are more shallow than others, but I don't think desiring more depth should take form in swapping out the appeal for something completely different. In that sense I felt this video was torn between "here's what I like in action games" (good) and "here's how action games should be" (very bad). It was really mostly good but I'm here to talk about the bad. 😈 I think your bias is shown in how you refer to God Hand as an example of your preferred approach in 3D. But like Bayo or DMC, the enemies just want to swarm you regardless of your position before throwing out attacks you can react to by canceling into s. Having your back to a wall is a bad spot, but you'll never be truly snowballed since you have the "reset mechanic" of updodge>sweep>run. Maybe you didn't really think of God Hand as a great example and just had it piggyback on RE4 though. Either way I do think God Hand is absolutely one of the best examples of the concepts you describe being represented in behind-the-back 3D, but it's also balancing that with the exact things you advise against, just like many other games you may be uncharitable towards. I do get the feeling you really disapprove of concepts you don't personally enjoy in action games and write them off despite knowing these games' value often comes from really digging into them with the right mindset. This is completely normal and understandable behavior, but when it comes to writing about action games it created some oddities in this video. Above all else, you gotta stop using the "C" term, especially if you admit how dumb of a label it is! Very hard to take seriously. Clearly its hazardous effects have been seeping into you already, get it away!! 🙏
Thanks! I'm not gonna argue otherwise, this is absolutely agenda driven and I explictly say that this is just me advocating for a type of design I like in the description. 😎 It couldn't be any other way though. There's no such thing as objectively good design because design is goal-oriented, and goals can be anything. If I talked about everything I'd end up saying nothing - the vid would just turn into white noise. What I wanna do is counter the usual "char action game" narrative about how combos make for interesting gameplay with my own about how a good balance between player/enemies and snowballing make for interesting gameplay. In reality both or neither can make for interesting gameplay, depends on implementation & player tastes. In general, IMO countering "x is good design" with "there's no such thing as a singlular good design" isn't a workable solution no matter how true it is. Beat em up fans have been doing this for decades and yet the games are still judged by how many moves they have. Because, in practice, all the latter argument can do is slow down the rate at which the other person convinces others. What you need to do is positively promote other kinds of design, and point out how they clash with other schools of design - it changes how people think of games, and vividly highlights the fact that every design choice has pros/cons. So instead of apologizing for bmups not having combos, attack char action games for being busted broken undercooked crap with poor combat dynamics that compensates for it with said combos and shallow adventure game elements. You also won't see me defending the elements of RE4 and God Hand that go against their snowballing - it's why I think RE4/5 only truly work in mercs where you have a constant pressure to engage, and why God Hand is outright flawed because it lets you run through enemies and push them, resetting the situation. Really you don't even need to duck dodge sweep, grab the backstep kick, cancel it and you can play it in a very lame cheesy manner. I wish God Hand had a strict level timer or something
Like I said I mostly enjoyed you sticking to explaining what you like instead of shoving other games into your template, but only mostly. I don't agree that attacking other types of games is productive at all. My whole point wasn't "criticizing anything is dumb because objectivity doesn't exist", it was that it'd be more engaging to criticize games through the lense of how they could increase depth or improve balance without completely betraying their unique appeal. I'm sure you don't care for SoR4 adding combo sandbox appeal into your fundamental beat em up. Just the same DMC players don't want to play Final Fight in their DMC. Suggesting other action games SHOULD be taking inspiration from arcade beat em ups' emphasis on positioning/competition is really no different than a combohead suggesting SoR SHOULD take further inspiration from DMC's emphasis on combo expression because that's what this person likes. But maybe this is indeed exactly how you view what you're doing, in which case I just don't care for that presentation for these ideas I suppose. But still, DMC has much room for more depth/better balance. Rather than removing what makes it unique and making everything a beat em up, it'd be more productive to discuss how you could balance/deepen it while maintaining it's core appeal, with a better scoring system, more active defense from enemies, or more complicated goals or environments or whatever. Like how you say a timer could aid the appeal you see in God Hand. But clearly combos aren't for you though, so in that case I think you're best leaving it at that unless you're willing to look past your preference and attempt to understand the appeal even if it's not to your taste. Your complete unwillingness to understand/acknowledge their appeal as unique, but willingness to attack them anyway for not having a completely different focus doesn't reflect well and makes your view come across as narrow. Like another flavor of "character action" people who think action combat is inherently striving to be epic combo video material. As you describe, people who judge games based on how many moves they have. You're just swapping that arbitrary metric out for another, more nuanced one. But again, you describe that lense very well, which is nice because it's certainly underdiscussed. But I think high level DMC brainrot combolords or Platinum stans won't easily see the vision because you don't have any understanding of why they enjoy what's unique about their games. Just like they pay no mind to the critiques of casuals who play a game once on normal and shrug it off as a jank button masher. If the fans of the games you attack aren't listening to your legit criticisms, then what's even the point of writing said critiques? In this sense your clear passion for action, knowledge on your preferred niche, and concise writing chops feel wasted on your narrow view. Action games need all the help they can get! I'd think you should be happy that combo videos or PP runs will be many people's gateway to 1CCs, instead of seething at the objective fact that most action gaymers alive right now simply do enjoy fancy combos more than they do snowbally beat em ups. From this perspective, I think a better prompt to spread your agenda would be to look at games that take a varied/balanced approach for better or for worse, like God Hand or Bayo 1, which solidly represent combo sandbox, CC fundamentals, and Bop-It reaction tests all mixed together. State how their modern elements devalue the stuff you enjoy most despite that stuff still being relevant, like the example you provided I mentioned earlier, rather than propping them up as good examples of representing the stuff you enjoy to some degree at all, and using games with irrelevant appeal as your "targets". Like "here's how I would tweak God Hand to be a true beat em up" rather than wrapping "DMC/Nioh/Sekiro/GoW/musou/whatever should simply be a completely different product" in along with it. But again, I do acknowledge you don't exactly do the latter in this video lol. It just comes across that, especially from the language in this reply, you struggle to overcome your close mindedness towards certain types of action games which results in writing that alienates its potential audience. God Hand again is symbolic of your "narrow view" as I see it. While God Hand's an insane oddity in terms of balance and such making this a weird example at this point, is it really "outright flawed" because you can reset the situation easily? I don't think so whatsoever. The freedom in your movement is a part of the game that works within its middle ground between more forgiving, "passive/reactive" elements and beatemup fundamentals, along with accounting for limitations with the camera and environments. I don't think your position within the environment is often insignificant because of a fundamental misunderstanding or glaring oversight, but because the designers of the game thought that'd be a good fit. Considering they made one of the most enjoyable video games of all time, I'm inclined to appreciate their decision! Although I guess you could just say "they also decided to let you split up groups with cheap taunts" and write it all off. The "customize your own difficulty" approach does kinda muddle this, but cheap taunts and wall infinite spam are definitely more of crutches you can "opt in or out of", while Gene's movement capabilities are completely inherent to the core combat. I think I have a point here but I can admit this line of thinking probably leads us to "well I've beat hard KMS no cheesing so I'm right you're wrong lalala." But again, ABOVE ALL ELSE! Please consider retiring the "C" term if you want people to take your ideas seriously! People who don't like the term cringe, and people who use the term generally interpret it as "game where I like the combo sandbox". It connects to my whole overarching point here which is kinda that when trying to spread a deeper understanding to action game fans and action games at large, you really need to be thoughtful in regards to looking outside of the small bubble we all often find ourselves in. 🤓@@boghogSTG
@@qinkhozam Lemme step back a bit - is this crit of the vid in particular or my general attitude expressed elsewhere? Cause in the vid, I've (mostly) avoided including games like DMC/Bayo and their combo mechanics even when it would be apt and decided to focus on games I like such as NG and rail shooters, even when shitting on them. Just to dodge bias & cleanly introduce the concept. Any kinda anti-combo sentiment should be subtext at most. The tug of war/snowballing stuff can be applied to any part of a game also, including combos. Once you opt into combos, the goal is still to create strong tug of war dynamics with gravity/infinite prevention systems and mechanics that pressure the player, instead of letting them do whatever. Is the problem that I didn't talk about that and only focused on the base combat itself? Or do you mean that I should have talked about combos outside the scope of the framework I'm using and went into other types of appeal, engagement theory-style? If it's the former, then maybe but I don't think this vid is the place to do that If it's a general attitude thing then ehhh I dunno. The "forgive a game's issues and opt into its challenge to see what it's doing" type of analysis essentially creates an environment where there's no cost to complexity from the developer's POV. Why not just bloat the game with a million busted broken mechanics? The players will find the fun in it, and the critics will praise the shit out of it. That's how you get this modern soup school of design - it's how you get Dark Souls and Elden Ring. There's gotta be a line where you say "ok fuck this" and refuse to do the legwork for the developers. It's a real tangible problem too because devs cannot focus on everything - so many bmup devs are spending countless hours fleshing out their combos in a grey box room cause they know people will try to squeeze out little crumbs of depth & enjoyment from their games no matter how bad the basic dynamics are. Sparkhunt's demo is a recent example of this but there are countless others. Thinking about it as a result of replying to this post, I'm not even sure I care what char action fans think of this cause the existence of DMC4 doesn't annoy me since it's a unique game - the existence of 2D bmups that want to be DMC4 and as a result fuck up their basic gameplay is what annoys me. Char action game communities are cooked - they have like 6 good games to play and they'll still somehow manage to avoid God Hand and instead play some slop like FF16. I have no idea where you get the idea that they'll be getting into 1cc's and scoring through ranks from - they don't even bother getting into scoring in their own games past S ranks. Hell the subgenre itself will prob be quietly replaced by ARPG's in the next decade anyway and the fans will barely notice as long as it has COMBOZ :D Me being annoying aside, the term char action has uses. For starters most of these games are action-adventure beat em up hybrids not pure beat em ups to begin with. Secondly, the emphasis is placed on very different things, imagine you had a genre of games that played like AvP's second half with mostly shooting, nade throwing, etc. and the fans would grow to value that - surely that'd be enough to justify a genre distinction even though it'd still be a subgenre/hybrid at the end of the day no?
I addressed several times that I appreciate you trying to hold back your bias in this video, but seeing you completely write off what doesn’t appeal to you in your first reply confirmed my thoughts that you do carry bias heavily. I could say I don't like games being misrepresented but this is ultimately coming down to the fact I strongly detest braggadocious closemindedness in any and all walks of life even if relatively harmless. Your increasing display of this trait is difficult for me to navigate since it saddens me more than any measure of your actual potential to spread knowledge on action games. Perhaps all I truly wish is that you were capable of enjoying a wider breadth of action games than you are, as to simply introduce more appreciation for action games into your life and thus the world. Anyway I was trying to say I think your unwillingness to acknowledge the legitimate value players find in what you call "slop" is crazy regressive, and tried to point out how this mindset negatively affected your writing's ability to achieve its goal. You provided said goal in your first reply: to “counter the usual ‘char action game’ narrative”. Then you went back on it in this reply by writing off the primary audience of your initially stated goal as a lost cause. In terms of genre language, I think that "action game = beatemup" is also crazy regressive. I don't think action games that stray from beatemups are "beatemup RPG/adventure/whatever hybrids", I think they are action games if they are games about action combat. I think action RPG or action adventure are good terms to describe games where the primary focus is significantly split between action combat and menuing/character progression/cutscenes/traversal/puzzles/whatever. I also don’t think any game is a “character action game” because nobody can come close to agreeing on what that means. The vast majority of the label’s supporters I’ve encountered believe it describes both Nier Automata and Devil May Cry 1. The term is not useful for describing the particular emphasis of certain games. It also doesn’t mean anything or make any sense in a vacuum. Many genre terms are nebulous but I can’t think of any others that are simply nonsensical on their surface. As I described before I think the term “beat em up” best represents a particular type of action game, whether 2D or 3D. Games like Double Dragon or Spikeout. This subgenre’s distinction is agreed upon by the vast majority of action fans I’ve encountered, although loosely referring to games outside that subgenre as “beat em up” or it's sibling "hack n slash" is not unusual either of course. Thus “arcade(style)/conveyor belt beat em ups” is my method of differentiation when needed. In your case as I see it, an attachment to the term (well not really the term itself but to the games I describe it representing, thus leading you to your usage of the term) observably pigeonholes your interpretations of action combat, similar to people attached to the “C” term as I said before. But again, just wanting all games to be what you like and not caring about anything else is completely normal and understandable behavior. And genre terms will always be impossible to completely agree on. Not seeing that combo MADs or challenge runs can lead players to 1CCs is completely delusional, not just because that's how it happened for me and many others I know already. But because "character action" smoothbrains already do include God Hand in their club of 8 games, very consistently, because the best players helped spread the game with popular combo videos! And the same people making combo videos and PP/Srank runs often enjoy score attack challenges as well! Regardless, the fact you imply chasing score beyond PP or Srank is inherently fruitful is completely indicative of my whole point! You may dislike the fact that Bayo or DMC are designed around score as an arbitrary metric to achieve, but acting like the games have any intention of encouraging a focus on score attack past said metrics as a typical gameplay experience is aggressively misrepresenting scoring’s role in these games. The games’ lack of said intention is not a fundamental flaw or misunderstanding of scoring, it’s a different approach you may not like. If you were more thoughtful in interpreting it as such I think it’d help you better articulate points you want to get across by (ideally) contributing to an understanding of what different styles of scoring (and anything else) can offer, which helps you compare/contrast what appeals to you and what doesn’t and why. Your continued sweeping assumptions about imaginary action fans in your head make you look more and more underexposed to the modern action community and landscape! I think your unwillingness to engage is bad bad bad! If you strive for as much action knowledge as possible whether as a writer or dev or just a dedicated enthusiast, then I believe writing off the stuff that doesn't speak to you is not useful. But again again again, it is completely normal and understandable behavior regardless. Just something I hate seeing in other passionate action fans. "Once you opt into combos, the goal is...." but what if that's not the only goal? What if the most popular action game franchise on the planet wants you to do combos largely to express yourself and push your technical skill? And what if this approach interests and engages FAR more players than snowbally beatemups? Are said majority of action fans simply all very stupid and uninformed and only you see the truth? Or are there maybe some valid lessons to learn about how execution requirements, the presentation of a scoring system, and arbitrary freedom affect player psychology? I think lessons can and should be learned from any and all kinds of action combat, even if you’re not interested in mastering the respective combat system yourself. To me you are akin to somebody booting up Final Fight, not being able to sick combo juggle each enemy safely one at a time, and thus writing off all arcade beatemups as a fundamental misunderstanding of the flow inherent to all action games (which is of course, juggling enemies safely one at a time to this person). This is opposed to said player going “eh cool stuff but not for me” and carrying on well aware of his ignorance, in the event he’s so fundamentally disinterested that he cannot acknowledge the value the game offers to others. I started out here overly nitpicking a perceived underlying bias within a video I enjoyed, hoping to maybe get some insight into my suspicion. Now I’ve confirmed I strongly disapprove of your view on genre labels for action games, but above all I've reached absolute abhorrence for your braggadocious closemindedness. Witnessing this trait can genuinely sadden me so I hope we're done here for now. Thank you for taking the time to read and reply, and best of luck with your endeavors. My final takeaway here is I've been the true fool all along, not realizing another word for "closeminded" could be “pigheaded”! Poetry! 🐷 @@boghogSTG
@@qinkhozam "You provided said goal in your first reply: to “counter the usual ‘char action game’ narrative”." I think you misunderstood - the goal of offering the counter-narrative isn't to convince char action game fans, it's to convince beat em up fans/devs looking towards char action games for inspiration, and to give a more effective framework for people who don't like char action games. You're correct though that I tried to tiptoe around char action games a bit too much when I really shouldn't have. ===Char action=== You've said a lot here, lemme try to organize my response : [ _"In terms of genre language, I think that "action game = beatemup" is also crazy regressive."_ ] I have NEVER said this, I don't know where you are taking this from. I used shmups, rail shooters & Tetris as examples in my video, they are all action games and none of them are even close to beat em ups. [ _"I don't think action games that stray from beatemups are "beatemup RPG/adventure/whatever hybrids", I think they are action games if they are games about action combat"_ ] Yes they are still action games, however they are NOT just beat 'em ups - they are hybrids. In the same way ARPGs are still action games at the end of the day. [ _"The term is not useful for describing the particular emphasis of certain games"_ ] It is, so much so that despite disliking the term and wanting to suck char action games back into bmups I constantly struggle to avoid using it because of the distinctions between the 2 genres. Just some of the distinctions : - A decent amount of adventure or RPG elements - Focusing on complex player movesets and freeform movement - VERY heavy incorporation of air combat as a distinct gameplay state via high jumps, juggles, air combos, etc. - Pretty hefty progression mechanics you can't opt out of There's more subtle stuff too like an emphasis on player expression through the use of scoring systems as nudging, de-emphasizing snowballing with really strong free defensive mechanics, increasingly the prominance of meters, etc. AvP's gun mechanics in the second half of the game are less extreme than some of the stuff these games are doing all the time. "Action combat" isn't how action games are defined either, else anything abstract that can't be easily boiled down to combat like Trauma Center or Mr Driller wouldn't be an action game but they both obviously are, so are shmups no matter how abstract they get. People's inability to define x or y doesn't mean it doesn't exist either - oftentimes it means they're still feeling out the distinction. [ _"Your continued sweeping assumptions about imaginary action fans in your head make you look more and more underexposed to the modern action community and landscape!"_ ] Sure maybe I'm under exposed - who are these scorers & bmup 1cc'ers coming from the char action communities I'm missing? Which communities should I take part in? I read stinger articles/forums, I'm in some char action oriented discords, I talk to some char action players. In my experience talking to char action fans, its legit easier to sell bmups to shmuppers and fighting game players, by a very wide margin [ _"Acting like the games have any intention of encouraging a focus on score attack past said metrics as a typical gameplay experience is aggressively misrepresenting scoring’s role in these games. The games’ lack of said intention is not a fundamental flaw or misunderstanding of scoring, it’s a different approach you may not like."_ ] Yes, and my point is that this is a bad way to go about it, and they should change, and I do my best to provide arguments for why this is the case. What's the problem here? It's not that I don't "understand" their goals, it's that I'm telling devs that those goals are bad and they should have different goals. Besides do you know for a fact that Bayo/DMC/etc devs wouldn't like the scoring system to be good for sustained play instead of being hard capped, especially when it wouldn't actually go against their goal as scoring-as-nudging? You don't, it's a post-hoc explanation based on the scoring systems being shit as soon as you move past S ranks. Hell, Ninja Gaiden Black and 3RE have more proper scoring systems and they do absolutely nothing to hurt the games. Mercs mode in RE4make does absolutely nothing to hurt RE4make's incredible popularity either. I'm not gonna respond to everything cause the comments are getting *absurdly* long. But what I will say is - if you want people who will talk about the virtues of combos and S ranks/scoring as nudging you can get that anywhere, I'm too pigheaded as you say to change on this front but not everyone is. The more you promote this kind of attitude the more homogenized and uninteresting game crit will become as people try to meet every game halfway and basically follow the devs' and gamers' lead. It's far more interesting to see more extreme viewpoints defended well, rather than dishonest regurgitation of what others find appealing. That sorta crit is very offputting IMO. Also careful about appeals to popularity, they always come back to bite you
Yeah absolutely, I think it's fairly common to call that whole subset of games like Tetris, Puyo, Money Exchanger, etc. "action puzzle". But honestly even then, the "puzzle" part is more about how it looks, at the end of the day it's just a really abstract action game
@@boghogSTG I think it can be refreshing with some tact. There's a handful of things Mark says that I don't agree with but I appreciate him saying it because he's a rare, necessary breed of critic. I think if anyone should rub off on a UA-camr, it's him.
I have no idea how to contact you, so I'll just ask my question here. What is your opinion on roguelike shmups? Is that a dead idea at its core? How would you design such a game? That's a new trend I see quite often and it seems pretty interesting to me because it changes how you engage with the game completely to the point where it feels like you're not playing a shmup. My perspective on this is that randomization, while it makes the game feel fresh on every run if executed properly, restricts you as a level designer in both creativity and difficulty since you can't put in your game huh memo aka unsidereadable sections that the player can't do on their first attempt and once you get out of novice territory, shmups do stop being reactable, that's their nature. To me the most memorable and exciting pieces of shmup leveldesign have always been those that require a bit of thinking and save-state homework: doj stage 4 and 5, basically everything in ketsui, stage 5 in raiden 4. On the other hand, roguelikes are replayable due to the stuff you can do with builds and the decision-making that comes from that.
Yea I pretty much agree with you, procgen has a kind of "averaging out" effect on game design, everything has to be more standardized and the gameplay becomes kinda improv heavy and flaily. But it's like that across the board in action games, whether you're talking about platformers or shmups or what have you, so I just think it's a tradeoff you have to make, and different players will prefer different things. That said, I think shmup gameplay is too subtlety and nuanced driven, and if you're going in the roguelike direction you should think about making it more discrete and simplified into more pre-baked interactions. Having shmups be hard & memoable helps because it creates these distinct anchor points that structure your experience with them & create a satisfying learning curve. If it's just all improv, then it becomes hard to really approach learning the games strategically, and it all starts blending together. A lot of action-roguelikes run into this issue where they just kinda blend together, Synthetik being the biggest culprit for me despite having fun core gameplay. You wanna go the Spelunky route - have some really discrete, clear mechanics/interactions that, when shuffled around via procgen, create very memorable scenes or scenarios that'll stick in your mind. Basically you gotta make the gameplay resemble turn based stuff as well. Binding of Isaac achieves this in a different way, I think a lot of the most interesting parts of that game are the times when you cleared out a map and are making decisions on how to spend your resources, which powers to get, whether or not you should gamble, etc.
I am just recently getting into action based combat again. I hope I dont buy a game that plays like "Parry the Platypus". I also hope that you dont get annoyed with me if I keep asking questions about character action games since I only know two people who can explain it to me.
We play it on the og hardware ofc :) but I've heard rumors that Supermodel 3 is good. Also it's getting ported in the new Yakuza at the start of next year so if you're a Yakuza fan already that might be worth picking up
wasn't expecting to see ys 2 at the end there! what did you think of ys 1 and 2? they might be flawed but personally i enjoyed them a lot(the pc engine version at least)
I only played the Chronicles port and they're pretty fun. I love bump combat, I love the insanely fast pace where it's almost like a parody of RPG progression & a lot of the bosses are basically shmup-like which is always good fun. I think I prefer Ys 2 tho it's way too easy + it de emphasizes bump combat too much thanks to spells, but it felt a lot less amateur. Ys 1 Chronicles straight up felt like someone's first video game at times LOL
I can't help but think Streets of Rage 4 also does this poorly because of many of the super armored enemies in late game as well as the reliance on special moves costing you health.
Yea I'm really not a fan of armored enemies in bmups but I will say that SOR4 still does it pretty well considering it inherits most of its mechanics from the old games. Throws are still in and very useful, crowd control's still really important, grouping enemies up & keeping them on one side is the way to go, etc. What's the issue with specials costing health though? I have a bit of a theory that they nerfed your ability to cancel moves with specials in order to balance out the fact that you can recover health, but besides that I wouldn't say spending health for specials is bad in any way.
@@boghogSTG There aren't enough defensive options like running or rolling away like in Streets of Rage 3 when dealing with enemies and you're most of the time forced to use special moves that drain health unless you hit enemies and those later enemies that I mentioned are a real pain in higher difficulties like Mania + and some times you can end up losing almost all your health if you get hit and it de-incentivizes you to want to use special moves. For the average player, that would be enough to have them not want to constantly use them. I typically play Axel and I really hate how you can't run or dodge. Axel is both slow and has a slow jump. There are instances where the devs intended for you, the player, to dodge attacks by jumping, which can work sometimes, but the amount of enemies with anti-air attacks does outweigh its situational usefulness and you are forced to use special attacks to either tank hits from enemies with armor or bosses, or even not get hit from projectiles. It was a mistake on part of the developers to not give characters like Axel a running animation even though he had one at one point in development but was scrapped because the developers thought they knew better by making it more frustrating for the average player to know every single intricacy when dealing with certain enemies. It's that level of complacency that I really dislike and I think with the success of this game they're going to think that they are really creative and smart and double down on it with a sequel if it ever does happen. With all these annoying enemy types, I'm surprised they never made an anti-special attack enemy that punishes you for using you're most reliably offensive moves. That would be the cherry on top of this already unbalanced game. So tl;dr, game is unbalanced and rewards constant offense over defense or in this case, offense is the only defense. Watch any Mania + playthrough and you'll know what I mean.
@@doclouis4236 You're talking to the wrong person buddy cause almost everything you listed is a positive to me - I'm happy they didn't give most of the characters a run or defensive moves because like you say it forces you to always be on the offensive, and that's where players have to take most risks and make quick decisions with real costs & rewards. I can see how the health drain could be discouraging but that's a huge part of the skill progression in these games - knowing when you should use a special move to put yourself in an advantageous position, knowing when you're about to get fucked and using them defensively to minimize damage, etc. They did kinda fuck that up with the ridiculous broken DLC moves though. Had a blast with Mania+ myself despite that though, even though I doubt I'll 1cc that mode cuz of how insanely long the game is...
@@ishimoto1597 The game has no mobility options like evading attacks, except slowly side-stepping up or down, or jumping. But jumping doesn't always work since basic enemies like Galcia now have a larger hitbox that can still hit you even if your jumping and there are so many other enemies that either negate your jump with a consistent anti-air attack when you jump besides them or they sometimes surround you beside basic Galsia enemies that do the same thing that I mentioned before. It's absurd. There's little opportunity to evade enemies and preserve health. So yes, I'd rather take blocking or anything else instead of being handicapped.
@@quadpad_music Well the basic gameplay seems to capture the snowballing principle pretty well since it's basically the only thing the game has going on in it moment-to-moment. Problem is that doesn't matter much cuz the actual moment to moment gameplay is almost besides the point - the core of the game is compulsion that comes from rng and progression. It deeply disgusts me because it has the worst excesses in game design and is essentially designed to be a time sucking slot machine that uses most brain hacks in the book to keep you stuck in a compulsion loop. It's like the most scummy parts of Diablo but without the effort put into its basic mechanics/systems, just purely a progression system - like a gamification of video games that reduces the main meat of games the moment to moment gameplay into a means to an end, just a way to play slot machines. The fact that it's taking over the bullet hell tags is extra salt in the wound cause it goes against almost everything that makes arcade games good minus really shallow stuff like big numbers & items Shit like this makes me wanna say "fuck it" to game design entirely because it inevitably leads to figuring out the best ways to manipulate people and get them addicted. I wouldn't be surprised if soulless corporate suits start studying this game and incorporating what they learn into social media. Maybe throw some AI into the mix as well, why not. Truly an abomination. As a side note, the fact that people think this sorta design is ok as long you don't monetize it is the type of peak delusion that gamers are uniquely good at. They're allowing devs to take every single step towards exploitative micro transaction ridden gacha trash, but then what the devs should be idiots who don't put the two together and add monetization? Why? Some have families to feed, some have extra yachts to buy. The idea that devs should have a moral struggle every time they consider monetizing their already extremely gambling-like games and win every time is dire. People deserve this industry & its excesses.
You make a lot of neat observations about enemy design across different games, but overall, they don't support your thesis that action games are competitive. You're not in a competition against the computer. The computer is not competing with you. Enemy design is simply a set of static rules that you can learn and play around, and this can be set up to generate more or less interesting and layered interactions. Saying "action games are competitive" implies that people use action games to compete with each other, such as in Style Tournaments, which are a common way that people compete against each other in these single player games.
It depends on how you define competition I suppose, whether it hinges on human agency or not - if we talk about a competition between a human and LLM (or really just any type of incredibly complex probabilistic AI), are we talking about it in real or metaphorical terms? ...That said the thesis is mostly just a buzz-phrase, similar to the whole action games are passive line that Atsushi Inaba dropped. At the end of the day I just wanna highlight that looking at SP games as a battle between 2 agents with short & longterm goals and game plans is really helpful abstraction, or at least it really is to me. So if you found it neat, that's all I can ask for :D
@@boghogSTG even then, a single player game doesn't have a clear win or loss for the AI like an AI controlling a player in a multiplayer match. It's cute framing, I think the thesis could have been worded better.
@@evilagram There's probably ways yea, would need someone a lot better with words than me though. Brain was already shriveling up into a raising trying to find this bowtie to wrap my vaguely connected thoughts in💀
@@boghogSTG the central piece of advice I give to most games writers is, Every Essay is an Argument. Focus on your thesis (the statement you're trying to prove/disprove), and everything else should be evidence for your thesis.
@@evilagram Oh yeah its definitely really good advice for staying on topic. But wording your thesis in a way thats snappy short & catchy is the eternal struggle especially cuz you usually can't do it without being wrong and or reductive. "Viewing action games as competitions as a metaphor helps build interesting player-enemy interactions & dynamics" is some shit youd find on ResearchGate not yt
I’d be careful in taking translations as literal. When he said passive his actual description was actually reaction not passivity. And this is true all action games are really reaction games. It’s why reaction time is the primitive building block in all action games. Anyway cool video. Note: sun and punishment has collision boxes linger jn player area. Maybe some other rail shooters do like planet harriers but anyway just wanted to point that out. Also looks like you left out gun games but good to see Tetris which I think is one of the purest (re)action games.
Yeah I was worried about him meaning something else in Japanese that wasn't captured in the translation but thinking about it more I think the way I interpreted it is correct. He doesn't say "reactive" as just a general abstract idea because when you think in those terms the description has no meaning - all games are "reactive" in the response to stimuli sense, and all real time game involve reaction times in some capacity - this by itself doesn't imply any kind of design framework at all. I think his goal was to sell the idea of using situational design over functional design, and the reactive stuff is just solid grounding for it. Also I do actually think that by "reactive" he means passive/defensive. Not really because of anything he says in GDC directly, but because of the direction in which Platinum games have gone - strong dodge/defensive options oriented around an enemy's attacks, over abundance of super armor that further shuts down proactive play, CRAZY effective positioning tools that let you reset snowballing, an emphasis on set pieces, etc. S&P1-2 do have a lot more lingering/foreground stuff than usual yea, they almost directly use shmup patterns at times (2 especially just turns into a twin stick shmup sometimes), Starfox does too but usually in the form of environmental stuff. It's just a relative thing - since rail shooters are literally just 3D shmups, it's a nice point of comparison. They can both use the same type of attack (projectiles directly aimed at the player) and it'll work extremely well in one and lead to lots of snowballing, but then be a wet fart in the other.
@@boghogSTG Combining this with what you said to daniil3308 about procgen, couldn’t the “averaging out” effect there actually pair quite nicely with that defensive style when combined with a high difficulty? Such a combination might let you use snowbally design more confidently in that context without it coming off as unfair, and/or allow players to escape that snowballing without doing too much damage to the overall longevity of the game. If my intuition is correct, anyway. Then again, maybe an alternative take is to make that snowballing even more extreme on the enemy’s side, thus further validating the player’s escape options…I guess that’s sort of an inversion of the usual relationships, but I also have no idea how that’d work. I’m mostly just spitballing here ^^;
@@technicolormischief-maker5683 Yeah, if your game's got too much (meaningful) RNG & enemies that can naturally corner & trap you, then really strong defensive options help prevent unfair checkmate situations and are kinda necessary. 2D beat em ups have the desperation attacks to offset the at times ridiculous enemy RNG after all. It's just that if you make the defensive options too strong that completely invalidates any advantage-building enemies do by letting you reset on a whim, so as a result even if a lot of the ingredients for snowballing are there, it just won't happen in practice. Tying defense to a limited resource helps a lot with this tho
I kinda agree but I tend to like games with restricted spaces but enough options to deal with things. Never too interesting when your extremely limited or given too much options.
I tend to like when last-resort tools are tied to resources - either bombs like in shmups or health like in beat em ups. Can have those "ok shit I'm trapped" moves to pull out when you've made an unsalvageable number of mistakes that aren't busted as hell
Thanks, awesome to hear! Hopefully I didnt ruin any games for you hehe ...Who am I kidding if it did spoil stuff for you, it's like a badge of honor for me 😎
I think that your options to get out of the snowball cycle matters just as much as the presence of a snowball cycle in the first place. I remember despite not being super good at videogames back then (or even now) and not really being the greatest analyst of game design noticing the same kind of concept when I tried a crushing playthrough of Uncharted. Getting hit made you lose life, and since life recover with time, that mean that time is your main currency. Spending time recovering life let ennemies get closer to you, where they'll end up having more opportunity to attack you. The goal of the player is therefor to use his differents attack to gain breathing room to be able to recover life without getting covered. There is a lot of differences between Resident Evil 4 and Uncharted, but a pretty big one that I think create tons of other in cascade is how moving is a powerful option. Moving in Resident Evil 4 throw off guard the aim of projectile throwing ennemies, can allow to escape the basic grab with just the super slow walkback, allow you to run past enemies with melee attack if you know what you're doing, and even the super salvadore have a short window where you can run just under his chainsaw ! No wonder they don't allow you to shoot when doing this ! It doesn't make you outright invincible, but it means that a lot of cornering can have a potentiel to be escaped. By contrast running in Uncharted is either a terrible move or something you do when you're at a difficulty level where the enemies aren't threats. There are moments where it's worth doing, but due to how difficulty work (more damage and more health for the enemies), the more the enemies are a threat that may corner you, the more the risk outweight the rewards. As a result, navigating around the pressure in Uncharted boil down to either use the better move (shotgun) that only available when you fucked up and the enemies are close to you, or memorizing the position of the enemies to snipe then before they have any time to surround you (special mention to uncharted water room, full of destructibles cover and enemies that come from multiple point that force you to memorize the spawn points or die).
Yea it's very true. You can think of it as 3 things, positive snowballing (in your favor), negative snowballing (in the enemy's favor) and advantage reset (back to neutral levels of advantage). RE4's run acts like a reset mechanic, and indeed it's something that makes the game feel less exciting because you know you could run away and reposition if things get bad. That's why IMO the game is at its best in very cramped areas like the cabin - your actions have a lot more consequences there. I should have actually compared Final Fight's and God Hand's movement now that you mention it - God Hand has RE4's problem where if you want you can just herd enemies around by running away. Final Fight doesn't let you do that, if you fucked up there's no way to reset anything besides using some of your health for a special move. Similar to what you describe in Uncharted but in the context of a beat em up specifically.
Nah I was kinda arguing the opposite. While they may have overtuned running, I think it makes the game more exciting, as it incentivize moving rather than just staying in place, memorize the spawn and using the shotgun when they get close (memorizing enemies spawn and using pore powerful options when they get close is still useful in RE or in any other game, it's just than thankfully there is more to the game than that!). Having the carrot of advantage reset that i can earn with good use of my tools (it's not like running make leon completely invincible, his hurtbox while mobile can still be hit by ennemies hitboxes, so the more ennemies you knockdown or just hitstun the safer repositioning yourself get)put an emphasis on improvising even if the odds are turning against me. I'm at the resident evil 4 water room on professional right now and while I won't criticize this place just for being hard (damn, if i had a nickel for every tps with a room that can be described as a "water room" that have a difficulty spike...) it have a bit of a sour "uncharted like" difficulty at the beginning. If I attempt and fail to snipe the two archers on the other side of the room, the enemies snowballing get ridiculous : I'm surrounded on three directions and archers that can drain my life and inflict hitstun attack me periodically. I don't even bother trying when this happen, and I think that having more situations like this would overall make the game worse@@boghogSTG
@@lisrinbastian2461 Well the exact points where a lot of snowballing is too much snowballing is gonna come down to tastes. I think repositioning is really important but it should be incrementally advantageous. Whereas Leon's run is VERY close to a full reset (provided you're not locked into a tight space) to the point where you can run back & forth picking off enemies 1 by one with barely any risk if you're patient. It lets you improv in the sense that it opens up all kinds of potential approaches to encounters, but it does so at the cost of devaluing your decisions & wins. Aiming at the right enemy at the right time and getting the kick just in the nick of time doesn't matter much if you could just run back and try it again after failing. The satisfying type of improv IMO comes from necessity - when games put you into difficult high pressure situations and you manage to overcome them with good thinking and quick reflexes. If the risk taking is voluntary, then in my book it's more of toy sandbox rather than an action game - action games imply pressure & intensity to me that you shouldn't be able to opt out of. Imagine a horror game where you can just opt out of every scary situation/mechanic, you could make one but it'd be almost self-undermining in a way. Getting frustrated/discouraged by this sorta difficulty is pretty normal and I get it putting you off (I had a hard time getting into Final Fight cuz of the enemy snowballing) but you really gotta view it long-term. The frustration will fade as you get better at the game, while the fun parts will become more & more fun. ...That said the RE4 snipers are kinda lame cuz it's a simple beginner memorization trap - they're trivial to kill once you know what you're doing, but a nightmare if you don't. Ideally they should remain a challenging threat long term so there's no feeling of disappointment once you figure out the one trick. I have not played Uncharted but by the sound of it, it relies a lot on those kinda hard memorization challenges where it's hell until you figure out That One Strat.
@@boghogSTG Rethinking a bit about this (and having lost a super long comment so at least i'm gonna try to be a bit more concise) it think that tetris and power-ups in shmups are much better exemple to what i want to talk about than a game that have much bigger problems and that i haven't played in years. Tetris players don't compete against time (which can be inserted into any game and is thus not a relevant criteria) but against height. The higher the height of your stack is, the more limited your options are. There is three types of tetris that are popular currently : the modern variant with little to no snowballing due to the ability of the players to keep a piece moving forever and is thus only played in multiplayer, the nes/gb variation with very high snowballing due to the piece locking in place at the first frame they touch another one, and the most popular one across high level players, the tgm that allow player to only keep moving a piece for a limited amont of time, creating consequences for actions and allowing recoveries to always be within grasp. (at a higher level, as the player will deal with 20g that make fall instantaneous, structure will be more of an obstacle than height, but bad structure tend to occur at higher height and the same concept still applies) Power up in shmup are a form of "hard" snowballing that is enforced by the games mechanics rather than being the result of a loss of some more abstract thing like space. Get power ups and you gain a more powerful shot that you can use to kill more enemies, controlling more of the space and getting more power ups. Get touch and it's now the enemies that have the advantage, making you loose part or all of your amassed power. Yet high player or enemies snowballing is usually seen as a flaw, and early game with power-up like gradius 1 or r-type have rank system that heavily decrease upon getting hit, creating practically two distinct games rather than considering that the player lost an advantage and calling it a day. If the developers of raizing saw there games as a simple competition between players and computers, they would have considered each power up to simply be a competitive advantage gained by the player and would never have thought of increasing the enemies firepower to the point that getting a powerup represent an active decision, as it would have been the equivalent of allowing a struggling player in a moba a few free levels to make him catch up. (overall, shmup while hard don't necessarly try super hard to snowball the players. Enemies invading the screen with their shot is definitively a thing, but for exemple you rarely see fleets of zakos with aimed shots changing strategies if they are left in high number to aim at and around the player to counter streaming and occupy more of the screen) The extreme ideal of a game centered around snowballing would be that any advantage gained by the player result in a situation where while it may be theoretically possible to lose ground to the enemies, a player that gained an advantage would be in practice always good enough to further capitalize on it. On the reverse, any advantage gained by the enemies would result in a situation where while winning might be theoretically possible by a superior player, the player bad enough to get advantage lost in the first place wouldn't be good enough to stop the enemies from further capitalizing on it. While it's interesting to have a video that serve as a reminder that snowballing isn't inherently a bad thing (one of the few good things about space invaders is the snowballing), I think that there is a limit to design a game around the snowballing, and that most games should try to create intermediate situations where the player gained a (dis)advantage but the result isn't necessarily guaranteed and skillful play can avoid (or minimize) the use of resources. (not really sure if i really said anything you didn't know with that comment, but i think that some of the interpretation evoked in the last paragraph maybe somewhat resume the state of mind of the most sceptic people toward the video)
@@lisrinbastian2461 I think the core problem you're running into is that you think I said "more snowballing = better game", but I explicitly talk about how this isn't the case in the vid. Between covering how both sides fight for an advantage in the games I discussed & towards the end where I use all the Ninja Gaiden clips. I called it "competitive" not "snowbally" for a reason. Think about competition - an engaging competition gives both sides ways to forcefully gain advantage through skillful play, otherwise the first move wins essentially. It's just that in the case of the computer, there's no thing such as "skillful play" so it gets a lot more abstract and messy, they have to rely on rubberbanding, crutches & resets (like end of encounters). I think in your answer you described exactly how Tetris players compete against time - since blocks come out more & more rapidly and in many versions like the NES one they get locked in immediately or at least quickly, it creates a lot more risk the faster the pace of the game gets. Ofc even in games where you can rotate pieces forever this is an element because (unless I'm missing some technique) you can't move any piece anywhere, once it falls your movement choices will depend on your current stack. I guess I didn't emphasize the competition for screen space aspect enough - but it's given meaning by time fundamentally, remove that and the game's dynamics suffer which is why so many people prefer versions where you can't rotate pieces forever. Power ups are snowballing of course but 1. Gradius/R-Type style power ups are obvious and not really interesting (outside of Gradius' rank). I constantly emphasize gradual gains/losses in the vid and talk about how viewing snowballing dynamics from a zoomed out perspective obscures lackluster dynamics during encounters 2. Some of the best shmups around don't have them (Crimzon Clover World Ignition, Ikaruga, later CAVE games) while the control of space/time is nearly universal in bullet hell shmups Regarding Yagawa games - they're pretty tricky because almost every signifier is flipped upside down, even calling the items you pick up "power ups" is misleading since they essentially become a hazard that the game uses to limit your movement space in a way similar to bullets, just a lost softer & longer term. Conflating them with R-Type's system is going to just lead to confusion, even if they are called the same. I can't really tell you if Gregga rank is competitive or not since I'm not good enough at its scoring - whether it's competitive would really just depend on whether the player can capitalize on high rank via higher scores (I know that powering up increases tick point gain for example) or not. Greg's snowballing & rubber banding is intresting though, I dunno if I can boil it down to competition exactly, even if when you look at more isolated instances the competitions more clear. Sadly idk enough about Greggas scoring to say anything for sure, since whether certain actions are beneficial or not for the player doesnt just come down to survival but also score "overall, shmup while hard don't necessarly try super hard to snowball the players" Now this though is complete nonsense, that's a huge chunk of their difficulty. Your mistake is that you're looking at specific enemy behaviors, rather than the general dynamics. Popcorn don't have to do anything special - as soon as you fuck up your streaming and are left with little space, you're essentially fucked and the only way to reverse it without going for extremely risky dodges is to do a restream, which itself becomes impossible if you don't have much room & the shots you're streaming are dense enough. What's more is, as I pointed out in the vid, time being a factor basically means that by being cornered the game is giving itself more time to spawn more enemies and further corner you The fact that the enemies don't need to do anything special to achieve this is kinda the point & why it's interesting - the competition is baked into the mechanics & conventions of the genre, that's why the genre's got such a strong set of fundies that are hard to stray away from without losing a lot. It's not just that snowballing is not always a bad thing, it's that it's a pre-requisite for games to have tactical gameplay, without it you simply don't get meaningful decisions period. A game without snowballing would be something like a rhythm game with a fully linear scoring system - fun as an execution challenge, but devoid of any decision making. It's basically just a question of how often you wanna reset said snowballing, and how many crutches you wanna give the losing side. Which is a question competitive MP games actively grapple with even more Also our fucking reply length is snowballing but I really appreciate the back n forth 🤜🤛
Thanks! It really depends on your tastes but *Zero Ranger* is most likely going to be a safe bet. For straightforward bullet hell games, *Dodonpachi Resurrection* & *Mushihimesama* via modern ports are good entry points since they have a lot of modes with a ton of novice modes that slowly ramp up, along with just not being too hard to 1cc. *Dodonpachi Daioujou* , *Ketsui* & *Esprade* are probably the best straightforward bullet hell games IMO. If you're into crazier games then check out *Guwange* , it's easily in my top 3 but its mechanics might take some time to click (you control two characters, one working more like a rail shooter crosshair). If you want some games that encourage scoring then check out *Muchi Muchi Pork* (you get lives every 10 million points, so the more you score the more lives you'll have), *Psyvariar Delta* (scoring well lets you unlock harder stages) or *Radiant Silvergun* (you power up your weapons by chaining enemies, which becomes mandatory in late game). *Armed Police Batrider* is one of the better ways of getting into Yagawa's style of gameplay, though playing Muchi Pork before this will make it easier to get into IMO.
Nioh I guess, mostly thanks to having a fuckton of meters. I also love Ys Origin/Felghana but only because of their bosses, which by their nature aren't very snowbally.
@@soratheorangejuicemascot5809 It's ok, certainly better than Ys 7 onwards but it feels like a sloppy unrefined version of Origin/Felghana. I often didn't feel properly leveled up for the area (good luck trying to deal damage if you get to the final boss without upgrading your swords). A lot of the bosses have a whole lot of jank going on, stuff like crappy hitboxes or kinda lame attack patterns. Ernst was really stupid and is so insanely RNG driven that I imagine no damage is basically just frustrating slot machines. Maybe Nightmare + catastrophe was kind of a throwaway difficulty in it though and it's better on Hard, I only played the former though so it soured the game for me.
cooming form a guy who used to play primarly and only single player action games hack slashes ,RE etc..as you state and now being one of the most mlg bois in the WD. double master rank SF6 , top 100 GG strive evo potemkin etc... and 112th sf3 player. You are correct.
This is a very good analysis but Man explains game design I do not find particularly fun and seems to view it as the only valid way I just don't think players need to be skilled tacticians to have fun with action... and snowballing can create a lot of going between frustration (when disadvantaged) and boredom (when advantaged). There's nothing wrong with game design just asking you to be reactive and not think 10 steps ahead about enemy and boss patterns you don't even know about yet
Thanks! Don't worry about any of that shit, if you found the analysis useful in some way even if it's a what-to-avoid guide then it's all good. I finished it with a "no rules, only tools" Vilppu quote for a reason ...That said, are you sure you don't find it particularly fun? Or are the particular examples I used skewed too far in one direction or another for your liking? Cause for example Resident Evil 4's pretty hard to hate as a game IMO. I don't mind upping the amount of frustration in games personally, the obsession with flow state is leading devs to treat players like babies - it's ok to get frustrated with a game and come back later, some of my fav games got that reaction out of me initially. Boredom's a big problem but that happens when the balance gets messed up and the devs *stop* thinking about competition. It's precisely the crappy game scenario I described when showing the zombie tomb section from Ninja Gaiden Sigma 1
@@boghogSTG TLDR I've decided snowball effects can be important, but it's also important to keep giving both the player and their enemy agency, and level the playing field at several points to prevent frustration/boredom from setting in too much. It's important to challenge players, but that can be done in a variety of ways and doesn't simply come down to tactical pushes. I actually haven't played most of the stuff you were describing in particular, but I have played rail shooters like Star Fox 64 and Kid Icarus Uprising, and at least one Platinum game... I think they all handle tension very well, especially in harder difficulties. I guess I usually view snowball effects in games as a negative; By the time they're really hitting you it is often too late to do anything about it, and instead of having a way out by exercising some skill in the moment-- or instead of having space to get back on your feet-- you're just spanked into the ground. You don't really learn anything at all since you can't get back on the right footing to try anything. On the other hand, if you're in the advantage because of a tactical advantage you might have just accidentally grabbed, you might be continually effortlessly pummeling your foes... and also not learning anything. I suppose that's only how it is when snowball effects are *too* exaggerated though, because at the end of the day a lot of great games have this effect to some extent... but I guess it's often just as important to have moments that level the playing field so that you or your enemies aren't stuck in a rough spot for too long. I think of the fight with Senator Armstrong in Metal Gear Rising: You can actually rush straight up to him right away and pull a string of attacks, but it takes a LOT to stop him from charging up his more powerful attacks. You're both pretty much continuously on the same level as each other since you both pretty consistently have the opportunity to deal damage, but will sometimes get combo'd by each other for a short time... the challenge arises from this fact. It's not too tough to stay out of the way, but you won't accomplish anything in doing so. You've gotta constantly think about what's happening in the moment, and it demands enough of you that you don't need to be thinking about several steps ahead... and it's still hard enough (on Hard mode) that I have yet to beat this fight, ahah...
@@hahasamian8010 Well first off, the important point isn't when and how often you reset advantages, rather I want to encourage thinking in terms of advantage/disadvantage to begin with. You could build a lot of mechanics & systems that allow for a ton of snowballing into both directions, but then decide that the snowballing leads to gameplay that's TOO momentum driven and add some resets to balance this out. To an extent all games will have to do this, if not mid fight then at least in between fights, to prevent being boring. And even the most snowbally games tend to have momentum resets (bombs in bullet hell shmups, desperation attacks that cost health in Final Fight). It's all about approaching the problem from the right direction, instead of prescribing exact solutions necessarily. That said, I'm really not a fan of Platinum's output including Armstrong specifically because it feels like the fights exist in a state of stasis where your only engagement with boss fights is finding openings in their scripted attacks to do more damage. Sometimes they have some hitstun states & counters you can play around with, but even that isn't as common as it should be. It's less that they reset the advantage, and more that there's really not much of an advantage to be gained on either side outside of meters. After a while they all just feel exactly the same - dodge/parry telegraphed attack, counter with as many attacks as you can get away with. The only variation comes from timing, how many attacks you have to counter back to back, and statistical differences. Like a glorified game of simon says, where you're watching a series of cool cutscenes play out and attack the boss in between them. Even when this is hard (Armstrong's def not an easy boss), it's just boring IMO. Dark Souls games suffered from this big time as well until Elden Ring. It felt like you just spanked bosses during their wait animation and taht was the whole gameplay, even if you misdirected their attacks, it was a lot of risk for very little gain. Elden Ring's addition of the stamina/stagger system though made sure that every single extra opening you find actually builds to something - and if you can find them back-to-back you will get a nice stagger, some time to heal/apply buffs or extra damage. Now, in ER this can feel a little to exploitable where you shut down bosses without letting them even do much, but this is just a matter of creating reset points where they reset their stagger bar, more boss phases, etc. The central combat dynamic is very solid. In fact, Nioh does this (and did it first) by having bosses manually reset their stamina bar.
@@boghogSTG Neat to have this discussion with you, although I'm not sure there's much more I can say- I think that alongside the aggressive pacing, the variety of ways enemies attack in games like MGR and KIU are what keep it exciting and engaging. Kid Icarus in particular has a lot of instances where enemies attack or defend in very unique ways you have to watch out for, so it keeps you on your toes a lot, especially as different groups of these enemies are presented to you. I'd say that's the biggest appeal of this sort of design! It could have also had more staggering, but I think that would have just slowed down the pace... well, except for the land sections, which actually do have a bit more snowballing alongside the larger health pools!
@@boghogSTG Great video and I've been enjoying reading through the comments, which include more elaboration such as what you are giving here. It's a very different school of thought from my guy Saur who didn't get on much with 3D Ninja Gaiden and Nioh and loved Clover/Platinum for the freedom of player expression and styling on enemies that their systems offer!
It's probably just me, but I can't tell whether you're for or against rail-shooter game design. The way you make it sound is that they're less engaging than shmups unless it's something like sin and punishment where gravity is added to the mix.
Damn looks like I'm nailing that fence sitting observer video essayist vibe then! Yea I'm not a fan of rail shooters overall but the genre has a lot of potential. S&P does a lot of things really well, including having a lot of projectiles in the play area, and having a crapton of targets. If a rail shooter captures those bullet hell shmuppy dynamics it'll be one of my fav games ever I think
I hate those enemies and figured I'd rather shit talk games I love overall than get say DMC fans salty LOL NG manages to have the best shit ever and the worst shit ever side by side
Forgive me it had to be done, I wanted to avoid including Automata at all costs cause if I saw footage of that game this vid would turn into 10 min of me expressing frustration with Platinum's combat design and nothing else
I understand what you mean, but I can't take the video seriously when you start from a clearly false premise. You're changing the meaning of the word “competition” to conclude that action games are competitive. With this kind of reasoning, you can conclude anything, such as that single player games are actually multiplayer, just by changing the meaning of "single player". In fact, because of this “fallacy”, you end up undermining the very idea that you're offering an opposing view to that of the platinum dev, which is kind of the intention of the video. If you base your whole idea on “action games are competitive”, but you're using a false, ultra generic definition of what competition is, then you can very well take the core of the Platinum dev's idea, consider that to be “competition” in some way (remember, competition can be anything) and now the two ideas are no longer in opposition! And of course, action games can be competitive in the original sense of the word, as long as they have some kind of score, and even if they don't, people can compete based on other things (who can finish the game the fastest, for example). But that's not the subject of the video.
"I understand what you mean" is where you shoulda ended this comment. 1. Competition has not only been used for "fake agents" like characters, AI, etc. but it has even been applied to objects that have no implied agency at all like products - people say that products compete against each other for example, ads compete for your attention, and so many more examples. Hell, we're offering *competing definitions* , competing theories. Not sure where you're getting your definition that excludes non-human competition but it's plain wrong. 2. The goal isn't to debunk Platinum but to convey an idea through contrast, and you seemed to have understood it so what's the issue? You can swap out a word in Atsushi Inaba's speech but then there's step 2 of actually defining it and contrasting it. You can swap out "action games are passive" with "action games are gsgdsvc" and my vid with "action games are yrejgod" and then still have perfectly workable definitions of "gsgdsvc/yrejgod" provided in the talk/vid itself. So really you'd just have 2 competing ideas of "competition" being elaborated on - nothing substantial would change.
![Movement, Shooting & Hitboxes [SHMUP WORKSHOP 01]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yAF2FkgyiYM/mqdefault.jpg)
I really love your point about rail shooters not having long active hitboxes, that s something I never thought about before.
Its why you want lots of optional targets in them but not in shmups I think
@@boghogSTGyes note to future rail shooters, have some stuff that lingers on screen ha
@@diydylana3151 I feel that Mario 64's more sandbox-y gameplay was more of an intentional design choice and not a result of hardware limitations, otherwise all of the levels would be designed like the Bowser levels or Crash Bandicoot. Sandbox-style games in general, whether it's a 3D open-world adventure or a top-down 2D game(especially if you have ALttP-style screen scrolling) are hard to design and even a lot of Mario 64 romhacks now really limit how much freedom you have so you have to engage with everything the game hands to you.
I'd say the best approach to sandbox enemy design is to design them in a way that plays to that genre's strength, like maybe add an element of randomness that forces you to play dynamically and not just follow a script. Most games will usually have strong enemy aggro or some sort of enemy magnetism so you can't just run past them, but I'm admittedly not a huge fan of that approach because you end up getting a lot of forced one-on-one encounters.
I died when you started to talk about bullet hell shmups with a vampire survivors clip
Steam be like
I've often thought that the main thing that makes action games interesting is the amount of mental stack they engage at higher levels of play. Part of the reason I can no longer find much enjoyment in Souls games (and the majority of their derivatives), for example, is because the best offensive response in almost every situation is the same, same with defensive responses - not helped by the limited movesets. I feel similarly about most character action games released in the past few years.
Yea for me its not a recent problem at all its just char action games as a whole, and you even saw it become an issue in 2D beat em ups - a huge focus on giving the player mobility and options, not enough focus on how theyd all come together to create tactical gameplay. Resident Evil 5 mercs has been more enjoyable to play as a beat em up for me than just about any char action game thats not God Hand or NG2 since it captures a lot of the interesting dynamics of bmups through TPS mechanics
I like how you show Vampire Survivors when you say “Bullet Hell Shmups.” Solid joke, I chuckled.
Showing off Galaxy Force II as the first example in the Rail Shooters segment is kinda funny because among Rail Shooters it's actually pretty unique
GFII starts you off with a set amount of Energy that slowly decreases over time, getting hit will decrease this amount (and you'll lose even more if you've lost your shield, naturally) but you get refueled at the end of each level and during certain checkpoints. However, the amount that you get refueled depends on how many enemies you manage to hit. On top of that, you can actually speed up and slow down the throttle at any given moment. Speeding up means you'll reach the checkpoints sooner, but you'll also miss potential targets and you're more liable to run into bullets or terrain if you're not careful (especially since terrain obstacles are a lot more prevalent in GFII than in many other Rail Shooters)
It turns the game from what would be a normal rail shooter into almost a checkpoint racer, where you're always trying to push forwards as quickly as you can while dancing around obstacles in an attempt to destroy targets and reap big rewards. There's more to focus on than just avoiding oncoming bullets and locking onto enemies which makes it very fun and aggressive, though it's far from typical for the genre lmao
Yea I mostly included it just so people wonder "woah wtf is this" and hopefully check it out 😎
That said, it's a good example of what I said towards the end of the vid - it's improtant to focus on the immediate combat dynamics, rather than more meta stuff like meter management (or even scoring) because all that meta stuff can exist even with fleshed out combat. A good example for me would be DMC1 - it has very simplistic barebones interactions with enemies, a lot of them don't even play by the normal rules of the game and either take no damage from melee (shadows), reduced damage from most stuff (frosts), cannot be juggled/knocked down (scissors), etc. *But* the game has devil trigger which you build by attacking enemies and in DMD is an important tool for doing damage, along with scoring which does reward quick kills along with style (via orbs). So the enemy encounters *are* connected & snowball via these system mechanics, even if the natural combat when taken on its own lacks them. The better you're able to build meter, the more damage you'll do, the more damage you do the easier you'll be able to hit the orb + speed requirements for S rank.
If applied to racing specifically, IMO it's more interesting to look at how incredibly snowbally sim racer mechanics are where every input not only affects your car but every other input as well in many different contextual ways making them very deep, rather than looking at how the games reward speed/lack of it.
@@boghogSTG That's a good point yeah, GFII still lacks something in the immediate space because it ends up putting more focus on the meta aspect of needing enough energy. It puts the game in an odd spot where it's got aspects of a racer but also lacks a lot of the more immediate challenges of controlling momentum, speed, entry/exit points thru turns, etc. Not to say that's bad of course since the game isn't entirely built around that, but it still doesn't really solve the problem of rail shooters being (often) lacking in immediate snowballing, haha
Very fascinating and interesting way of thinking about design, very cool to examine especially action games in this lens
Great video, it's sick seeing someone break down the importance of feedback loops in a lot of action game design on such a moment-to-moment level when they're often overlooked in discussion. The beat-em-up example is really interesting, especially considering that even as far back as Renegade the meaning of space and enemy placement was already so well applied (forward vs. back attacks, running, the works).
I think the way rail shooters are framed is a bit dismissive though, mostly because it doesn't acknowledge that most rail shooters make up for the lost tension from movement in other ways (moments limited on a time axis like deflecting projectiles or saving allies, hitting environmental targets, or testing your ability to quickly gauge whether/how to shoot something) that beat-em-ups and shmups often don't have and don't need.
Thanks! Also hey I did say "many" didn't I hehe, just imagine your fav rail shooters are exceptions
I do love some rail/cabal shooters like Sin & Punishment (limited movement + lots of projectiles that come from above or explode when reaching the play area + lots of targets + fun multitasking sections like the platformer part in 1) but overall the genre feels a lot like a somewhat lame middle ground between shmups (for reasons I mentioned) and light gun shooters like Time Crisis/HOTD because it doesn't really test fast precise aiming or target prioritization to the same extent for the most part. There's nothing inherent about it holding it back though, just need more games really pushing that stuff.
Still gotta play Starfox Zero more, maybe its scoring will be the secret ingredient....
just another reason why i enjoy ninja gaiden 2
Solid Video, and I like how you reframe "competitiveness" as a general design principle for single player games as well. However, in the spirit of your last statement, "no rules, only tools" , saying situational and functional design are those that you disagree with seems counterproductive. ( by the way there is a gdc talk called "action without borders" by platinum that talks about it in more detail ) . Games can invoke different design perspectives and create engaging experiences, whether it be from mechanics, situations, functions, action etc. I sure you know this though. Yours is just a different perspective.
What you seem to be advocating for is Depth, decision making per second, dynamics, and positional play, with risk reward dynamics that have consequences. (im not just throwing out terms these are studied academically depth, game feel, interesting decisions etc) This emphasizes player skill and enhances depth. There is much more here than can be just reduced to competitiveness though, and so as useful as the heuristic is, it can also be reductive. hence the importance off taking a pluralistic and open minded approach to design perspectives and analysis In my opinion.
Not all games are designed to optimize for these things, and thats fine, calling them bad because of this seems unnecessary, they are bad through the prism of this design philosophy...but that isn't the goal of many of those games. This also doesn't mean there arent bad games of course.
Regardless, I enjoyed the video.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed the vid!
I don't think I called them bad did I ;)))
Seriously though, you're right - it's not really a fair nor comprehensive vid (nor is it fully honest, some games I love don't use this design AT ALL) but rather a vid attempting to advocate for a type of design I generally value a lot, that's kinda being lost, by distilling it into a simple heuristic.
The big problem with breaking it down into components is that, in my experience, component-driven analysis is just too complicated when you're making games - it works retroactively and in isolation as kind of detailed toy models. But during dev, it's such an inuitive in-the-moment process that having these kinda clear punchy heuristics is extremely important.
I can either sit there drooling while going through depth, dynamics, decision making, and all those abstract principles & piecing them together in my head...or I can ask myself "what's the enemy trying to accomplish with this attack?" and snap out of it.
@@boghogSTG My bad that I misrepresented you calling those games bad. Also very interesting counterpoint about the practicalities of theory in the context of actually designing games. That would be an interesting essay topic lol
It makes sense why simple heuristics are necessary. The reason i'm perhaps being pedantic about clarity in design perspectives is we can often conflate our preferences with good and bad design.
@@playfulmusings6190 Oh yeah now that you mention it, it'd definitely be interesting to explore, though I think the best format for that would be a series of short dev interviews or something.
I think a more heavily theory-based approach would be more useful in really tightly designed turn based strategy games (SRPG's, chess-style tactics games like Into The Breach, etc), because there you can actually visualize the possibility space a lot clearer, and there's no "this series of inputs feels kinda awkward" physical crap distracting you. Action games are just really damn chaotic, and there's even devs I've spoken to who outright say that design theory's useless for anything but fun and just go by pure intuitions. I'm not sure I 100% buy that but yeah, it's definitely very hard to transfer the things you think about when you're not designing games to the actual design process IMO...
Yea I wish people got over holding up specific style of design as The Objective Standard™, it doesn't even make any sense since design's functional and its quality can only ever be judged relative to what goals you're trying to accomplish. I tried to mostly avoid making value judgements but I guess the whole "these dynamics BREAK DOWN" thing and that one section towards the ends where I talk about what I consider to be the worst action games give a different impression. For the latter I was just hoping that it'd be an agreeable exaggerated enough example that almost everyone could get behind it LOL even used a shitty part of an otherwise excellent game 💀
I've seen many videos covering action games and their design, this one had the most refreshing ideas and opinions out of all. Great job!! Subbed.
Aw hell yeah, that means a lot thanks!
Viewing shmup corners like fighting game corners is really interesting
Nice video! I liked your take on action games as a competition in general. To add my two pence onto the rail shooter point, you acknowledged gravity but I think the focus on making physical structures hazards can help keep up the pressure though I can't say how much these games did much with this.
It reminds me a bit of how Mega Man Legends shifted more of a bomb focused design as far as your artillery and the enemies (enemies still often have contact damage - you can zone them more easily in 3D).
They did a fair bit with it especially stuff like Star Fox 64, the hardest parts tend to be really restricted. Its definitely one of the better ways to go for the genre
As much as I appreciate your viewpoint on what makes a good action game, it feels like you're trying to fit a square in a circle shaped hole in some segments of the video. I will probably add comments below when I come up with a more precise critique.
Go for it! In terms of what though, the analysis not working or the analysis working but "missing the point"? Would love to hear the former but the latter isnt that interesting to me since at the end of the day what you get or want to get out of games is subjective
I made a rant post about NieR Automata having no interesting enemy to hit, too much threatless level design, difficulty that just changes damage and health, questionable enemy placement, parry fest combo, etc on some random group and I suddenly get attacked in the comment section. It is sad that I can't talk much about gameplay in this "so called" masterpiece.
Also, what do you think of Assault Spy? I am considering on getting that game since its cheap.... if I do have extra left.
Yeah a lot of char action game players don't like people attacking their sacred cow. I really hated Automata for those exact reasons, it's a collection of the worst design tendencies Platinum has in one game...
I haven't played Assault Spy that much, didn't like it at all based on first impressions. Seems basically the same ol Platinum inspired stuff
@@boghogSTG all I see are just sandbag combo videos. Kinda hard to find something that actually got nice level design.
@@soratheorangejuicemascot5809 Fuck char action games Im just playing RE5 mercs and having a great time
@@boghogSTG great idea. I will just play Gal Gun instead.
Compared to Ninja Gaiden, Nier Automata is a lesser game. But it still does enough right to be fun.
Lovely video! With this new point of view it's easy to see why some games that didn't particularily click with me failed to do so. Enemy design for action games seems like an extremely difficult challenge, and this video raises some very interesting points.
Awesome, glad it was helpful! Yea the vid was inspired by me not liking newer character action games/beat em ups myself, feeling they're hollowed out, and trying to figure out why cuz I love older games in the genres
Great video. Snappy, insightful, and entertaining! I'd love to see you do more of these with other topics
Thanks! Yea I'll keep making them every now and then I think
Great analysis!
Bog will always find a way to put Final Fight in the spotlight whenever he gets the chance 😆
Oh you bet. The nice thing about it is that it's that perfect mix of being really fundamentals driven while still being "modern" with really high intensity & an emphasis on throws/aggression
I think splatoon's salmon run is an excellent example of this mindset
Haven't played Splatoon but it seems like a great example since it represents space-based competition very literally
Damn thats good. Like really good. I enjoyed it so much I didnt even expect a Glenn Villpu reference in the ending. XD
Prolly even the best game design video for action games and specially arcade games. Thank you this'll help my game development for sure. Big help even for a decade old professional like me.
I'm impressed both by the tug of war perspective you presented, as well how much and thorough you respond and discuss in the comments. I subscribe and look forward to your other videos.
Hell yea, thanks a bunch! Not sure when I'll make another vid but ye, basically just gotta wait until something starts living in my head rent free for a couple of months
this video has such a wealth of design considerations, thank you for doing it.
Thanks for watching, glad you found it interesting!
I love this way of thinking about action games
Love vids like these especially from an actual dev
Great points! Definitely some things that i hadn't considered.
Great job articulating your kind of action game. But I think your mindset of "'beat em up' = 'action game'" leads you down a similar path to people who think "character action" means something: an oddly narrow view of action games. I can get you want to honor the genre's history and influences, but you end up viewing games that stray from those influences as wrong for doing so on some level. But action games shouldn't have to be like arcade beat em ups, beat em ups are like beat em ups. Action games can be anything focused on action combat. Strategy centric musou, Punch Out/Bop-It style Sekiro, combo sandbox DMC, boring basic combat cuz it's a movie game, or actual beat em ups whether 2D or 3D, like Final Fight or Die Hard. They all have unique appeal. Yes many are more shallow than others, but I don't think desiring more depth should take form in swapping out the appeal for something completely different. In that sense I felt this video was torn between "here's what I like in action games" (good) and "here's how action games should be" (very bad). It was really mostly good but I'm here to talk about the bad. 😈
I think your bias is shown in how you refer to God Hand as an example of your preferred approach in 3D. But like Bayo or DMC, the enemies just want to swarm you regardless of your position before throwing out attacks you can react to by canceling into s. Having your back to a wall is a bad spot, but you'll never be truly snowballed since you have the "reset mechanic" of updodge>sweep>run. Maybe you didn't really think of God Hand as a great example and just had it piggyback on RE4 though. Either way I do think God Hand is absolutely one of the best examples of the concepts you describe being represented in behind-the-back 3D, but it's also balancing that with the exact things you advise against, just like many other games you may be uncharitable towards. I do get the feeling you really disapprove of concepts you don't personally enjoy in action games and write them off despite knowing these games' value often comes from really digging into them with the right mindset. This is completely normal and understandable behavior, but when it comes to writing about action games it created some oddities in this video.
Above all else, you gotta stop using the "C" term, especially if you admit how dumb of a label it is! Very hard to take seriously. Clearly its hazardous effects have been seeping into you already, get it away!! 🙏
Thanks! I'm not gonna argue otherwise, this is absolutely agenda driven and I explictly say that this is just me advocating for a type of design I like in the description. 😎 It couldn't be any other way though. There's no such thing as objectively good design because design is goal-oriented, and goals can be anything. If I talked about everything I'd end up saying nothing - the vid would just turn into white noise. What I wanna do is counter the usual "char action game" narrative about how combos make for interesting gameplay with my own about how a good balance between player/enemies and snowballing make for interesting gameplay. In reality both or neither can make for interesting gameplay, depends on implementation & player tastes.
In general, IMO countering "x is good design" with "there's no such thing as a singlular good design" isn't a workable solution no matter how true it is. Beat em up fans have been doing this for decades and yet the games are still judged by how many moves they have. Because, in practice, all the latter argument can do is slow down the rate at which the other person convinces others. What you need to do is positively promote other kinds of design, and point out how they clash with other schools of design - it changes how people think of games, and vividly highlights the fact that every design choice has pros/cons.
So instead of apologizing for bmups not having combos, attack char action games for being busted broken undercooked crap with poor combat dynamics that compensates for it with said combos and shallow adventure game elements.
You also won't see me defending the elements of RE4 and God Hand that go against their snowballing - it's why I think RE4/5 only truly work in mercs where you have a constant pressure to engage, and why God Hand is outright flawed because it lets you run through enemies and push them, resetting the situation. Really you don't even need to duck dodge sweep, grab the backstep kick, cancel it and you can play it in a very lame cheesy manner. I wish God Hand had a strict level timer or something
Like I said I mostly enjoyed you sticking to explaining what you like instead of shoving other games into your template, but only mostly. I don't agree that attacking other types of games is productive at all. My whole point wasn't "criticizing anything is dumb because objectivity doesn't exist", it was that it'd be more engaging to criticize games through the lense of how they could increase depth or improve balance without completely betraying their unique appeal. I'm sure you don't care for SoR4 adding combo sandbox appeal into your fundamental beat em up. Just the same DMC players don't want to play Final Fight in their DMC. Suggesting other action games SHOULD be taking inspiration from arcade beat em ups' emphasis on positioning/competition is really no different than a combohead suggesting SoR SHOULD take further inspiration from DMC's emphasis on combo expression because that's what this person likes. But maybe this is indeed exactly how you view what you're doing, in which case I just don't care for that presentation for these ideas I suppose.
But still, DMC has much room for more depth/better balance. Rather than removing what makes it unique and making everything a beat em up, it'd be more productive to discuss how you could balance/deepen it while maintaining it's core appeal, with a better scoring system, more active defense from enemies, or more complicated goals or environments or whatever. Like how you say a timer could aid the appeal you see in God Hand. But clearly combos aren't for you though, so in that case I think you're best leaving it at that unless you're willing to look past your preference and attempt to understand the appeal even if it's not to your taste. Your complete unwillingness to understand/acknowledge their appeal as unique, but willingness to attack them anyway for not having a completely different focus doesn't reflect well and makes your view come across as narrow. Like another flavor of "character action" people who think action combat is inherently striving to be epic combo video material. As you describe, people who judge games based on how many moves they have. You're just swapping that arbitrary metric out for another, more nuanced one.
But again, you describe that lense very well, which is nice because it's certainly underdiscussed. But I think high level DMC brainrot combolords or Platinum stans won't easily see the vision because you don't have any understanding of why they enjoy what's unique about their games. Just like they pay no mind to the critiques of casuals who play a game once on normal and shrug it off as a jank button masher. If the fans of the games you attack aren't listening to your legit criticisms, then what's even the point of writing said critiques? In this sense your clear passion for action, knowledge on your preferred niche, and concise writing chops feel wasted on your narrow view. Action games need all the help they can get! I'd think you should be happy that combo videos or PP runs will be many people's gateway to 1CCs, instead of seething at the objective fact that most action gaymers alive right now simply do enjoy fancy combos more than they do snowbally beat em ups.
From this perspective, I think a better prompt to spread your agenda would be to look at games that take a varied/balanced approach for better or for worse, like God Hand or Bayo 1, which solidly represent combo sandbox, CC fundamentals, and Bop-It reaction tests all mixed together. State how their modern elements devalue the stuff you enjoy most despite that stuff still being relevant, like the example you provided I mentioned earlier, rather than propping them up as good examples of representing the stuff you enjoy to some degree at all, and using games with irrelevant appeal as your "targets". Like "here's how I would tweak God Hand to be a true beat em up" rather than wrapping "DMC/Nioh/Sekiro/GoW/musou/whatever should simply be a completely different product" in along with it. But again, I do acknowledge you don't exactly do the latter in this video lol. It just comes across that, especially from the language in this reply, you struggle to overcome your close mindedness towards certain types of action games which results in writing that alienates its potential audience.
God Hand again is symbolic of your "narrow view" as I see it. While God Hand's an insane oddity in terms of balance and such making this a weird example at this point, is it really "outright flawed" because you can reset the situation easily? I don't think so whatsoever. The freedom in your movement is a part of the game that works within its middle ground between more forgiving, "passive/reactive" elements and beatemup fundamentals, along with accounting for limitations with the camera and environments. I don't think your position within the environment is often insignificant because of a fundamental misunderstanding or glaring oversight, but because the designers of the game thought that'd be a good fit. Considering they made one of the most enjoyable video games of all time, I'm inclined to appreciate their decision! Although I guess you could just say "they also decided to let you split up groups with cheap taunts" and write it all off. The "customize your own difficulty" approach does kinda muddle this, but cheap taunts and wall infinite spam are definitely more of crutches you can "opt in or out of", while Gene's movement capabilities are completely inherent to the core combat. I think I have a point here but I can admit this line of thinking probably leads us to "well I've beat hard KMS no cheesing so I'm right you're wrong lalala."
But again, ABOVE ALL ELSE! Please consider retiring the "C" term if you want people to take your ideas seriously! People who don't like the term cringe, and people who use the term generally interpret it as "game where I like the combo sandbox". It connects to my whole overarching point here which is kinda that when trying to spread a deeper understanding to action game fans and action games at large, you really need to be thoughtful in regards to looking outside of the small bubble we all often find ourselves in. 🤓@@boghogSTG
@@qinkhozam
Lemme step back a bit - is this crit of the vid in particular or my general attitude expressed elsewhere? Cause in the vid, I've (mostly) avoided including games like DMC/Bayo and their combo mechanics even when it would be apt and decided to focus on games I like such as NG and rail shooters, even when shitting on them. Just to dodge bias & cleanly introduce the concept. Any kinda anti-combo sentiment should be subtext at most.
The tug of war/snowballing stuff can be applied to any part of a game also, including combos. Once you opt into combos, the goal is still to create strong tug of war dynamics with gravity/infinite prevention systems and mechanics that pressure the player, instead of letting them do whatever. Is the problem that I didn't talk about that and only focused on the base combat itself? Or do you mean that I should have talked about combos outside the scope of the framework I'm using and went into other types of appeal, engagement theory-style? If it's the former, then maybe but I don't think this vid is the place to do that
If it's a general attitude thing then ehhh I dunno. The "forgive a game's issues and opt into its challenge to see what it's doing" type of analysis essentially creates an environment where there's no cost to complexity from the developer's POV. Why not just bloat the game with a million busted broken mechanics? The players will find the fun in it, and the critics will praise the shit out of it. That's how you get this modern soup school of design - it's how you get Dark Souls and Elden Ring. There's gotta be a line where you say "ok fuck this" and refuse to do the legwork for the developers. It's a real tangible problem too because devs cannot focus on everything - so many bmup devs are spending countless hours fleshing out their combos in a grey box room cause they know people will try to squeeze out little crumbs of depth & enjoyment from their games no matter how bad the basic dynamics are. Sparkhunt's demo is a recent example of this but there are countless others.
Thinking about it as a result of replying to this post, I'm not even sure I care what char action fans think of this cause the existence of DMC4 doesn't annoy me since it's a unique game - the existence of 2D bmups that want to be DMC4 and as a result fuck up their basic gameplay is what annoys me. Char action game communities are cooked - they have like 6 good games to play and they'll still somehow manage to avoid God Hand and instead play some slop like FF16. I have no idea where you get the idea that they'll be getting into 1cc's and scoring through ranks from - they don't even bother getting into scoring in their own games past S ranks. Hell the subgenre itself will prob be quietly replaced by ARPG's in the next decade anyway and the fans will barely notice as long as it has COMBOZ :D
Me being annoying aside, the term char action has uses. For starters most of these games are action-adventure beat em up hybrids not pure beat em ups to begin with. Secondly, the emphasis is placed on very different things, imagine you had a genre of games that played like AvP's second half with mostly shooting, nade throwing, etc. and the fans would grow to value that - surely that'd be enough to justify a genre distinction even though it'd still be a subgenre/hybrid at the end of the day no?
I addressed several times that I appreciate you trying to hold back your bias in this video, but seeing you completely write off what doesn’t appeal to you in your first reply confirmed my thoughts that you do carry bias heavily. I could say I don't like games being misrepresented but this is ultimately coming down to the fact I strongly detest braggadocious closemindedness in any and all walks of life even if relatively harmless. Your increasing display of this trait is difficult for me to navigate since it saddens me more than any measure of your actual potential to spread knowledge on action games. Perhaps all I truly wish is that you were capable of enjoying a wider breadth of action games than you are, as to simply introduce more appreciation for action games into your life and thus the world.
Anyway I was trying to say I think your unwillingness to acknowledge the legitimate value players find in what you call "slop" is crazy regressive, and tried to point out how this mindset negatively affected your writing's ability to achieve its goal. You provided said goal in your first reply: to “counter the usual ‘char action game’ narrative”. Then you went back on it in this reply by writing off the primary audience of your initially stated goal as a lost cause.
In terms of genre language, I think that "action game = beatemup" is also crazy regressive. I don't think action games that stray from beatemups are "beatemup RPG/adventure/whatever hybrids", I think they are action games if they are games about action combat. I think action RPG or action adventure are good terms to describe games where the primary focus is significantly split between action combat and menuing/character progression/cutscenes/traversal/puzzles/whatever. I also don’t think any game is a “character action game” because nobody can come close to agreeing on what that means. The vast majority of the label’s supporters I’ve encountered believe it describes both Nier Automata and Devil May Cry 1. The term is not useful for describing the particular emphasis of certain games. It also doesn’t mean anything or make any sense in a vacuum. Many genre terms are nebulous but I can’t think of any others that are simply nonsensical on their surface.
As I described before I think the term “beat em up” best represents a particular type of action game, whether 2D or 3D. Games like Double Dragon or Spikeout. This subgenre’s distinction is agreed upon by the vast majority of action fans I’ve encountered, although loosely referring to games outside that subgenre as “beat em up” or it's sibling "hack n slash" is not unusual either of course. Thus “arcade(style)/conveyor belt beat em ups” is my method of differentiation when needed. In your case as I see it, an attachment to the term (well not really the term itself but to the games I describe it representing, thus leading you to your usage of the term) observably pigeonholes your interpretations of action combat, similar to people attached to the “C” term as I said before. But again, just wanting all games to be what you like and not caring about anything else is completely normal and understandable behavior. And genre terms will always be impossible to completely agree on.
Not seeing that combo MADs or challenge runs can lead players to 1CCs is completely delusional, not just because that's how it happened for me and many others I know already. But because "character action" smoothbrains already do include God Hand in their club of 8 games, very consistently, because the best players helped spread the game with popular combo videos! And the same people making combo videos and PP/Srank runs often enjoy score attack challenges as well! Regardless, the fact you imply chasing score beyond PP or Srank is inherently fruitful is completely indicative of my whole point! You may dislike the fact that Bayo or DMC are designed around score as an arbitrary metric to achieve, but acting like the games have any intention of encouraging a focus on score attack past said metrics as a typical gameplay experience is aggressively misrepresenting scoring’s role in these games. The games’ lack of said intention is not a fundamental flaw or misunderstanding of scoring, it’s a different approach you may not like. If you were more thoughtful in interpreting it as such I think it’d help you better articulate points you want to get across by (ideally) contributing to an understanding of what different styles of scoring (and anything else) can offer, which helps you compare/contrast what appeals to you and what doesn’t and why.
Your continued sweeping assumptions about imaginary action fans in your head make you look more and more underexposed to the modern action community and landscape! I think your unwillingness to engage is bad bad bad! If you strive for as much action knowledge as possible whether as a writer or dev or just a dedicated enthusiast, then I believe writing off the stuff that doesn't speak to you is not useful. But again again again, it is completely normal and understandable behavior regardless. Just something I hate seeing in other passionate action fans.
"Once you opt into combos, the goal is...." but what if that's not the only goal? What if the most popular action game franchise on the planet wants you to do combos largely to express yourself and push your technical skill? And what if this approach interests and engages FAR more players than snowbally beatemups? Are said majority of action fans simply all very stupid and uninformed and only you see the truth? Or are there maybe some valid lessons to learn about how execution requirements, the presentation of a scoring system, and arbitrary freedom affect player psychology? I think lessons can and should be learned from any and all kinds of action combat, even if you’re not interested in mastering the respective combat system yourself.
To me you are akin to somebody booting up Final Fight, not being able to sick combo juggle each enemy safely one at a time, and thus writing off all arcade beatemups as a fundamental misunderstanding of the flow inherent to all action games (which is of course, juggling enemies safely one at a time to this person). This is opposed to said player going “eh cool stuff but not for me” and carrying on well aware of his ignorance, in the event he’s so fundamentally disinterested that he cannot acknowledge the value the game offers to others.
I started out here overly nitpicking a perceived underlying bias within a video I enjoyed, hoping to maybe get some insight into my suspicion. Now I’ve confirmed I strongly disapprove of your view on genre labels for action games, but above all I've reached absolute abhorrence for your braggadocious closemindedness. Witnessing this trait can genuinely sadden me so I hope we're done here for now. Thank you for taking the time to read and reply, and best of luck with your endeavors. My final takeaway here is I've been the true fool all along, not realizing another word for "closeminded" could be “pigheaded”! Poetry! 🐷
@@boghogSTG
@@qinkhozam
"You provided said goal in your first reply: to “counter the usual ‘char action game’ narrative”."
I think you misunderstood - the goal of offering the counter-narrative isn't to convince char action game fans, it's to convince beat em up fans/devs looking towards char action games for inspiration, and to give a more effective framework for people who don't like char action games. You're correct though that I tried to tiptoe around char action games a bit too much when I really shouldn't have.
===Char action===
You've said a lot here, lemme try to organize my response :
[ _"In terms of genre language, I think that "action game = beatemup" is also crazy regressive."_ ]
I have NEVER said this, I don't know where you are taking this from. I used shmups, rail shooters & Tetris as examples in my video, they are all action games and none of them are even close to beat em ups.
[ _"I don't think action games that stray from beatemups are "beatemup RPG/adventure/whatever hybrids", I think they are action games if they are games about action combat"_ ]
Yes they are still action games, however they are NOT just beat 'em ups - they are hybrids. In the same way ARPGs are still action games at the end of the day.
[ _"The term is not useful for describing the particular emphasis of certain games"_ ]
It is, so much so that despite disliking the term and wanting to suck char action games back into bmups I constantly struggle to avoid using it because of the distinctions between the 2 genres. Just some of the distinctions :
- A decent amount of adventure or RPG elements
- Focusing on complex player movesets and freeform movement
- VERY heavy incorporation of air combat as a distinct gameplay state via high jumps, juggles, air combos, etc.
- Pretty hefty progression mechanics you can't opt out of
There's more subtle stuff too like an emphasis on player expression through the use of scoring systems as nudging, de-emphasizing snowballing with really strong free defensive mechanics, increasingly the prominance of meters, etc. AvP's gun mechanics in the second half of the game are less extreme than some of the stuff these games are doing all the time.
"Action combat" isn't how action games are defined either, else anything abstract that can't be easily boiled down to combat like Trauma Center or Mr Driller wouldn't be an action game but they both obviously are, so are shmups no matter how abstract they get. People's inability to define x or y doesn't mean it doesn't exist either - oftentimes it means they're still feeling out the distinction.
[ _"Your continued sweeping assumptions about imaginary action fans in your head make you look more and more underexposed to the modern action community and landscape!"_ ]
Sure maybe I'm under exposed - who are these scorers & bmup 1cc'ers coming from the char action communities I'm missing? Which communities should I take part in? I read stinger articles/forums, I'm in some char action oriented discords, I talk to some char action players. In my experience talking to char action fans, its legit easier to sell bmups to shmuppers and fighting game players, by a very wide margin
[ _"Acting like the games have any intention of encouraging a focus on score attack past said metrics as a typical gameplay experience is aggressively misrepresenting scoring’s role in these games. The games’ lack of said intention is not a fundamental flaw or misunderstanding of scoring, it’s a different approach you may not like."_ ]
Yes, and my point is that this is a bad way to go about it, and they should change, and I do my best to provide arguments for why this is the case. What's the problem here? It's not that I don't "understand" their goals, it's that I'm telling devs that those goals are bad and they should have different goals. Besides do you know for a fact that Bayo/DMC/etc devs wouldn't like the scoring system to be good for sustained play instead of being hard capped, especially when it wouldn't actually go against their goal as scoring-as-nudging? You don't, it's a post-hoc explanation based on the scoring systems being shit as soon as you move past S ranks. Hell, Ninja Gaiden Black and 3RE have more proper scoring systems and they do absolutely nothing to hurt the games. Mercs mode in RE4make does absolutely nothing to hurt RE4make's incredible popularity either.
I'm not gonna respond to everything cause the comments are getting *absurdly* long. But what I will say is - if you want people who will talk about the virtues of combos and S ranks/scoring as nudging you can get that anywhere, I'm too pigheaded as you say to change on this front but not everyone is. The more you promote this kind of attitude the more homogenized and uninteresting game crit will become as people try to meet every game halfway and basically follow the devs' and gamers' lead. It's far more interesting to see more extreme viewpoints defended well, rather than dishonest regurgitation of what others find appealing. That sorta crit is very offputting IMO. Also careful about appeals to popularity, they always come back to bite you
I never thought of Tetris as an action game before, but yeah, it totally is, isn't it?
Yeah absolutely, I think it's fairly common to call that whole subset of games like Tetris, Puyo, Money Exchanger, etc. "action puzzle". But honestly even then, the "puzzle" part is more about how it looks, at the end of the day it's just a really abstract action game
Awesome. Love the cheeky RE4 clips.
Huh, that's an interesting why to frame things for a game dev.
Love this channel and appreciate a nuanced respectful talk about these kind of games.
Thanks a ton! I did talk a little bit more shit in this one, MarkMSX's style is rubbing off on me
@@boghogSTG I think it can be refreshing with some tact. There's a handful of things Mark says that I don't agree with but I appreciate him saying it because he's a rare, necessary breed of critic. I think if anyone should rub off on a UA-camr, it's him.
I have no idea how to contact you, so I'll just ask my question here.
What is your opinion on roguelike shmups? Is that a dead idea at its core? How would you design such a game? That's a new trend I see quite often and it seems pretty interesting to me because it changes how you engage with the game completely to the point where it feels like you're not playing a shmup.
My perspective on this is that randomization, while it makes the game feel fresh on every run if executed properly, restricts you as a level designer in both creativity and difficulty since you can't put in your game huh memo aka unsidereadable sections that the player can't do on their first attempt and once you get out of novice territory, shmups do stop being reactable, that's their nature. To me the most memorable and exciting pieces of shmup leveldesign have always been those that require a bit of thinking and save-state homework: doj stage 4 and 5, basically everything in ketsui, stage 5 in raiden 4. On the other hand, roguelikes are replayable due to the stuff you can do with builds and the decision-making that comes from that.
Yea I pretty much agree with you, procgen has a kind of "averaging out" effect on game design, everything has to be more standardized and the gameplay becomes kinda improv heavy and flaily. But it's like that across the board in action games, whether you're talking about platformers or shmups or what have you, so I just think it's a tradeoff you have to make, and different players will prefer different things.
That said, I think shmup gameplay is too subtlety and nuanced driven, and if you're going in the roguelike direction you should think about making it more discrete and simplified into more pre-baked interactions. Having shmups be hard & memoable helps because it creates these distinct anchor points that structure your experience with them & create a satisfying learning curve. If it's just all improv, then it becomes hard to really approach learning the games strategically, and it all starts blending together. A lot of action-roguelikes run into this issue where they just kinda blend together, Synthetik being the biggest culprit for me despite having fun core gameplay.
You wanna go the Spelunky route - have some really discrete, clear mechanics/interactions that, when shuffled around via procgen, create very memorable scenes or scenarios that'll stick in your mind. Basically you gotta make the gameplay resemble turn based stuff as well. Binding of Isaac achieves this in a different way, I think a lot of the most interesting parts of that game are the times when you cleared out a map and are making decisions on how to spend your resources, which powers to get, whether or not you should gamble, etc.
I am just recently getting into action based combat again. I hope I dont buy a game that plays like "Parry the Platypus". I also hope that you dont get annoyed with me if I keep asking questions about character action games since I only know two people who can explain it to me.
this video has been fact checked by real video gamer patriots
Send gamer god association my regards
The moral of the story of The Electric Underground and Boghogs latest videos is that I need to play Spikeout. What are you playing it on?
We play it on the og hardware ofc :) but I've heard rumors that Supermodel 3 is good. Also it's getting ported in the new Yakuza at the start of next year so if you're a Yakuza fan already that might be worth picking up
wasn't expecting to see ys 2 at the end there! what did you think of ys 1 and 2? they might be flawed but personally i enjoyed them a lot(the pc engine version at least)
I only played the Chronicles port and they're pretty fun. I love bump combat, I love the insanely fast pace where it's almost like a parody of RPG progression & a lot of the bosses are basically shmup-like which is always good fun. I think I prefer Ys 2 tho it's way too easy + it de emphasizes bump combat too much thanks to spells, but it felt a lot less amateur. Ys 1 Chronicles straight up felt like someone's first video game at times LOL
Great video, made me consider new things thanks.
Thanks, happy to hear that it was good food for thought!
I can't help but think Streets of Rage 4 also does this poorly because of many of the super armored enemies in late game as well as the reliance on special moves costing you health.
Yea I'm really not a fan of armored enemies in bmups but I will say that SOR4 still does it pretty well considering it inherits most of its mechanics from the old games. Throws are still in and very useful, crowd control's still really important, grouping enemies up & keeping them on one side is the way to go, etc.
What's the issue with specials costing health though? I have a bit of a theory that they nerfed your ability to cancel moves with specials in order to balance out the fact that you can recover health, but besides that I wouldn't say spending health for specials is bad in any way.
@@boghogSTG There aren't enough defensive options like running or rolling away like in Streets of Rage 3 when dealing with enemies and you're most of the time forced to use special moves that drain health unless you hit enemies and those later enemies that I mentioned are a real pain in higher difficulties like Mania + and some times you can end up losing almost all your health if you get hit and it de-incentivizes you to want to use special moves.
For the average player, that would be enough to have them not want to constantly use them.
I typically play Axel and I really hate how you can't run or dodge. Axel is both slow and has a slow jump. There are instances where the devs intended for you, the player, to dodge attacks by jumping, which can work sometimes, but the amount of enemies with anti-air attacks does outweigh its situational usefulness and you are forced to use special attacks to either tank hits from enemies with armor or bosses, or even not get hit from projectiles.
It was a mistake on part of the developers to not give characters like Axel a running animation even though he had one at one point in development but was scrapped because the developers thought they knew better by making it more frustrating for the average player to know every single intricacy when dealing with certain enemies.
It's that level of complacency that I really dislike and I think with the success of this game they're going to think that they are really creative and smart and double down on it with a sequel if it ever does happen.
With all these annoying enemy types, I'm surprised they never made an anti-special attack enemy that punishes you for using you're most reliably offensive moves. That would be the cherry on top of this already unbalanced game.
So tl;dr, game is unbalanced and rewards constant offense over defense or in this case, offense is the only defense. Watch any Mania + playthrough and you'll know what I mean.
@@doclouis4236 You're talking to the wrong person buddy cause almost everything you listed is a positive to me - I'm happy they didn't give most of the characters a run or defensive moves because like you say it forces you to always be on the offensive, and that's where players have to take most risks and make quick decisions with real costs & rewards. I can see how the health drain could be discouraging but that's a huge part of the skill progression in these games - knowing when you should use a special move to put yourself in an advantageous position, knowing when you're about to get fucked and using them defensively to minimize damage, etc.
They did kinda fuck that up with the ridiculous broken DLC moves though. Had a blast with Mania+ myself despite that though, even though I doubt I'll 1cc that mode cuz of how insanely long the game is...
@@doclouis4236"offense is the only defense" wtf that's good. I'm supposed to be blocking in a beat em up or something? No
@@ishimoto1597 The game has no mobility options like evading attacks, except slowly side-stepping up or down, or jumping.
But jumping doesn't always work since basic enemies like Galcia now have a larger hitbox that can still hit you even if your jumping and there are so many other enemies that either negate your jump with a consistent anti-air attack when you jump besides them or they sometimes surround you beside basic Galsia enemies that do the same thing that I mentioned before. It's absurd. There's little opportunity to evade enemies and preserve health. So yes, I'd rather take blocking or anything else instead of being handicapped.
Great video! What's your opinion on the Vampire Survivor-like genre of games?
Insert picture of dry wojak here
@@boghogSTGOk but jokes aside, that's only the conclusion to your opinion. What's the argumentation?
@@quadpad_music Well the basic gameplay seems to capture the snowballing principle pretty well since it's basically the only thing the game has going on in it moment-to-moment. Problem is that doesn't matter much cuz the actual moment to moment gameplay is almost besides the point - the core of the game is compulsion that comes from rng and progression.
It deeply disgusts me because it has the worst excesses in game design and is essentially designed to be a time sucking slot machine that uses most brain hacks in the book to keep you stuck in a compulsion loop. It's like the most scummy parts of Diablo but without the effort put into its basic mechanics/systems, just purely a progression system - like a gamification of video games that reduces the main meat of games the moment to moment gameplay into a means to an end, just a way to play slot machines. The fact that it's taking over the bullet hell tags is extra salt in the wound cause it goes against almost everything that makes arcade games good minus really shallow stuff like big numbers & items
Shit like this makes me wanna say "fuck it" to game design entirely because it inevitably leads to figuring out the best ways to manipulate people and get them addicted. I wouldn't be surprised if soulless corporate suits start studying this game and incorporating what they learn into social media. Maybe throw some AI into the mix as well, why not. Truly an abomination.
As a side note, the fact that people think this sorta design is ok as long you don't monetize it is the type of peak delusion that gamers are uniquely good at. They're allowing devs to take every single step towards exploitative micro transaction ridden gacha trash, but then what the devs should be idiots who don't put the two together and add monetization? Why? Some have families to feed, some have extra yachts to buy. The idea that devs should have a moral struggle every time they consider monetizing their already extremely gambling-like games and win every time is dire. People deserve this industry & its excesses.
You make a lot of neat observations about enemy design across different games, but overall, they don't support your thesis that action games are competitive. You're not in a competition against the computer. The computer is not competing with you. Enemy design is simply a set of static rules that you can learn and play around, and this can be set up to generate more or less interesting and layered interactions.
Saying "action games are competitive" implies that people use action games to compete with each other, such as in Style Tournaments, which are a common way that people compete against each other in these single player games.
It depends on how you define competition I suppose, whether it hinges on human agency or not - if we talk about a competition between a human and LLM (or really just any type of incredibly complex probabilistic AI), are we talking about it in real or metaphorical terms?
...That said the thesis is mostly just a buzz-phrase, similar to the whole action games are passive line that Atsushi Inaba dropped. At the end of the day I just wanna highlight that looking at SP games as a battle between 2 agents with short & longterm goals and game plans is really helpful abstraction, or at least it really is to me. So if you found it neat, that's all I can ask for :D
@@boghogSTG even then, a single player game doesn't have a clear win or loss for the AI like an AI controlling a player in a multiplayer match.
It's cute framing, I think the thesis could have been worded better.
@@evilagram There's probably ways yea, would need someone a lot better with words than me though. Brain was already shriveling up into a raising trying to find this bowtie to wrap my vaguely connected thoughts in💀
@@boghogSTG the central piece of advice I give to most games writers is, Every Essay is an Argument. Focus on your thesis (the statement you're trying to prove/disprove), and everything else should be evidence for your thesis.
@@evilagram Oh yeah its definitely really good advice for staying on topic. But wording your thesis in a way thats snappy short & catchy is the eternal struggle especially cuz you usually can't do it without being wrong and or reductive. "Viewing action games as competitions as a metaphor helps build interesting player-enemy interactions & dynamics" is some shit youd find on ResearchGate not yt
I’d be careful in taking translations as literal. When he said passive his actual description was actually reaction not passivity. And this is true all action games are really reaction games. It’s why reaction time is the primitive building block in all action games. Anyway cool video.
Note: sun and punishment has collision boxes linger jn player area. Maybe some other rail shooters do like planet harriers but anyway just wanted to point that out.
Also looks like you left out gun games but good to see Tetris which I think is one of the purest (re)action games.
Yeah I was worried about him meaning something else in Japanese that wasn't captured in the translation but thinking about it more I think the way I interpreted it is correct.
He doesn't say "reactive" as just a general abstract idea because when you think in those terms the description has no meaning - all games are "reactive" in the response to stimuli sense, and all real time game involve reaction times in some capacity - this by itself doesn't imply any kind of design framework at all. I think his goal was to sell the idea of using situational design over functional design, and the reactive stuff is just solid grounding for it.
Also I do actually think that by "reactive" he means passive/defensive. Not really because of anything he says in GDC directly, but because of the direction in which Platinum games have gone - strong dodge/defensive options oriented around an enemy's attacks, over abundance of super armor that further shuts down proactive play, CRAZY effective positioning tools that let you reset snowballing, an emphasis on set pieces, etc.
S&P1-2 do have a lot more lingering/foreground stuff than usual yea, they almost directly use shmup patterns at times (2 especially just turns into a twin stick shmup sometimes), Starfox does too but usually in the form of environmental stuff. It's just a relative thing - since rail shooters are literally just 3D shmups, it's a nice point of comparison. They can both use the same type of attack (projectiles directly aimed at the player) and it'll work extremely well in one and lead to lots of snowballing, but then be a wet fart in the other.
@@boghogSTG Combining this with what you said to daniil3308 about procgen, couldn’t the “averaging out” effect there actually pair quite nicely with that defensive style when combined with a high difficulty? Such a combination might let you use snowbally design more confidently in that context without it coming off as unfair, and/or allow players to escape that snowballing without doing too much damage to the overall longevity of the game. If my intuition is correct, anyway.
Then again, maybe an alternative take is to make that snowballing even more extreme on the enemy’s side, thus further validating the player’s escape options…I guess that’s sort of an inversion of the usual relationships, but I also have no idea how that’d work. I’m mostly just spitballing here ^^;
@@technicolormischief-maker5683 Yeah, if your game's got too much (meaningful) RNG & enemies that can naturally corner & trap you, then really strong defensive options help prevent unfair checkmate situations and are kinda necessary. 2D beat em ups have the desperation attacks to offset the at times ridiculous enemy RNG after all. It's just that if you make the defensive options too strong that completely invalidates any advantage-building enemies do by letting you reset on a whim, so as a result even if a lot of the ingredients for snowballing are there, it just won't happen in practice. Tying defense to a limited resource helps a lot with this tho
L take bro, every thing should just be handled in a cutscene or in rpg turn based combat
Yea you know what they say the best action games are JRPGs
I kinda agree but I tend to like games with restricted spaces but enough options to deal with things. Never too interesting when your extremely limited or given too much options.
I tend to like when last-resort tools are tied to resources - either bombs like in shmups or health like in beat em ups. Can have those "ok shit I'm trapped" moves to pull out when you've made an unsalvageable number of mistakes that aren't busted as hell
Good stuff, thanks Bog Hog!
Super interesting, never really thought about action games like this. Love this kind of content
Perfect, giving people food for thought & fresh insights is all I want 😎
excellent analysis as usual Bog Hog.
Thanks Kai
Nice video definitely opened my eyes to some stuff
Thanks, awesome to hear! Hopefully I didnt ruin any games for you hehe
...Who am I kidding if it did spoil stuff for you, it's like a badge of honor for me 😎
Amazing video! No rules, only tools!
Glenn Villpu was on fire with that line
I think that your options to get out of the snowball cycle matters just as much as the presence of a snowball cycle in the first place.
I remember despite not being super good at videogames back then (or even now) and not really being the greatest analyst of game design noticing the same kind of concept when I tried a crushing playthrough of Uncharted. Getting hit made you lose life, and since life recover with time, that mean that time is your main currency. Spending time recovering life let ennemies get closer to you, where they'll end up having more opportunity to attack you. The goal of the player is therefor to use his differents attack to gain breathing room to be able to recover life without getting covered.
There is a lot of differences between Resident Evil 4 and Uncharted, but a pretty big one that I think create tons of other in cascade is how moving is a powerful option. Moving in Resident Evil 4 throw off guard the aim of projectile throwing ennemies, can allow to escape the basic grab with just the super slow walkback, allow you to run past enemies with melee attack if you know what you're doing, and even the super salvadore have a short window where you can run just under his chainsaw ! No wonder they don't allow you to shoot when doing this ! It doesn't make you outright invincible, but it means that a lot of cornering can have a potentiel to be escaped.
By contrast running in Uncharted is either a terrible move or something you do when you're at a difficulty level where the enemies aren't threats. There are moments where it's worth doing, but due to how difficulty work (more damage and more health for the enemies), the more the enemies are a threat that may corner you, the more the risk outweight the rewards. As a result, navigating around the pressure in Uncharted boil down to either use the better move (shotgun) that only available when you fucked up and the enemies are close to you, or memorizing the position of the enemies to snipe then before they have any time to surround you (special mention to uncharted water room, full of destructibles cover and enemies that come from multiple point that force you to memorize the spawn points or die).
Yea it's very true. You can think of it as 3 things, positive snowballing (in your favor), negative snowballing (in the enemy's favor) and advantage reset (back to neutral levels of advantage). RE4's run acts like a reset mechanic, and indeed it's something that makes the game feel less exciting because you know you could run away and reposition if things get bad. That's why IMO the game is at its best in very cramped areas like the cabin - your actions have a lot more consequences there.
I should have actually compared Final Fight's and God Hand's movement now that you mention it - God Hand has RE4's problem where if you want you can just herd enemies around by running away. Final Fight doesn't let you do that, if you fucked up there's no way to reset anything besides using some of your health for a special move. Similar to what you describe in Uncharted but in the context of a beat em up specifically.
Nah I was kinda arguing the opposite. While they may have overtuned running, I think it makes the game more exciting, as it incentivize moving rather than just staying in place, memorize the spawn and using the shotgun when they get close (memorizing enemies spawn and using pore powerful options when they get close is still useful in RE or in any other game, it's just than thankfully there is more to the game than that!). Having the carrot of advantage reset that i can earn with good use of my tools (it's not like running make leon completely invincible, his hurtbox while mobile can still be hit by ennemies hitboxes, so the more ennemies you knockdown or just hitstun the safer repositioning yourself get)put an emphasis on improvising even if the odds are turning against me.
I'm at the resident evil 4 water room on professional right now and while I won't criticize this place just for being hard (damn, if i had a nickel for every tps with a room that can be described as a "water room" that have a difficulty spike...) it have a bit of a sour "uncharted like" difficulty at the beginning. If I attempt and fail to snipe the two archers on the other side of the room, the enemies snowballing get ridiculous : I'm surrounded on three directions and archers that can drain my life and inflict hitstun attack me periodically. I don't even bother trying when this happen, and I think that having more situations like this would overall make the game worse@@boghogSTG
@@lisrinbastian2461 Well the exact points where a lot of snowballing is too much snowballing is gonna come down to tastes.
I think repositioning is really important but it should be incrementally advantageous. Whereas Leon's run is VERY close to a full reset (provided you're not locked into a tight space) to the point where you can run back & forth picking off enemies 1 by one with barely any risk if you're patient.
It lets you improv in the sense that it opens up all kinds of potential approaches to encounters, but it does so at the cost of devaluing your decisions & wins. Aiming at the right enemy at the right time and getting the kick just in the nick of time doesn't matter much if you could just run back and try it again after failing. The satisfying type of improv IMO comes from necessity - when games put you into difficult high pressure situations and you manage to overcome them with good thinking and quick reflexes.
If the risk taking is voluntary, then in my book it's more of toy sandbox rather than an action game - action games imply pressure & intensity to me that you shouldn't be able to opt out of. Imagine a horror game where you can just opt out of every scary situation/mechanic, you could make one but it'd be almost self-undermining in a way.
Getting frustrated/discouraged by this sorta difficulty is pretty normal and I get it putting you off (I had a hard time getting into Final Fight cuz of the enemy snowballing) but you really gotta view it long-term. The frustration will fade as you get better at the game, while the fun parts will become more & more fun.
...That said the RE4 snipers are kinda lame cuz it's a simple beginner memorization trap - they're trivial to kill once you know what you're doing, but a nightmare if you don't. Ideally they should remain a challenging threat long term so there's no feeling of disappointment once you figure out the one trick. I have not played Uncharted but by the sound of it, it relies a lot on those kinda hard memorization challenges where it's hell until you figure out That One Strat.
@@boghogSTG Rethinking a bit about this (and having lost a super long comment so at least i'm gonna try to be a bit more concise) it think that tetris and power-ups in shmups are much better exemple to what i want to talk about than a game that have much bigger problems and that i haven't played in years.
Tetris players don't compete against time (which can be inserted into any game and is thus not a relevant criteria) but against height. The higher the height of your stack is, the more limited your options are. There is three types of tetris that are popular currently : the modern variant with little to no snowballing due to the ability of the players to keep a piece moving forever and is thus only played in multiplayer, the nes/gb variation with very high snowballing due to the piece locking in place at the first frame they touch another one, and the most popular one across high level players, the tgm that allow player to only keep moving a piece for a limited amont of time, creating consequences for actions and allowing recoveries to always be within grasp. (at a higher level, as the player will deal with 20g that make fall instantaneous, structure will be more of an obstacle than height, but bad structure tend to occur at higher height and the same concept still applies)
Power up in shmup are a form of "hard" snowballing that is enforced by the games mechanics rather than being the result of a loss of some more abstract thing like space. Get power ups and you gain a more powerful shot that you can use to kill more enemies, controlling more of the space and getting more power ups. Get touch and it's now the enemies that have the advantage, making you loose part or all of your amassed power. Yet high player or enemies snowballing is usually seen as a flaw, and early game with power-up like gradius 1 or r-type have rank system that heavily decrease upon getting hit, creating practically two distinct games rather than considering that the player lost an advantage and calling it a day.
If the developers of raizing saw there games as a simple competition between players and computers, they would have considered each power up to simply be a competitive advantage gained by the player and would never have thought of increasing the enemies firepower to the point that getting a powerup represent an active decision, as it would have been the equivalent of allowing a struggling player in a moba a few free levels to make him catch up.
(overall, shmup while hard don't necessarly try super hard to snowball the players. Enemies invading the screen with their shot is definitively a thing, but for exemple you rarely see fleets of zakos with aimed shots changing strategies if they are left in high number to aim at and around the player to counter streaming and occupy more of the screen)
The extreme ideal of a game centered around snowballing would be that any advantage gained by the player result in a situation where while it may be theoretically possible to lose ground to the enemies, a player that gained an advantage would be in practice always good enough to further capitalize on it. On the reverse, any advantage gained by the enemies would result in a situation where while winning might be theoretically possible by a superior player, the player bad enough to get advantage lost in the first place wouldn't be good enough to stop the enemies from further capitalizing on it. While it's interesting to have a video that serve as a reminder that snowballing isn't inherently a bad thing (one of the few good things about space invaders is the snowballing), I think that there is a limit to design a game around the snowballing, and that most games should try to create intermediate situations where the player gained a (dis)advantage but the result isn't necessarily guaranteed and skillful play can avoid (or minimize) the use of resources.
(not really sure if i really said anything you didn't know with that comment, but i think that some of the interpretation evoked in the last paragraph maybe somewhat resume the state of mind of the most sceptic people toward the video)
@@lisrinbastian2461
I think the core problem you're running into is that you think I said "more snowballing = better game", but I explicitly talk about how this isn't the case in the vid. Between covering how both sides fight for an advantage in the games I discussed & towards the end where I use all the Ninja Gaiden clips. I called it "competitive" not "snowbally" for a reason. Think about competition - an engaging competition gives both sides ways to forcefully gain advantage through skillful play, otherwise the first move wins essentially. It's just that in the case of the computer, there's no thing such as "skillful play" so it gets a lot more abstract and messy, they have to rely on rubberbanding, crutches & resets (like end of encounters).
I think in your answer you described exactly how Tetris players compete against time - since blocks come out more & more rapidly and in many versions like the NES one they get locked in immediately or at least quickly, it creates a lot more risk the faster the pace of the game gets. Ofc even in games where you can rotate pieces forever this is an element because (unless I'm missing some technique) you can't move any piece anywhere, once it falls your movement choices will depend on your current stack. I guess I didn't emphasize the competition for screen space aspect enough - but it's given meaning by time fundamentally, remove that and the game's dynamics suffer which is why so many people prefer versions where you can't rotate pieces forever.
Power ups are snowballing of course but
1. Gradius/R-Type style power ups are obvious and not really interesting (outside of Gradius' rank). I constantly emphasize gradual gains/losses in the vid and talk about how viewing snowballing dynamics from a zoomed out perspective obscures lackluster dynamics during encounters
2. Some of the best shmups around don't have them (Crimzon Clover World Ignition, Ikaruga, later CAVE games) while the control of space/time is nearly universal in bullet hell shmups
Regarding Yagawa games - they're pretty tricky because almost every signifier is flipped upside down, even calling the items you pick up "power ups" is misleading since they essentially become a hazard that the game uses to limit your movement space in a way similar to bullets, just a lost softer & longer term. Conflating them with R-Type's system is going to just lead to confusion, even if they are called the same. I can't really tell you if Gregga rank is competitive or not since I'm not good enough at its scoring - whether it's competitive would really just depend on whether the player can capitalize on high rank via higher scores (I know that powering up increases tick point gain for example) or not. Greg's snowballing & rubber banding is intresting though, I dunno if I can boil it down to competition exactly, even if when you look at more isolated instances the competitions more clear. Sadly idk enough about Greggas scoring to say anything for sure, since whether certain actions are beneficial or not for the player doesnt just come down to survival but also score
"overall, shmup while hard don't necessarly try super hard to snowball the players"
Now this though is complete nonsense, that's a huge chunk of their difficulty. Your mistake is that you're looking at specific enemy behaviors, rather than the general dynamics. Popcorn don't have to do anything special - as soon as you fuck up your streaming and are left with little space, you're essentially fucked and the only way to reverse it without going for extremely risky dodges is to do a restream, which itself becomes impossible if you don't have much room & the shots you're streaming are dense enough. What's more is, as I pointed out in the vid, time being a factor basically means that by being cornered the game is giving itself more time to spawn more enemies and further corner you
The fact that the enemies don't need to do anything special to achieve this is kinda the point & why it's interesting - the competition is baked into the mechanics & conventions of the genre, that's why the genre's got such a strong set of fundies that are hard to stray away from without losing a lot.
It's not just that snowballing is not always a bad thing, it's that it's a pre-requisite for games to have tactical gameplay, without it you simply don't get meaningful decisions period. A game without snowballing would be something like a rhythm game with a fully linear scoring system - fun as an execution challenge, but devoid of any decision making. It's basically just a question of how often you wanna reset said snowballing, and how many crutches you wanna give the losing side. Which is a question competitive MP games actively grapple with even more
Also our fucking reply length is snowballing but I really appreciate the back n forth 🤜🤛
Great breakdown!!
any shmup recomendation? i've been trying to get into the genre but don't know what game should i play first. great video btw
Thanks!
It really depends on your tastes but *Zero Ranger* is most likely going to be a safe bet. For straightforward bullet hell games, *Dodonpachi Resurrection* & *Mushihimesama* via modern ports are good entry points since they have a lot of modes with a ton of novice modes that slowly ramp up, along with just not being too hard to 1cc. *Dodonpachi Daioujou* , *Ketsui* & *Esprade* are probably the best straightforward bullet hell games IMO.
If you're into crazier games then check out *Guwange* , it's easily in my top 3 but its mechanics might take some time to click (you control two characters, one working more like a rail shooter crosshair). If you want some games that encourage scoring then check out *Muchi Muchi Pork* (you get lives every 10 million points, so the more you score the more lives you'll have), *Psyvariar Delta* (scoring well lets you unlock harder stages) or *Radiant Silvergun* (you power up your weapons by chaining enemies, which becomes mandatory in late game). *Armed Police Batrider* is one of the better ways of getting into Yagawa's style of gameplay, though playing Muchi Pork before this will make it easier to get into IMO.
need source of that macho man in the "back to bmups" transition...
Managed to track this down again just 4 u buddy
www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm14481431
@@boghogSTG you are the BEST! thank you beast
based glenn vilppu chad
He's so cool
Great video!
Thanks!
5:00 wait poison and hugo are final fight? lol
Yeah thats their origin, fighting games and beat em ups had really close ties
1:53 I don't know why but I laughed
cool channel
oh Yeah we need more action game essays
Get to it then I'm pooped
What's the name of the song at the beginning?
A track from the Under Defeat OST (dreamcast version, not HD), not gonna say which one so go listen to the whole thing cause it's amazing 😎
Alr alr lol ty@@boghogSTG
Very good video
Thank you
hey Boghog, what action rpg do you think that actually passes in your criteria as a "good action game"?
Nioh I guess, mostly thanks to having a fuckton of meters. I also love Ys Origin/Felghana but only because of their bosses, which by their nature aren't very snowbally.
@@boghogSTG what do you think of Ark of Napetism?
@@soratheorangejuicemascot5809 It's ok, certainly better than Ys 7 onwards but it feels like a sloppy unrefined version of Origin/Felghana. I often didn't feel properly leveled up for the area (good luck trying to deal damage if you get to the final boss without upgrading your swords). A lot of the bosses have a whole lot of jank going on, stuff like crappy hitboxes or kinda lame attack patterns. Ernst was really stupid and is so insanely RNG driven that I imagine no damage is basically just frustrating slot machines. Maybe Nightmare + catastrophe was kind of a throwaway difficulty in it though and it's better on Hard, I only played the former though so it soured the game for me.
@@boghogSTG not a fan of Ys9 after trying the demo. Something feels off playing it.
great vid
Great!
cooming form a guy who used to play primarly and only single player action games hack slashes ,RE etc..as you state and now being one of the most mlg bois in the WD. double master rank SF6 , top 100 GG strive evo potemkin etc... and 112th sf3 player. You are correct.
We lost a brother😔
This is a very good analysis but
Man explains game design I do not find particularly fun and seems to view it as the only valid way
I just don't think players need to be skilled tacticians to have fun with action... and snowballing can create a lot of going between frustration (when disadvantaged) and boredom (when advantaged). There's nothing wrong with game design just asking you to be reactive and not think 10 steps ahead about enemy and boss patterns you don't even know about yet
Thanks! Don't worry about any of that shit, if you found the analysis useful in some way even if it's a what-to-avoid guide then it's all good. I finished it with a "no rules, only tools" Vilppu quote for a reason
...That said, are you sure you don't find it particularly fun? Or are the particular examples I used skewed too far in one direction or another for your liking? Cause for example Resident Evil 4's pretty hard to hate as a game IMO.
I don't mind upping the amount of frustration in games personally, the obsession with flow state is leading devs to treat players like babies - it's ok to get frustrated with a game and come back later, some of my fav games got that reaction out of me initially. Boredom's a big problem but that happens when the balance gets messed up and the devs *stop* thinking about competition. It's precisely the crappy game scenario I described when showing the zombie tomb section from Ninja Gaiden Sigma 1
@@boghogSTG TLDR I've decided snowball effects can be important, but it's also important to keep giving both the player and their enemy agency, and level the playing field at several points to prevent frustration/boredom from setting in too much. It's important to challenge players, but that can be done in a variety of ways and doesn't simply come down to tactical pushes.
I actually haven't played most of the stuff you were describing in particular, but I have played rail shooters like Star Fox 64 and Kid Icarus Uprising, and at least one Platinum game... I think they all handle tension very well, especially in harder difficulties.
I guess I usually view snowball effects in games as a negative; By the time they're really hitting you it is often too late to do anything about it, and instead of having a way out by exercising some skill in the moment-- or instead of having space to get back on your feet-- you're just spanked into the ground. You don't really learn anything at all since you can't get back on the right footing to try anything.
On the other hand, if you're in the advantage because of a tactical advantage you might have just accidentally grabbed, you might be continually effortlessly pummeling your foes... and also not learning anything.
I suppose that's only how it is when snowball effects are *too* exaggerated though, because at the end of the day a lot of great games have this effect to some extent... but I guess it's often just as important to have moments that level the playing field so that you or your enemies aren't stuck in a rough spot for too long.
I think of the fight with Senator Armstrong in Metal Gear Rising: You can actually rush straight up to him right away and pull a string of attacks, but it takes a LOT to stop him from charging up his more powerful attacks. You're both pretty much continuously on the same level as each other since you both pretty consistently have the opportunity to deal damage, but will sometimes get combo'd by each other for a short time... the challenge arises from this fact. It's not too tough to stay out of the way, but you won't accomplish anything in doing so. You've gotta constantly think about what's happening in the moment, and it demands enough of you that you don't need to be thinking about several steps ahead... and it's still hard enough (on Hard mode) that I have yet to beat this fight, ahah...
@@hahasamian8010 Well first off, the important point isn't when and how often you reset advantages, rather I want to encourage thinking in terms of advantage/disadvantage to begin with. You could build a lot of mechanics & systems that allow for a ton of snowballing into both directions, but then decide that the snowballing leads to gameplay that's TOO momentum driven and add some resets to balance this out. To an extent all games will have to do this, if not mid fight then at least in between fights, to prevent being boring. And even the most snowbally games tend to have momentum resets (bombs in bullet hell shmups, desperation attacks that cost health in Final Fight). It's all about approaching the problem from the right direction, instead of prescribing exact solutions necessarily.
That said, I'm really not a fan of Platinum's output including Armstrong specifically because it feels like the fights exist in a state of stasis where your only engagement with boss fights is finding openings in their scripted attacks to do more damage. Sometimes they have some hitstun states & counters you can play around with, but even that isn't as common as it should be. It's less that they reset the advantage, and more that there's really not much of an advantage to be gained on either side outside of meters.
After a while they all just feel exactly the same - dodge/parry telegraphed attack, counter with as many attacks as you can get away with. The only variation comes from timing, how many attacks you have to counter back to back, and statistical differences. Like a glorified game of simon says, where you're watching a series of cool cutscenes play out and attack the boss in between them. Even when this is hard (Armstrong's def not an easy boss), it's just boring IMO.
Dark Souls games suffered from this big time as well until Elden Ring. It felt like you just spanked bosses during their wait animation and taht was the whole gameplay, even if you misdirected their attacks, it was a lot of risk for very little gain. Elden Ring's addition of the stamina/stagger system though made sure that every single extra opening you find actually builds to something - and if you can find them back-to-back you will get a nice stagger, some time to heal/apply buffs or extra damage. Now, in ER this can feel a little to exploitable where you shut down bosses without letting them even do much, but this is just a matter of creating reset points where they reset their stagger bar, more boss phases, etc. The central combat dynamic is very solid. In fact, Nioh does this (and did it first) by having bosses manually reset their stamina bar.
@@boghogSTG Neat to have this discussion with you, although I'm not sure there's much more I can say-
I think that alongside the aggressive pacing, the variety of ways enemies attack in games like MGR and KIU are what keep it exciting and engaging. Kid Icarus in particular has a lot of instances where enemies attack or defend in very unique ways you have to watch out for, so it keeps you on your toes a lot, especially as different groups of these enemies are presented to you. I'd say that's the biggest appeal of this sort of design! It could have also had more staggering, but I think that would have just slowed down the pace... well, except for the land sections, which actually do have a bit more snowballing alongside the larger health pools!
@@boghogSTG Great video and I've been enjoying reading through the comments, which include more elaboration such as what you are giving here. It's a very different school of thought from my guy Saur who didn't get on much with 3D Ninja Gaiden and Nioh and loved Clover/Platinum for the freedom of player expression and styling on enemies that their systems offer!
It's probably just me, but I can't tell whether you're for or against rail-shooter game design. The way you make it sound is that they're less engaging than shmups unless it's something like sin and punishment where gravity is added to the mix.
Damn looks like I'm nailing that fence sitting observer video essayist vibe then! Yea I'm not a fan of rail shooters overall but the genre has a lot of potential. S&P does a lot of things really well, including having a lot of projectiles in the play area, and having a crapton of targets. If a rail shooter captures those bullet hell shmuppy dynamics it'll be one of my fav games ever I think
Actually, Guwanges basically kinda what I want out of a rail.shooter but without the 3D
Great
*good action games are competitive
7:16 what emulator did you use to play spike out
Supermodel 3, just make sure to grab Supermodel's Assistant GUI so you don't have to use a fuckin command line
@@boghogSTG thanks
you're showing NG here as a joke though right or do you just hate these enemies lol
I hate those enemies and figured I'd rather shit talk games I love overall than get say DMC fans salty LOL
NG manages to have the best shit ever and the worst shit ever side by side
wrong
Word
Eww Scrubcalibur VI, at least show footage from better games such as SC2, 4 or even 5 (aka 3d third strike)
Forgive me it had to be done, I wanted to avoid including Automata at all costs cause if I saw footage of that game this vid would turn into 10 min of me expressing frustration with Platinum's combat design and nothing else
@@boghogSTG Hahaha fair enough, Quick and good video btw as a casual God Hand enjoyer myself.
@@Reayashin Thanks man!
@@boghogSTGplatinum games trying not to add qtes and minigames into their action games (IMPOSSIBLE)
@@Thonato420 Yes Kamiya-san I will gladly play another crappy Space Harrier clone if I get crumbs of combat again.......
I understand what you mean, but I can't take the video seriously when you start from a clearly false premise. You're changing the meaning of the word “competition” to conclude that action games are competitive. With this kind of reasoning, you can conclude anything, such as that single player games are actually multiplayer, just by changing the meaning of "single player".
In fact, because of this “fallacy”, you end up undermining the very idea that you're offering an opposing view to that of the platinum dev, which is kind of the intention of the video. If you base your whole idea on “action games are competitive”, but you're using a false, ultra generic definition of what competition is, then you can very well take the core of the Platinum dev's idea, consider that to be “competition” in some way (remember, competition can be anything) and now the two ideas are no longer in opposition!
And of course, action games can be competitive in the original sense of the word, as long as they have some kind of score, and even if they don't, people can compete based on other things (who can finish the game the fastest, for example). But that's not the subject of the video.
"I understand what you mean" is where you shoulda ended this comment.
1. Competition has not only been used for "fake agents" like characters, AI, etc. but it has even been applied to objects that have no implied agency at all like products - people say that products compete against each other for example, ads compete for your attention, and so many more examples. Hell, we're offering *competing definitions* , competing theories. Not sure where you're getting your definition that excludes non-human competition but it's plain wrong.
2. The goal isn't to debunk Platinum but to convey an idea through contrast, and you seemed to have understood it so what's the issue? You can swap out a word in Atsushi Inaba's speech but then there's step 2 of actually defining it and contrasting it. You can swap out "action games are passive" with "action games are gsgdsvc" and my vid with "action games are yrejgod" and then still have perfectly workable definitions of "gsgdsvc/yrejgod" provided in the talk/vid itself. So really you'd just have 2 competing ideas of "competition" being elaborated on - nothing substantial would change.