The one thing I'll give Federation Force is that none of the bad elements revolve around Samus and what happens to her. That is a definite plus because Samus is a character I like and if someone tried to charge her of the crime of this game having been released, she can plead no contest to that without issue.
But being Samus in Other M was still fun enough for the most part that the rest didn't completely ruin things, in my opinion.
Yup. She felt fast and powerful and very badass in the game, on a tactile level, similar to how she "felt" in the 2D games. It's always hard to describe, but there's a lot of stuff Other M got right on a very basic level that was obscured by the more large-scale things they got terribly wrong.
I want the next game to be like Other M in how Samus controls and in the isometric/quasi-sidescrolling perspective. That stuff just works.
Really? Until I got the Plasma Beam I felt weak as shit. You basically needed to do the annoyingly slow kill moves on anything bigger than a geemer in order to kill things before the heat death of the universe.
Running around was the only part of the controls that felt legit good. And then they put you in tight one-direction corridors with no chance to run around exploring.
FF might be the rare game that would have been better off without the well known license.
Rare? This happens a lot. Look at the FPS XCOM or Syndicate. Games that nobody gave a shit about despite using an existing IP because they didn't really capture much about what made the originals great. Shoving games into IPs they have no business being in is a total thing and it's a mistake publishers will keep making well into the future.
At least the unmentionable game seems to have been the end of the franchise, from its own creator.
The one thing I'll give Federation Force is that none of the bad elements revolve around Samus and what happens to her. That is a definite plus because Samus is a character I like and if someone tried to charge her of the crime of this game having been released, she can plead no contest to that without issue.
But being Samus in Other M was still fun enough for the most part that the rest didn't completely ruin things, in my opinion.
Yup. She felt fast and powerful and very badass in the game, on a tactile level, similar to how she "felt" in the 2D games. It's always hard to describe, but there's a lot of stuff Other M got right on a very basic level that was obscured by the more large-scale things they got terribly wrong.
I want the next game to be like Other M in how Samus controls and in the isometric/quasi-sidescrolling perspective. That stuff just works.
Really? Until I got the Plasma Beam I felt weak as shit. You basically needed to do the annoyingly slow kill moves on anything bigger than a geemer in order to kill things before the heat death of the universe.
Running around was the only part of the controls that felt legit good. And then they put you in tight one-direction corridors with no chance to run around exploring.
Man, I played through it in order to make a rant video, and I HATED EVERYTHING ABOUT IT save for the purple glow of the Gravity Suit and the boss battles (and then again, not all of them). The gameplay just does not work, everything is a hassle, and just eight directions in a third person game are not enough. Not to mention going from third to first person is uncomfortable. Why not just use the nunchuck? It's not like every Wii didn't bring one...
And don't get me started on the forced first person moments. The game wants me to look at a specific detail that you can take a lot of time to figure out what they want you to look at, and one of those is the first time it activates. That alone stops the flow of the game, it slows it down too much. The sudden death moments you aren't prepared for are fucking terrible. How was I supposed to see that damn lava monster coming?
It just doesn't work. It's terrible in almost every aspect, no wonder it sold poorly, and I'm glad, because I would hate for Nintendo to be encouraged to make more games like those and to keep degrading strong female protagonists.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I can appreciate they were going for something different with the gameplay of That Metroid Game, but at no point did it ever hold any kind of appeal for me before it was released and after I saw it in action.
2D sidescrolling is more of an abstraction of presenting the world, but it can still be plenty immersive without constantly kicking you in the face with the message "this is just a game". 3D is more resource intensive and realistic, but obviously can provide a pretty awesomely immersive experience.
2.5D is just... weird. Camera angles hopping around, the way combat has to be handled, etc, it's just one big huge flashing neon banner that the game is just a game. It's terribly, obviously unreal. Especially after the MP trilogy, just watching the game felt like being tremendously limited in movement and perspective, just for the sake of some odd design notion.
FF might be the rare game that would have been better off without the well known license.
Rare? This happens a lot. Look at the FPS XCOM or Syndicate. Games that nobody gave a shit about despite using an existing IP because they didn't really capture much about what made the originals great. Shoving games into IPs they have no business being in is a total thing and it's a mistake publishers will keep making well into the future.
At least the unmentionable game seems to have been the end of the franchise, from its own creator.
FF might be the rare game that would have been better off without the well known license.
Rare? This happens a lot. Look at the FPS XCOM or Syndicate. Games that nobody gave a shit about despite using an existing IP because they didn't really capture much about what made the originals great. Shoving games into IPs they have no business being in is a total thing and it's a mistake publishers will keep making well into the future.
At least the unmentionable game seems to have been the end of the franchise, from its own creator.
Syndicate was great tho
Syndicate was great. Destiny, Payday 2, and other stuff scratch that itch now though.
FF might be the rare game that would have been better off without the well known license.
Rare? This happens a lot. Look at the FPS XCOM or Syndicate. Games that nobody gave a shit about despite using an existing IP because they didn't really capture much about what made the originals great. Shoving games into IPs they have no business being in is a total thing and it's a mistake publishers will keep making well into the future.
At least the unmentionable game seems to have been the end of the franchise, from its own creator.
Syndicate was great tho
Syndicate was great. Destiny, Payday 2, and other stuff scratch that itch now though.
Syndicate was bucking the trend by actually being decent. It also only sold around 300,000 copies or so - which was a total disaster.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Sure, it's all fun and games, until the miners unearth unheard-of science-o-whats-its that pop up on a certain bounty hunter's sensors, and then you end up in a death spiral of wailing pirates as one of the craftpirates carves a picture of their demise on a necklace, as the demise is happening.
The necklace menaces with spikes of Phazon.
On the necklace is an image of a space pirate cowering.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Pff, digging with his own claws? Surely some of the local wildlife could be fed phazon and then tormented into a murderous rage then released on a nearby wall. What could possibly go wrong?
Pff, digging with his own claws? Surely some of the local wildlife could be fed phazon and then tormented into a murderous rage then released on a nearby wall. What could possibly go wrong?
Pff, digging with his own claws? Surely some of the local wildlife could be fed phazon and then tormented into a murderous rage then released on a nearby wall. What could possibly go wrong?
C&D.
Dark Samus the Ebon Assailant sends them a cease and desist for horning in on her Phazon racket?
Pff, digging with his own claws? Surely some of the local wildlife could be fed phazon and then tormented into a murderous rage then released on a nearby wall. What could possibly go wrong?
C&D.
Dark Samus the Ebon Assailant sends them a cease and desist for horning in on her Phazon racket?
Okay, I've seen this before. Taking down this wall should take 12 hours in real time. Or you can pay real money to make the construction happen faster. Right?
Okay, I've seen this before. Taking down this wall should take 12 hours in real time. Or you can pay real money to make the construction happen faster. Right?
No, fuck that noise. I want this to be a game you play, with an actual success condition, not a timesink microtransaction engine. I haven't worked out the actual timer details just yet, but I swear this: there will be no "premium currency".
+9
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Each of the squares on the planet map can be occupied by a squad of pirates. The work the pirates are doing depends on what kind of zone/facility it is. So a squad assigned to a research facility will be doing research, a squad assigned to a hanger might be building or repairing a ship, a squad assigned to an unknown tile is exploring, etc. So (and this is pretty rough in my head) I'm thinking that if you attract the Hunter's attention, what you'll see is that she'll use a pathfinding algorithm to proceed through the zones, starting with a random surface zone. How long she spends in each zone will be based on the combat skill and HP of the pirates in the squad plus a flat minimum.
Even just typing that out, it makes me realize that a smart base building operation might have just a single surface zone, and load up a bunch of high HP pirates into a squad as cannon fodder. Or just find some other way to provide a choke point. Like Enlong said - you can't win, but you can buy time.
What I haven't worked out yet is how the Hunter becomes a factor. There's one idea that I had, and it relates to the Chozo ruins zone type. Basically, having unoccupied Chozo ruin zones in your base provides a tremendous boost to research, but is a beacon for the Hunter. So you've got to a) don't excavate them if discovered, b) excavate and destroy them, or c) excavate them, spin up a bunch of research, and hope for the best. I suspect that there will be other attracting factors as well. Probably population, base size, number of successful raids based out of a planet. So you'd really be incentivized to land on a planet, use it up as quickly as possible, and then move on, which makes me happy as it's thematically appropriate.
I would love to see a "hidden decoy artifacts" modifier to the hunter exploration algorithm, where I could, say, build a false ruin in a tile with a "genuinely" useful artifact that delays the hunter's progress because now they have a spider ball and therefore must explore a bunch of previously unreachable dead-ends that I built into the facility.
But maybe I'm just too smart to be a Galactic Corsair.
One way to get around the "one surface zone" would be to basically require spaceport tiles. In order to exploit X resource or research X project, you need a spaceport of X size.
EDIT: Which, of course, means more Void Corsairs with their bigger ships doing more Void Corsairing, drawing more attention.
Matron Cortex help you if you happen to come across ancient ruins on a planet with a big ol spaceport going.
MechMantis on
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143999Tellin' yanot askin' ya, not pleadin' with yaRegistered Userregular
Destructible ruins would be neat, maybe as a late tech tree option. Maybe ruins are built of ruinium, which is difficult to destroy, or maybe they're powered by unstable ruinium-12, which makes the surviving infrastructure difficult to safely decommission.
Is there an advantage to having ruins, if you're not a hunter?
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
The Hunter is exceedingly good at subverting technology for her own needs.
Who could have ever expected that the recharge station everyone uses to keep their phones charged throughout the day could supply her with missiles? It's just supposed to be electricity , dammit!
Another thing that you need to do is justify why save rooms are a vital part of base infrastructure.
What you term "Save Rooms" are actually power plants for the base.
Heh. I was going to make the pirate cloning rooms look like save points. Which is pretty terrifying, as a pirate. You're expecting Bazbaz the Unruly, and out pops the Hunter at full health and missiles.
Also I want to thank you all for the running gag of coming up with "close enough" names. I was originally going with Xenopirates, but I think I like some of your options better. Plus I'm totally using Matron Cortex.
Now that gives me an interesting idea - fighting with pirates depletes the Hunter's hp/missiles, but if she gets low she just has to go to the nearest recharge room. If there's no recharge room, she has to go back to her ship, buying you time to redeploy forces/evacuate/pray.
I've been doing all the spritework because it easily fits into an evening after work, while weekends are reserved for code and development. But the project is at an early enough stage that stuff like this can still be considered.
Another thing that you need to do is justify why save rooms are a vital part of base infrastructure.
What you term "Save Rooms" are actually power plants for the base.
Heh. I was going to make the pirate cloning rooms look like save points. Which is pretty terrifying, as a pirate. You're expecting Bazbaz the Unruly, and out pops the Hunter at full health and missiles.
Also I want to thank you all for the running gag of coming up with "close enough" names. I was originally going with Xenopirates, but I think I like some of your options better. Plus I'm totally using Matron Cortex.
News bulletin: Phaxone Mutation has been known to cause lexical confusion. If you experience Phaxone exposure symptoms outside normal parameters, please see the nearest Science Team specialist for evaluation to see if you qualify for Extra Rations!
News bulletin: Wanted: Phaxone Biogenetics Lab volunteers. Work with local flora and fauna in a stimulating, hands-on environment! Ration incentives may apply.
News Bulletin: A: Previous bulletin has been amended to reflect new Command Directive 35-Gamma-A6: No local flora are to be exposed to Phaxone under any circumstances and are absolutely not to be ingested.
B: Urgent need for Phaxone BIogenetics Lab volunteers! We have found ourselves suddenly very short-staffed. No relation to previous bulletin. Ration Incentives may apply!
Now that gives me an interesting idea - fighting with pirates depletes the Hunter's hp/missiles, but if she gets low she just has to go to the nearest recharge room. If there's no recharge room, she has to go back to her ship, buying you time to redeploy forces/evacuate/pray.
I've been doing all the spritework because it easily fits into an evening after work, while weekends are reserved for code and development. But the project is at an early enough stage that stuff like this can still be considered.
That's sort of my idea with save points as well. I was thinking they were more data storage, so you have her getting defeated and retreating to the last terminal or ship. And the bennefit would be more research salvaged from the inevitable hunter-catalyst planet detonation. So you'd have to make the choice between delaying the hunter as much as possible, or getting to keep more of the research, but letting the hunter take out the planet quicker.
There'll be direct threats aside from the Hunter, right? Like attacks from the federation, or maybe common thieves or hackers after your research?
It'd be interesting if you had to decide how to shore up your defenses based on each threat. Like, beefing up your computer security would halt thieves, but it wouldn't slow the Hunter at all.
An addition to consider would be a doppelgänger of the hunter, a dark hunter if you will, that can be a hazard or ally depending how you play your cards. Maybe a specific research project has the chance of resulting in its creation.
Posts
Really? Until I got the Plasma Beam I felt weak as shit. You basically needed to do the annoyingly slow kill moves on anything bigger than a geemer in order to kill things before the heat death of the universe.
Running around was the only part of the controls that felt legit good. And then they put you in tight one-direction corridors with no chance to run around exploring.
Rare? This happens a lot. Look at the FPS XCOM or Syndicate. Games that nobody gave a shit about despite using an existing IP because they didn't really capture much about what made the originals great. Shoving games into IPs they have no business being in is a total thing and it's a mistake publishers will keep making well into the future.
At least the unmentionable game seems to have been the end of the franchise, from its own creator.
Man, I played through it in order to make a rant video, and I HATED EVERYTHING ABOUT IT save for the purple glow of the Gravity Suit and the boss battles (and then again, not all of them). The gameplay just does not work, everything is a hassle, and just eight directions in a third person game are not enough. Not to mention going from third to first person is uncomfortable. Why not just use the nunchuck? It's not like every Wii didn't bring one...
And don't get me started on the forced first person moments. The game wants me to look at a specific detail that you can take a lot of time to figure out what they want you to look at, and one of those is the first time it activates. That alone stops the flow of the game, it slows it down too much. The sudden death moments you aren't prepared for are fucking terrible. How was I supposed to see that damn lava monster coming?
It just doesn't work. It's terrible in almost every aspect, no wonder it sold poorly, and I'm glad, because I would hate for Nintendo to be encouraged to make more games like those and to keep degrading strong female protagonists.
2D sidescrolling is more of an abstraction of presenting the world, but it can still be plenty immersive without constantly kicking you in the face with the message "this is just a game". 3D is more resource intensive and realistic, but obviously can provide a pretty awesomely immersive experience.
2.5D is just... weird. Camera angles hopping around, the way combat has to be handled, etc, it's just one big huge flashing neon banner that the game is just a game. It's terribly, obviously unreal. Especially after the MP trilogy, just watching the game felt like being tremendously limited in movement and perspective, just for the sake of some odd design notion.
Syndicate was great tho
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
stealth edit:
I promise I'll stop fucking around with these and get back to work now
Syndicate was great. Destiny, Payday 2, and other stuff scratch that itch now though.
Shh...
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Syndicate was bucking the trend by actually being decent. It also only sold around 300,000 copies or so - which was a total disaster.
The necklace menaces with spikes of Phazon.
On the necklace is an image of a space pirate cowering.
C&D.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Dark Samus the Ebon Assailant sends them a cease and desist for horning in on her Phazon racket?
Ahem.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Okay, I've seen this before. Taking down this wall should take 12 hours in real time. Or you can pay real money to make the construction happen faster. Right?
No, fuck that noise. I want this to be a game you play, with an actual success condition, not a timesink microtransaction engine. I haven't worked out the actual timer details just yet, but I swear this: there will be no "premium currency".
There's this mountain, of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it, and an hour to go around it.
And every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain...
I would love to see a "hidden decoy artifacts" modifier to the hunter exploration algorithm, where I could, say, build a false ruin in a tile with a "genuinely" useful artifact that delays the hunter's progress because now they have a spider ball and therefore must explore a bunch of previously unreachable dead-ends that I built into the facility.
But maybe I'm just too smart to be a Galactic Corsair.
EDIT: Which, of course, means more Void Corsairs with their bigger ships doing more Void Corsairing, drawing more attention.
Matron Cortex help you if you happen to come across ancient ruins on a planet with a big ol spaceport going.
Is there an advantage to having ruins, if you're not a hunter?
What you term "Save Rooms" are actually power plants for the base.
Who could have ever expected that the recharge station everyone uses to keep their phones charged throughout the day could supply her with missiles? It's just supposed to be electricity , dammit!
Heh. I was going to make the pirate cloning rooms look like save points. Which is pretty terrifying, as a pirate. You're expecting Bazbaz the Unruly, and out pops the Hunter at full health and missiles.
Also I want to thank you all for the running gag of coming up with "close enough" names. I was originally going with Xenopirates, but I think I like some of your options better. Plus I'm totally using Matron Cortex.
I've been doing all the spritework because it easily fits into an evening after work, while weekends are reserved for code and development. But the project is at an early enough stage that stuff like this can still be considered.
News bulletin: Phaxone Mutation has been known to cause lexical confusion. If you experience Phaxone exposure symptoms outside normal parameters, please see the nearest Science Team specialist for evaluation to see if you qualify for Extra Rations!
News bulletin: Wanted: Phaxone Biogenetics Lab volunteers. Work with local flora and fauna in a stimulating, hands-on environment! Ration incentives may apply.
News Bulletin: A: Previous bulletin has been amended to reflect new Command Directive 35-Gamma-A6: No local flora are to be exposed to Phaxone under any circumstances and are absolutely not to be ingested.
B: Urgent need for Phaxone BIogenetics Lab volunteers! We have found ourselves suddenly very short-staffed. No relation to previous bulletin. Ration Incentives may apply!
3DS: 0447-9966-6178
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
This should end with the door opening and Samus freezing the entire tunnel back into a block of ice.
It'd be interesting if you had to decide how to shore up your defenses based on each threat. Like, beefing up your computer security would halt thieves, but it wouldn't slow the Hunter at all.
edit: Well, over a year.
Unlocked the polkadot camo today
3DS: 0447-9966-6178