These tool-assisted combos were prepared for a video project proposed by D44-Bas. He wanted to use them as bonus materials for some sort of CvS2 advanced tactics tutorial, but never got around to completing a draft. Since then, these clips have caused me repeated headaches and delays – eventually ending up in numerous scatteredcommunityprojects. Nearly four years later, i’ve decided to reunite the whole set for the sake of completeness.
Since most of these clips never got the full transcript treatment, i’ll write up some notes as soon as i have some free time – which probably won’t happen until the weekend.
I spent a fair bit of time playing Torchlight recently, which prompted a retroactive review of the experience. In expressing my assessment, i couldn’t help but notice that the majority of my reservations were symptomatic of a larger issue – the alarmingly inhospitable expectations woven throughout the action role-playing genre’s identity.
Fancy words aside, the main problem for me is the amount of braindead grinding needed to access the coolest toys in the game. Naturally we’re all going to find some snazzy piece of armor and want to complete the rest – or hear about a rare pet/hireling that we can’t resist. Should it cost fifty hours of repetitive chores to unlock these scraps?
Action RPGs tend to be engaging at the beginning because we’re constantly seeing new things and making meaningful decisions at a fast pace. Ultimately that rhythm grinds to a halt, and the amount of dead time between exciting new discoveries stretches into hours. Daring to want that last component of Griswold’s Legacy means killing a thousand recycled monsters beyond the last unfamiliar pixel you’ll ever see.
After i finished all of the story quests in Torchlight and reached lvl35 with my first character, i discovered that the fastest way to obtain unique items was by scamming the gambler NPC in town. I promptly maxed out my Barter skill, equipped as much Decrease in Vendor Prices gear as i could round up, and filled my inventory with stacks of Dogfish/Catfish. Then i sold, bought, and resold the entire stash hundreds of times, twenty clicks at a time, and used the profits to buy irregularly priced socketed unidentified items from Duros the Blade at a steep discount. Over 1/3 of them were uniques, yet it still took forever and a half to assemble Magnus’ Trove.
It was probably the least fun i’ve ever had playing a video game. And then there’s the fishing. Don’t get me started about the fishing. How can any of this fluff be considered gameplay? Don’t these arbitrarily time-consuming activites seem like they were contrived purely for the sake of boasting X number of replay hours? Personally i find it disingenuous, and i think it tarnishes an otherwise excellent game. There has to be a better way, right? I certainly don’t have all the answers, but i can offer a few suggestions.
As much as i tried to resist its charismatic visual charm and overt Diablo nostalgia, Torchlight finally baited me into downloading the XBLA demo. Before i knew it, i’d purchased both the full XBLA version and the discounted PC version, and sunk quite a few hours into the game.
Now that i’ve seen almost everything there is to see in Torchlight, i have to say that i’m extremely disappointed with how unnecessarily long it took to reach this point. Don’t get me wrong, the game is expertly crafted in many ways, but my lasting impression of the experience is frustration.
As much as i want to show off screenshots of Torchlight’s compelling atmosphere, i can’t bring myself to recommend the game to anyone – for the simple reason that it quickly turns into addictive torture by design.
Believe it or not, the whole reason i played the demo was because the XBLA description promised that i could transform my pet into various creatures, including elementals. I’ve had a soft spot for elementals since the original Warcraft.
What that marketing blurb didn’t explain is that you have to “play” their braindead fishing “mini-game” for 5-10 hours straight in order to catch one extremely rare fish to permanently transform a single character’s pet into a (random!) elemental. I mean, why??
These Capcom vs SNK 2 game engine exploration clips were recorded in 2004 and distributed individually on a weekly basis. Nobody has the patience to download forty files anymore, so i’ve assembled the highlights along with a few unreleased leftovers into this compilation.
Detailed explanations of each experiment can still be found in the old notebook archive. Even the unsorted clips at the bottom are either self-explanatory or covered in some other entry. The only real exception is the batch of OTG throw leftovers starting at 0:28.
Recently i got a chance to play Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition and (randomly) Street Fighter Alpha 3 with Ed Ma. This dude got 3rd place in SF4 at Evo2k9, so it’s no surprise that he beat me up pretty bad. I think he won something like 80% of our matches.
It seemed like all of our matches were close though. I didn’t feel like i was getting nervous toward the end either. I wasn’t dropping any more combos near the end of rounds than i was at the beginning, which made the outcome even more confusing.
That got me thinking about what he has that i don’t – and i believe it’s an “endgame.”
Lately people have been talking a lot about how LeBron James is lacking Kobe Bryant’s killer instinct. What does that really mean? Does LeBron enjoy losing more than Kobe does? I don’t think that’s the case at all. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that “killer instinct” in competitive games is an attitude. Unless we’re talking about breaking the rules, i don’t see how that can translate into success when you’re comparing two world-class athletes. Nobody gets that good without motivation, dedication, and a desire to win.
So then, how is Kobe able to step up at the end of the game whereas LeBron seems to shrink down? My answer is that “killer instinct” is a mindset and a skill, not an attitude.
