That's not it though. No one complained about parrying in Bayonetta or Ninja Gaiden II because this is where the mechanic belongs. But when you start seeing it in Resident Evil or Doom, or even new IPs like Slitterhead, you have to start questioning if combat designers are being pushed to ride a trend or if they're being lazy and using parrying as a crutch.
mohab
joined 6 months ago
I think with parrying specifically, it's frustrating to see it become a crutch for games to add combat depth, or pop up as the central mechanic everywhere at the expense of exploring new combat ideas.
Dishonored is obviously not a bad example of parrying, so I'll give a bad one I just encountered recently: Slitterhead. The game has plenty of cool combat mechanics, but it repeatedly puts you in scenarios where parrying becomes either your only option or your quickest road to victory, which trivializes the rest of its cool combat ideas.
I think games like Ninja Gaiden II or Bayonetta perfectly handled parrying: it's a tool that unlocks combat depth, but not the only one, and combat is still fun without it. Not to say anything is wrong with a game like Sekiro, but to see games blindly copy this design philosophy is disappointing.
Well, none because favorites are super subjective, but I'll shout out my favorites because no one else did:
- The Wonderful 101
- Bayonetta
- Ninja Gaiden II
- God Hand
- Viewtiful Joe
- Catherine
- Gravity Rush
- Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R
- Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes
- Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
- Crimzon Clover: World EXplosion
- Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi
The only game I kinda like on this list is Okami.
"Look at older games where the whole game is active gameplay and you have to be focused the whole time to win."
I can't 😂 We're talking about games where you game during the whole game as relics of an age bygone now?!
The Wonderful 101! Closing in on 100%. The better I get at the game, the more fun I have! Just like an action game should be!
I am dual booting Artix and Win 11, and solely gamed on Linux for 2 years before getting into a bunch of games that don't run there, which eventually pushed me to dual boot Win 11.
I'd rather not touch Windows at all though and just hate it any time I have to use it for any reason other than gaming. The flip side is I hated gaming on Linux when I had to use it to play incompatible games.
I'll most likely just wait until my favorite games run on there and move for good. Maybe go for a Steam Deck then too. But RN attempting to go back to gaming on Linux feels like a potential time/money sink for non optimal results, which doesn't make sense when I already have a working setup.
Shows one platinum, one gold, and one silver on my end? Catherine is notorious for being difficult to run on Linux, even the comments on ProtonDB say so… IDK if I can consider that very little tinkering.
Plus, that doesn't include docked performance… I need stable 60FPS docked for fighting games.
Like, I see your point that it's almost there, but going full tilt into gaming on Linux RN still feels like a risky investment for both my time and money when my $400 Windows laptop runs everything OOTB.
One day though.
You joke, but half of my Steam library is incompatible with Steam Deck. Like, I fucking hate Windows, but I'm stuck there for gaming, and I don't even play these multiplayer games. I'm talking Catherine, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Under Night In-Birth II… etc. Niche games all of them.
On Slitterhead, I'm more of a Gravity Rush Toyama fan than a Silent Hill/Siren one, so I'm hoping what horror fans disliked about the game will appeal to me. Combat was fun in the demo, but I need to experience the bodiless traversal in more open-environment scenarios to decide if I like it or not.
I also hope the tracking thing doesn't get in the way. It was a tad confusing in the demo. Seems like you need to interview NPCs too? I hope that doesn't end up screwing with the game's pace.
OK, I like how him and Daniel Radcliffe pick cool projects. Yeah, sometimes they back fire, but that's just the nature of taking risk in art.
This is a remake I'm not opposed to, unlike whatever the fuck Disney is doing.
Didn't Furi do this in 2016? I'd be surprised if it was the first game to tie parrying to health gain either. In the slew of action games that came out in the PS2 era, someone must've done it.