Be Excellent To Each Other

http://tinyurl.com/d8j7u2

Can't wait

Should hold me over until Gridrunner+++ emerges on PC.

The burning question: how much?

800 I hope. You never know with M$ though...

If it's 800 then I'm sold. When I get my 360 back, of course...

http://tinyurl.com/ctsvhz

800 points, confirmed. Squee!

Have they fixed that you can't hold down fire on this one?

Not sure, find out Wednesday...

800 points!? FUCK YES. Sense has won out again! Especially as pap like Lode Runner is going for 1200. (Talking of which - I DO remember playing LR now. And it is ace. But 1£10 for a massively half arsed remake? No thank!)

800 points means instabuy for me.



I bloody well hope not.

Spamming fire is playing the game against how it was intended. It's a game about well placed shots. Getting a decent score is massively dependent on it.

So if they put in an autofire lots of people wouldn't be lead towards the 'correct' way to play it.

And sure one could respond that "I should be able to play it however I like" and thats true. But I think in this case its a request so against the spirit of the game it's like asking for an autofire button for Track and Field.

A far better solution would be to say include an autofire power up that you could get within seconds of starting the game just by shooting 3 blue invaders.

Which they've done.

Of course it isn't, that would utterly break Track and Field, this would in your contention actually make Extreme HARDER.

It's funny you should bring up Track and Field because right now it's just like playing that, except that the 100m lasts for 10 minutes.

It makes it extremely hard to educate the player about the mechanisms that have been designed to be enjoyed.

To perpetuate the poor analogy autofire:

In Track and Field autofire would make it harder because you would be trying to play the game properly and slip for a second and autofire would take over spoiling your game.

In Space Invaders Extreme autofire would make it harder because you would be trying to play the game properly and slip for a second and autofire would take over spoiling your game.

And bothe games would have to try harder to explain how you should be playing.

I don't mean "firing constantly" I mean, hold down the button to keep firing rather than have to break your fingers pointlessly hammering. Also obviously it should be an option.



And here you're starting to sound like Minter.

A far better solution would be to say include an autofire power up that you could get within seconds of starting the game just by shooting 3 blue invaders.

Which they've done.


If you want to exaggerate my point of view to breaking point then sure. I do.

Because as mental as minter is, the real talent of (specifically arcade) game design comes from elegantly coherencing your audience in to playing the game as you intend.

Space Invaders Extreme does it with lots of subtle touches. The way the music builds. The lack of an autofire.

Minter does it, by allowing more freedom and then getting pissy on the internet when people don't understand how he thinks they should be playing.

There's really only one way you can play Space Giraffe. Stray too far from intended coping techniques and you'll never get good scores.

Jeff gets pissy on the internet because when you get the volume and level of vitriol he received it is difficult to be anything but defensive. The guy always shared everything about himself and the development of his games, for over two decades, up to and including Space Giraffe. Then suddenly there's a wall of hate. He's Gordon Lightfoot at a Skrewdriver gig. That SG ought to have had an exhaustive built in tutorial that covered everything, alongside scalable degrees of visual feedback, is irrelevant. What we saw was only ever going to make him defensive. It was certainly almost enough to see me away from forums and comments boxes for good.

Go tell Stu there should be a legacy controls power up in Quake and see how far you get. It's the same issue to me, it's annoying and on a DS lite, not unpainful to have to pummel buttons. It's a major reason why I haven't played it more. A powerup you might have for 20% of the time you play the game is hardly a solution.

I'm assuming this is how Rev feels about non-legacy FPS, it seems crazy to actively fight against a feature that'll makes the game worse for precisely no-one but makes it easier for probably a reasonable segment of players.

As to Minter, he's perfectly welcome to direct the game to the 3 people who care about and embrace his vision, his trouble was a simple one, he wanted to make a massively, massively niche game but somehow still expected blockbuster sales. He needs to learn to choose, there was nothing wrong with SG, just with his expectations. He made the game equivalent of a black and white arthouse film about the life of Grover Cleveland but expected the box office returns of Monsters vs Aliens.

Gridrunner +++ (working title) addresses this issue, for me at least, and I never got to my Geo Wars or T2K levels of success with Space Giraffe. Won't be long now.

Let's hope. I await the release of Monsters vs Grover Cleveland with interest.

Can you recommend a good dealer?

I think what it comes down to is you think that this is a control issue. Like legacy controls in FPSs (which I'm all for).

Where as I think this is a game mechanism issue. Less to do with legacy controls and more to do with whether the bolt action rifle in CoD2 should autofire or not. Whilst this isn't an analogy you can take very far - I think it makes my point clearer.

duds,
we always seem to have this conversation,
did you play SIE on the DS a lot? I mean, not just to survive, but to actually improve you score, then you would see it is a precision game, where the sequence of who you kill matters.. autofire would ruin this.. it has nothing to do with easier controls, while retaining the same functions, like legacy controls..

but kjust as with sensi xbox360 you probably won'y be convinced..

Autofire doesn't mean the ship needs to fire any faster - it just means you don't have to repeatedly batter the trigger.

My Opinions Follows. Kinda Presented Like Fact.

But you shouldn't be battering the trigger. & Including autofire implies that you are meant to be playing that way. Which you are not.

I know using words like 'shouldn't' and 'meant' leads to a rebellious feeling of 'I'll play the game however I like thanks!" but it is besides the point. Games are carefully designed to be played in specific ways.

Wanting autofire in a Space Invaders Extreme is completely fine. But what you are actually asking for is a different type of game.

For example Left 4 Dead and Resident Evil 4 are two ends of the spectrum of Zombie games. If you give players fluid responsive controls you end up with L4D and if you limit those controls you get RE4. Both fucking brilliant games. But I can't just want the controls of L4D in RE4 because the game would break.

RE5 has stepped closer to L4D because it's given you more control of your players. And so your bullets do less damage and it's had to up the amount of enemies in the game. Controls inherently tie into the game's mechanisms. And whilst people often complain (quite rightly) that they don't like the controls and that it should control different. But in many cases what they are actually asking for is a different type of game.

Sure you want a Space Invaders game that has autofire. Awesome. But that is a different game to space invaders extreme. Not a better or worse game (necessarily) but a different one.

I think I've said all I can on the subject in this ranto. So I'll shut up till Wednesday. When the XBLA game will have had autofire added....

It finally RRoDed? Sorry, not been reading over the weekend.

*sobs*

You haven't rushed out straight away for a lovely Red Jasper?

Call yourself a Gamer?

Call yourself a Man?

Nah, I'm actually a well-rounded human being and can cope for a couple of weeks without it being attached to me like a life-support machine.

I've got some old man's badly cared for PS2 to play while I wait.

*sobs*

Back to the Space Invaders! I didn't think it was 'all that' when I played it on the DS.

Sadly I've not played any game on the DS that I've thought was 'all that' for ages and ages. Even Geo Wars wasn't really that great.

/looks at tweetie and counts how many times Myp has written he misses his bezzies..

*wail*

this.

the DS just doesn't do it for me at all.

What Lave and Romanista said. Autofire would, indeed, turn it into a different type of game. And to be perfectly honest, it's one of the very few shooters I've played where I haven't cared (and, in fact, barely noticed) that there's no autofire.

My DS spends most of its life as a Zoo Keeper machine these days.

Same here. I wouldn't be without my DS and I do have quite a few other games for it, but these days it's more about the 360 for me.

I'm liking the sound of this Space Invaders game, only I suspect I won't be all that at it, and it will frustrate me. Still I'll try the demo and see what happens.

It's Space Invaders, using a Rez gameplay mechanic, with a Pac Man:CE style makeover true to the idiosyncracies of the original, all with the neon engine throbbing away behind it. Despite being shit at everything, I've never suffered too much from game-over-itis on the DS version, even if my scores aren't the greatest.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/Joystiq/videos/769/

The Rez I know plays like E-102 Gamma from Sonic Adventure.

What Rez are you talking about?

Ta for the link. That looks like tremendous fun, and it might even tempt me away from Peggle for a bit.

hate the demo, it doesn't feel at all like the ds version, the music sounds "wrong" and it looks not extreme at all..

Indeed. The music is 'wrong' and it doesn't feel polished at all. From a first play it is still space invaders extreme though. Seems to have the flaws the PSP version had...

Also the LEFT BUMPER turns off your powerups (allowing you to save them for later) I was worried they took it out when the triggers did nothing.

Still got it though. DO YOU SEE MICROSOFT? I'M AN UNFUSY CONSUMER AT 800. BUT YET I'M A REAL FUSSY FUCK AT 1200.

Extremely entertained to get 2 achievements within 30s of playing. And was at 18 on the leaderboard!

And here. Spooky. You'd think with all the practice I get at ZK I'd be any good at it by now, wouldn't you?

Mine also services as a 42 All Time Classics machine too.

Playing it now with chums, very nice, music sounds fine through my amp of doom.

I got this earlier and quite like it, though I can't see me playing it forever and ever. Still I did quite well at it I think and have unlocked three achievements so far, so I'm happy enough with that.

Yes but in my case it's currently mostly your bloody fault miss

Still can't get past 1/5th of your scores, still can't see how it's even possible.

Ooh what kinda scores are we talking about?

I <3 Zoo Keeper. Or more precisely Time Attack mode. Me and the GF played it religiously one holiday (it featured a lot of down time were not mental) and the best I managed was one 'in the zone' go where I just crept over 1million. Never got close again. The GF eventually sailed past me but she's insanely good at the few games she puts her mind too so that was to be expected.

I doubt I could break 200,000 these days.

DANGER WILL ROBINSON!! DANGER!!

According to random #comments" class="postlink">bloke on the internet and other rumours for arkaniod.


haven't tried it yet, but if it has 4 episodes in the menu then turns out you need to buy them? Wow, shitty stuff.

YMMV FYI ETC LMAO LOL WTFBBQ ROFLCOPTER

Blimey, well my current high score on Time Attack is 6,613,520. I broke 5 million a few times, but only just, and thought I'd reached my limit (not that it would stop me playing as I'm on the bugger every day). Anyway, a couple of weeks back I got the 6 million+, and I think everything just ran for me in terms of the boards all falling into place and that.

From memory though, when ZK was discussed a lot back on WOS, I'm sure I can recall a few people getting over 6 million, and also 7 million for someone (again, from memory, and I'm obviously referring to Time Attack mode).

I bought this today. I hadn't heard about this issue, but I can confirm there are 4 eps showing on the menu, but only the first 2 can be chosen, with 3 & 4 being greyed out. I just assumed it was because you needed to complete 1 & 2 first, but who knows. If the above is correct then that's pretty crappy indeed.

I can get just over a million, have done several times recently.

Starls has 6 million.

SIX.

Woman's an alien or something.

I like time attack but I'd like to see "Time to a million points" as an alternative scoring mechanism.