I've only tried the JD demo but hey... lemme quickly fire it up and then tell you!
Long and the short of it? DC is more accurate, JD is more fun.
Which is probably why it is kurbstomping DC.
OK, having played the game now, holy shit is that fun!
Awesome track selection, dance moves which literally had me laughing out loud, full of character, generally awesome times.
I never really clicked with Dance Central, I know lots of folks love it, and it is probably the 'better' game, but I always felt it was just nagging at me, and too difficult to really enjoy.
Just Dance is just a full on fucking riot, can't wait to fire it up during a drunken party!
Speaking of TOR, the male Jedi Knight (I believe) is credited as "David Hayter"
The David Hayter? I can't even detect a hint of Snake in that voice.
It's almost as if he's an actor or something.
There are a lot of VAs that can do one or two voices that are really good and thus get hired for everything. Cree Summer is a good example of this, although that might be due to a reluctance to hire black people/create more black characters.
EDIT: Steve Blum is another, although I hear he can do more voices than Spike. It's just that...he gets told to do Spike in everything.
Speaking of TOR, the male Jedi Knight (I believe) is credited as "David Hayter"
The David Hayter? I can't even detect a hint of Snake in that voice.
It's almost as if he's an actor or something.
There are a lot of VAs that can do one or two voices that are really good and thus get hired for everything. Cree Summer is a good example of this, although that might be due to a reluctance to hire black people/create more black characters.
EDIT: Steve Blum is another, although I hear he can do more voices than Spike. It's just that...he gets told to do Spike in everything.
Hynden Walch seems another. Everytime I hear her as Princess Bubblegum or Nia, I can't help but think of Starfire. Tara Strong, on the other hand, seems to have a fair range of distinctive voices.
Tara Strong is more diverse, but seems to have several go-to voices. Watching Sym-Bionic Titan the other day and it was pretty much the same voice as MLP.
Finding the voice actors within a game and figuring out who they are is a fun game in itself. You find tons of cross-pollination from games to movies to cartoons to dubbing to general voice over work.
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"Did ya hear the one about the mussel that wanted to purchase Valve? Seems like the bivalve had a juicy offer on the table but the company flat-out refused and decided to immediately clam up!"
Oh yeah. Like finding out Phil LaMarr, the guy who played Vamp in the Metal Gear games was in Pulp Fiction and is the voice of Hermes from Futurama and Samurai Jack.
I feel like (unfairly) attributing this to today's comic. Anyone else?
Wow, EA. Taking this brave, brave stance after the legislation has been yanked and is likely dead. Next I'm sure they'll announce that Nazis are bad guys.
So, in other news, you remember those Dedicated Servers that Epic was raving about having in Gears3? Well it appears that if you haven't purchased the latest DLC mappack, you can no longer play on those servers. Looking around this seems to be an actual real thing, and not caused by reason server issues Epic has been having.
Personally I think this may be the straw that breaks the camels back. Removing a feature post-launch, a feature listed on the game's packaging no less, because the user did not purchase DLC.
Two guys who are always immediately recognizable to me are Cam Clarke and Paul Eiding.
Cam: Liquid Snake from MGS, Anthony in Eternal Darkness, Kratos from Tales of Symphonia, Simba in Kingdom Hearts, bit roles in KOTOR, etc.
Paul: Colonel Cambell from MGS, Paul Luther in Eternal Darkness, several roles in the Diablo series including Pepin the Healer, several roles in the God of War series, every old person in Fallout 3...and probably best known recently as grandpa in Ben 10.
Tara Strong is more diverse, but seems to have several go-to voices. Watching Sym-Bionic Titan the other day and it was pretty much the same voice as MLP.
Hand to god, while playing Arkham City, I didn't know she was doing Harley. I thought it was... whatshername who always did it in the cartoons. It wasn't until somebody actually pointed it out that I finally noticed.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Tara Strong is more diverse, but seems to have several go-to voices. Watching Sym-Bionic Titan the other day and it was pretty much the same voice as MLP.
Hand to god, while playing Arkham City, I didn't know she was doing Harley. I thought it was... whatshername who always did it in the cartoons. It wasn't until somebody actually pointed it out that I finally noticed.
Probably due to working with Arleen Sorkin so much on The New Batman Adventures. She probably learned to mimic her voice.
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Two guys who are always immediately recognizable to me are Cam Clarke and Paul Eiding.
Cam: Liquid Snake from MGS, Anthony in Eternal Darkness, Kratos from Tales of Symphonia, Simba in Kingdom Hearts, bit roles in KOTOR, etc.
Paul: Colonel Cambell from MGS, Paul Luther in Eternal Darkness, several roles in the Diablo series including Pepin the Healer, several roles in the God of War series, every old person in Fallout 3...and probably best known recently as grandpa in Ben 10.
Paul seems like a really cool guy.
I was immensely pleased to hear Cam Clarke voice the druids (I think?) in Sacrifice (an old strategy game)
"With a song, in my hearrrtt"
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
What a difference six months makes. In June last year Sony boss Kaz Hirai proudly took to the stage at E3 to announce that the Vita would retail for $250 (or $299 for the 3G version) - a figure that was generally greeted with enthusiasm by both press and gamers alike. Meanwhile, the considerably less powerful 3DS was floundering at around the same price, just a few months after its launch.
Fast forward to January 2012 and the 3DS is flying off shelves following an unprecedented pricing rethink while the Vita has got off to a miserable start in Japan, with numerous internet commentators already starting their 'cut the price' catcalls.
So, one month ahead of the machine's global launch, we've enlisted the help of technical intelligence experts UBM TechInsights and taken a screwdriver to Sony's new portable in an attempt to divine two things - whether you're getting good value for money, and whether Sony has left itself any room for an emergency price drop should the Western launch belly-flop.
UBM's VP of business intelligence, Jeffrey Brown, tells us that the total bill of materials for the 3G-enabled version of the system comes in at an estimated $159.10 - that's around £102.90. That figure breaks down as follows:
The comparisons to the 3DS are some of the more important parts of this. The take-home after cost is relatively the same between the two, but Nintendo was willing to make the price dive down considerably. But if I remember right, some of the higher-ups at Nintendo took less pay to compensate (which I still consider a classy move). So unless Sony is willing to do the same to compensate, any price drop they could give on the Vita would be... hurting them. Again.
Yea, Iwata and the rest of the higher ups at Nintendo took paycuts in order to make up the drop in the 3DS. In fact, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere the Iwata took a larger pay cut than the rest of his staff. Super classy.
There aint no way Kaz vollunteers to give up part of his salary if the Vita completely tanks in the end.
if i fall and instantly get put back on the ledge, i never realize i fucked up. i never felt like i made a mistake, because they are impossible to make.
But you get put back on a ledge several steps back from where you were going. In most cases you need to do multiple movements to get back to where you made the mistake. What is a setback if not a mistake? You didn't progress and were pushed back several steps. It's not like it had an auto time rewind straight back to where you were. You have to do that sequence again. So you do get punished for mistakes and you do make them. You just don't stare at a screen telling you the obvious where you have to push the retry button first.
I'm okay with people wanting to stick to the old ways because they prefer them or they can't be bothered to think otherwise, but I see this attitude bleed over into obscuring facts. It has a failure state. You do make mistakes and you do get punished for it. The ledges it puts you on are the same ledges most games of it's ilk would use as a checkpoint system anyway. If the game had cut to black, put a screen you had to push a button to get past, then set you back on the same ledge I bet it wouldn't have been a problem. It's not making mistakes you want, it's the cutaway from the game to get you to think. That's pretty different from it being impossible to make a mistake.
The cutaway part is tradition. If all games from the start had used the same system as 08 this wouldn't be an issue, that kind of punishment would be normal. A person who had grown up with games like that would probably consider cutting away to a black screen they have to press to get past irritating as all get out.
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
i think most games are too easy on the player, which has the effect of boiling gameplay down to attrition. if there are no consequences for death/failure, why allow me to fail at all? why not make me invincible? finite health is just as archaic. (so is finite ammuntion; hell, most shooters these days give you so many bullets that you might as well have infinite ammo at this point.)
as far as death in games is concerned: what we're really talking about is failure and what type of consequences a designer wants to impose on the player. the lives system gives you several chances, then forces you to start the game from the very beginning when you run out. yeah, arcade design certainly plays into the mechanic, but the fact that you can earn more chances to continue means that some semblance of challenge is woven into the design.
to each his own and all that but if a game poses no challenge i lose interest quickly
if i fall and instantly get put back on the ledge, i never realize i fucked up. i never felt like i made a mistake, because they are impossible to make.
But you get put back on a ledge several steps back from where you were going. In most cases you need to do multiple movements to get back to where you made the mistake. What is a setback if not a mistake? You didn't progress and were pushed back several steps. It's not like it had an auto time rewind straight back to where you were. You have to do that sequence again. So you do get punished for mistakes and you do make them. You just don't stare at a screen telling you the obvious where you have to push the retry button first.
I'm okay with people wanting to stick to the old ways because they prefer them or they can't be bothered to think otherwise, but I see this attitude bleed over into obscuring facts. It has a failure state. You do make mistakes and you do get punished for it. The ledges it puts you on are the same ledges most games of it's ilk would use as a checkpoint system anyway. If the game had cut to black, put a screen you had to push a button to get past, then set you back on the same ledge I bet it wouldn't have been a problem. It's not making mistakes you want, it's the cutaway from the game to get you to think. That's pretty different from it being impossible to make a mistake.
The cutaway part is tradition. If all games from the start had used the same system as 08 this wouldn't be an issue, that kind of punishment would be normal. A person who had grown up with games like that would probably consider cutting away to a black screen they have to press to get past irritating as all get out.
The problem with PoP 08 isn't just the no-death. It's also the ridiculous amount of auto-correct they put on stuff like jumps.
if i fall and instantly get put back on the ledge, i never realize i fucked up. i never felt like i made a mistake, because they are impossible to make.
But you get put back on a ledge several steps back from where you were going. In most cases you need to do multiple movements to get back to where you made the mistake. What is a setback if not a mistake? You didn't progress and were pushed back several steps. It's not like it had an auto time rewind straight back to where you were. You have to do that sequence again. So you do get punished for mistakes and you do make them. You just don't stare at a screen telling you the obvious where you have to push the retry button first.
I'm okay with people wanting to stick to the old ways because they prefer them or they can't be bothered to think otherwise, but I see this attitude bleed over into obscuring facts. It has a failure state. You do make mistakes and you do get punished for it. The ledges it puts you on are the same ledges most games of it's ilk would use as a checkpoint system anyway. If the game had cut to black, put a screen you had to push a button to get past, then set you back on the same ledge I bet it wouldn't have been a problem. It's not making mistakes you want, it's the cutaway from the game to get you to think. That's pretty different from it being impossible to make a mistake.
The cutaway part is tradition. If all games from the start had used the same system as 08 this wouldn't be an issue, that kind of punishment would be normal. A person who had grown up with games like that would probably consider cutting away to a black screen they have to press to get past irritating as all get out.
The problem with PoP 08 isn't just the no-death. It's also the ridiculous amount of auto-correct they put on stuff like jumps.
I'm not talking about that, interested in that or particularly care about that.
I'm actually specifically interested in how players think about death/failure when I talk about 08. I don't really care about defending it, I enjoyed the experience but I'll never play it again.
@Local H Jay: Out of interest, what are acceptable consequences to you? Consequences aren't inherently negative. (It means the effect or result of a previous event/action etc.) You sound like you don't like the current infinite retry checkpoint systems either in how you talk about the old 1 up system, would that be right?
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(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
i'd prefer something inbetween. i want to feel like there are reasons to avoid death then charge in blindly. i don't mind checkpoints, but i'd rather have a respawn system where you lose something, be it overall health, items, or what have you. make the player feel as if failure was a failure, and work hard not to make that mistake again. i haven't played it but dark souls seems to do something like i'm describing.
Approaches to difficulty has always puzzled me. It seems like their isn't really any easy answer. If I die to something hard and get a chance to attempt it again quickly is that really that much worse of an approach than making me go through easy stuff again and again just to get to that part?
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That's the thing about games - they vary so much in design that what is appropriate for one game (or even genre) won't work well with another.
The beef about Bioshock, for me, was how it cheapened the entire mood the place was setting. I quickly stopped feeling scared and oppressed because I knew I could just bum-rush my way to victory with a wrench, whacking one guy at a time.
PoP 08, because it was literally the game reaching out and holding your (avatar's) hand, as if to tell you "don't worry, you can't actually fail at this.
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Talking about video game difficulty?
I was listening to episodes of Idle Thumbs tonight and in one such episode Steve Gaynor made a quick comment (which didn't get explored, but it made a ton of sense) that difficult games or difficult parts of games aren't a problem if the fail process involves learning something new, or getting a better idea of how to overcome that difficult part. And that's 100% true. Any time I fail to achieve something or die in a video game repeatedly, but have done everything possible with the few tools given to me, I eventually just shut the game off and walk away. The most recent example of this not happening (learning something as I fail), for me, was Sonic Colors. Running into enemies and avoiding pitfalls has shit all to do with learning something aside from basic memorizing the level layout. And forced memorization is my least favorite thing to do when it comes to beating a game. Encountering something and having just as much a chance (or more) of overcoming it as I would of failing to it is preferable. But if the only way I'm going to progress is to die to something so that I know it's there? Fuck that.
Incidentally, I can also go back to this thing from a Mega Man game on the NES:
Hm. Do you fall to the left or right? Either way, you'll logically have time to react. Let's trigger the screen scroll (in which you have no control) and see what happens.
Wait, that's not right at all.
Oh, I guess I died arbitrarily. Nothing learned from any mistake I made or any game mechanic I wasn't taught to use to its full extent yet.
It's funny, and potentially ruining the game for me, but I had no idea that deaths were meaningless in Bioshock, and I'm about ten hours in. I've only died a couple of times so far, in the same fight pretty early on. I assumed the enemy was regaining health when I wasn't actively beating the hell out of it, and eventually I was going to run out of any real ability to take them down.
I was actually mildly bothered by the chambers because I thought they were making me choose between quick loading to get my ammo back or just respawning in the chambers to save time but potentially grinding to a halt due to lack of resources.
Bioshock? I have to echo the response people have given. I got to a point where there was a Big Daddy I wanted to kill, and a vita chamber right next to it, but I didn't exactly have the resources to pull it off. So I just beat the damn thing to death with a melee weapon while dying about 10 times. No threat, no consequence, no tension.
Now something like a platformer, where I have to pull off 4 precise moves in a row? Yeah, just put me back at the beginning of the segment so I can try again. Nothing is served by making me replay the entire level up to that point every single time. It might be the same form of reloading as in Bioshock, but the situation and game design makes it completely different, and in this case acceptable.
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"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Talking about video game difficulty?
(Megaman horrors)
Oh, I guess I died arbitrarily. Nothing learned from any mistake I made or any game mechanic I wasn't taught to use to its full extent yet.
Yeah, but that was an entirely different age in gaming. Something like Megaman had to have arbitrarily hard stuff like that to pad out the length of the game; if they'd made it as forgiving as most games these days, you'd be through in an hour or two even if you knew nothing about the game. But then again, you've also got something like Sonic Generations. Frankly, I'm amazed at how much it feels like the old games but without trying to destroy you at the same time; the average player could completely beat the game without memorizing everything, they just wouldn't go very fast. At the same time, there's the challenge of actually doing things well, which is completely optional and is the part of the game I really enjoy.
That being said, difficulty seems to be one of the hardest things to get right, most especially consequences for dying/failing. Something like the way Minecraft works can really piss me off; screw up and touch some lava in some unexplored area and voila, you just lost a crapload of equipment because you don't even know where you were exploring and could spend hours trying to find it again. Then you have something like Dwarf Fortress, where you can spend hours crafting an elaborate, amazing fortress and have it all brought down be digging through the wrong wall at the wrong time. But when that happens, the disaster is as entertaining as the building; Dwarf Fortress is as much about starting over as it is about surviving.
But a high difficulty and suitable failure results are some things I think the industry in general has absolutely overlooked for a while now. Almost everything has the various difficulty modes set to vary damage and health as opposed to actually changing anything significant; very few games bother with making the game tough as a meaningful part of the game.
I think Sony has been going off the Apple "we can charge more because we're Apple." game plan for a while now. The problem is that that game plan only ever works for Apple.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Part of the problem is that memory cards can be required by some games for the Vita, which is what I think the joke Jay was aiming for.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Nah, they just need to go with their usual planning of releasing 15 different SKUs that subtly, but significantly, different. Works for them every time.
In fact, I'm surprised we don't have at least a half-dozen Vita SKUs already. That's what is really hurting those sales.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Some of the SKUs that came up for the PS3 really were bizarre. It was odd ways to segment the market. I'd call it random-shots in the dark to see which one appealed to people the most, but I mean... goddamn. It was pretty much choosing how fucked over you wanted to be.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I accidentally reminded myself of Skullgirls. le sigh
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OK, having played the game now, holy shit is that fun!
Awesome track selection, dance moves which literally had me laughing out loud, full of character, generally awesome times.
I never really clicked with Dance Central, I know lots of folks love it, and it is probably the 'better' game, but I always felt it was just nagging at me, and too difficult to really enjoy.
Just Dance is just a full on fucking riot, can't wait to fire it up during a drunken party!
EDIT: Steve Blum is another, although I hear he can do more voices than Spike. It's just that...he gets told to do Spike in everything.
Hynden Walch seems another. Everytime I hear her as Princess Bubblegum or Nia, I can't help but think of Starfire. Tara Strong, on the other hand, seems to have a fair range of distinctive voices.
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For every character.
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http://www.gamespot.com/news/esa-backs-off-sopa-6348988
I feel like (unfairly) attributing this to today's comic. Anyone else?
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Wow, EA. Taking this brave, brave stance after the legislation has been yanked and is likely dead. Next I'm sure they'll announce that Nazis are bad guys.
Personally I think this may be the straw that breaks the camels back. Removing a feature post-launch, a feature listed on the game's packaging no less, because the user did not purchase DLC.
Cam: Liquid Snake from MGS, Anthony in Eternal Darkness, Kratos from Tales of Symphonia, Simba in Kingdom Hearts, bit roles in KOTOR, etc.
Paul: Colonel Cambell from MGS, Paul Luther in Eternal Darkness, several roles in the Diablo series including Pepin the Healer, several roles in the God of War series, every old person in Fallout 3...and probably best known recently as grandpa in Ben 10.
Paul seems like a really cool guy.
Hand to god, while playing Arkham City, I didn't know she was doing Harley. I thought it was... whatshername who always did it in the cartoons. It wasn't until somebody actually pointed it out that I finally noticed.
Probably due to working with Arleen Sorkin so much on The New Batman Adventures. She probably learned to mimic her voice.
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Well we have "Rogue likes" from the games that are like the game Rogue.
Think its time for "Zelda likes"
No doubt they caved after getting a ton of threats regarding E3.
I was immensely pleased to hear Cam Clarke voice the druids (I think?) in Sacrifice (an old strategy game)
"With a song, in my hearrrtt"
Yea, Iwata and the rest of the higher ups at Nintendo took paycuts in order to make up the drop in the 3DS. In fact, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere the Iwata took a larger pay cut than the rest of his staff. Super classy.
There aint no way Kaz vollunteers to give up part of his salary if the Vita completely tanks in the end.
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But you get put back on a ledge several steps back from where you were going. In most cases you need to do multiple movements to get back to where you made the mistake. What is a setback if not a mistake? You didn't progress and were pushed back several steps. It's not like it had an auto time rewind straight back to where you were. You have to do that sequence again. So you do get punished for mistakes and you do make them. You just don't stare at a screen telling you the obvious where you have to push the retry button first.
I'm okay with people wanting to stick to the old ways because they prefer them or they can't be bothered to think otherwise, but I see this attitude bleed over into obscuring facts. It has a failure state. You do make mistakes and you do get punished for it. The ledges it puts you on are the same ledges most games of it's ilk would use as a checkpoint system anyway. If the game had cut to black, put a screen you had to push a button to get past, then set you back on the same ledge I bet it wouldn't have been a problem. It's not making mistakes you want, it's the cutaway from the game to get you to think. That's pretty different from it being impossible to make a mistake.
The cutaway part is tradition. If all games from the start had used the same system as 08 this wouldn't be an issue, that kind of punishment would be normal. A person who had grown up with games like that would probably consider cutting away to a black screen they have to press to get past irritating as all get out.
Oh my god that would be hysterical.
as far as death in games is concerned: what we're really talking about is failure and what type of consequences a designer wants to impose on the player. the lives system gives you several chances, then forces you to start the game from the very beginning when you run out. yeah, arcade design certainly plays into the mechanic, but the fact that you can earn more chances to continue means that some semblance of challenge is woven into the design.
to each his own and all that but if a game poses no challenge i lose interest quickly
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The problem with PoP 08 isn't just the no-death. It's also the ridiculous amount of auto-correct they put on stuff like jumps.
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I'm not talking about that, interested in that or particularly care about that.
I'm actually specifically interested in how players think about death/failure when I talk about 08. I don't really care about defending it, I enjoyed the experience but I'll never play it again.
@Local H Jay: Out of interest, what are acceptable consequences to you? Consequences aren't inherently negative. (It means the effect or result of a previous event/action etc.) You sound like you don't like the current infinite retry checkpoint systems either in how you talk about the old 1 up system, would that be right?
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The beef about Bioshock, for me, was how it cheapened the entire mood the place was setting. I quickly stopped feeling scared and oppressed because I knew I could just bum-rush my way to victory with a wrench, whacking one guy at a time.
PoP 08, because it was literally the game reaching out and holding your (avatar's) hand, as if to tell you "don't worry, you can't actually fail at this.
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I was listening to episodes of Idle Thumbs tonight and in one such episode Steve Gaynor made a quick comment (which didn't get explored, but it made a ton of sense) that difficult games or difficult parts of games aren't a problem if the fail process involves learning something new, or getting a better idea of how to overcome that difficult part. And that's 100% true. Any time I fail to achieve something or die in a video game repeatedly, but have done everything possible with the few tools given to me, I eventually just shut the game off and walk away. The most recent example of this not happening (learning something as I fail), for me, was Sonic Colors. Running into enemies and avoiding pitfalls has shit all to do with learning something aside from basic memorizing the level layout. And forced memorization is my least favorite thing to do when it comes to beating a game. Encountering something and having just as much a chance (or more) of overcoming it as I would of failing to it is preferable. But if the only way I'm going to progress is to die to something so that I know it's there? Fuck that.
Incidentally, I can also go back to this thing from a Mega Man game on the NES:
Hm. Do you fall to the left or right? Either way, you'll logically have time to react. Let's trigger the screen scroll (in which you have no control) and see what happens.
Wait, that's not right at all.
Oh, I guess I died arbitrarily. Nothing learned from any mistake I made or any game mechanic I wasn't taught to use to its full extent yet.
I was actually mildly bothered by the chambers because I thought they were making me choose between quick loading to get my ammo back or just respawning in the chambers to save time but potentially grinding to a halt due to lack of resources.
Bioshock? I have to echo the response people have given. I got to a point where there was a Big Daddy I wanted to kill, and a vita chamber right next to it, but I didn't exactly have the resources to pull it off. So I just beat the damn thing to death with a melee weapon while dying about 10 times. No threat, no consequence, no tension.
Now something like a platformer, where I have to pull off 4 precise moves in a row? Yeah, just put me back at the beginning of the segment so I can try again. Nothing is served by making me replay the entire level up to that point every single time. It might be the same form of reloading as in Bioshock, but the situation and game design makes it completely different, and in this case acceptable.
Apple does it with the iPod touch, don't they?
Yeah, but that was an entirely different age in gaming. Something like Megaman had to have arbitrarily hard stuff like that to pad out the length of the game; if they'd made it as forgiving as most games these days, you'd be through in an hour or two even if you knew nothing about the game. But then again, you've also got something like Sonic Generations. Frankly, I'm amazed at how much it feels like the old games but without trying to destroy you at the same time; the average player could completely beat the game without memorizing everything, they just wouldn't go very fast. At the same time, there's the challenge of actually doing things well, which is completely optional and is the part of the game I really enjoy.
That being said, difficulty seems to be one of the hardest things to get right, most especially consequences for dying/failing. Something like the way Minecraft works can really piss me off; screw up and touch some lava in some unexplored area and voila, you just lost a crapload of equipment because you don't even know where you were exploring and could spend hours trying to find it again. Then you have something like Dwarf Fortress, where you can spend hours crafting an elaborate, amazing fortress and have it all brought down be digging through the wrong wall at the wrong time. But when that happens, the disaster is as entertaining as the building; Dwarf Fortress is as much about starting over as it is about surviving.
But a high difficulty and suitable failure results are some things I think the industry in general has absolutely overlooked for a while now. Almost everything has the various difficulty modes set to vary damage and health as opposed to actually changing anything significant; very few games bother with making the game tough as a meaningful part of the game.
Part of the problem is that memory cards can be required by some games for the Vita, which is what I think the joke Jay was aiming for.
In fact, I'm surprised we don't have at least a half-dozen Vita SKUs already. That's what is really hurting those sales.