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Author Topic: I'm repurposing this as a "feel good moments" in vidya games thread now  (Read 5341 times)

Offline Angie

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So we put an attack animation in your attack animation so you can attack while you attack!

ITT: Video-Game (Or otherwise) Mechanics that are cool conceptually but get kind of tedious in execution.

PS: Star, you really need to change the font or colour or something of hyperlinks because they're barely noticeable as such now.

Maybe make them default underlined or something it's been forever since I've messed with forum script I dunno exactly what's doable.
« Last Edit: March 25, 2011, 11:41:18 PM by Angie »

Offline Soul Reaver

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Re: SO I HEARD YOU LIKED LONG ATTACK ANIMATIONS
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2010, 07:46:53 PM »
The ability to summon an ancient being that turns the entire planet into a giant beam-cannon, then shoots its target (a dinosaur in the below example) into the center of a galaxy, then explodes the galaxy?  Sounds awesome, right?!

Uh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Nqt0B3MHQ

Yeah, I have no idea what's going on half the time either, there isn't really much explanation in game about it either.

Keep in mind that in the game, you can use these attacks as often as you like with very little penalty (the only one being that you tend to get a lower 'salary' at regular intervals if you overuse these).  So basically, if you want to beat a boss (or really, just about anything in the game), just spam the hell out of this ability.

Did I mention the animation is unskippable?  It's unskippable.

Offline john greymore

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Re: SO I HEARD YOU LIKED LONG ATTACK ANIMATIONS
« Reply #2 on: June 30, 2010, 10:47:52 PM »
And who can ever forget Sephiroth's Super Nova!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InNHB9J0eqs

The worst thing is that you can't choose when it happens. It all depends on Sephiroth as to whether he'll destroy the universe in an attempt to super heat the sun to super proportions to hurt you... or turn you into a frog.

Also, Soul, if I recall correctly, there should be an option in the games that allow you to either shorten or skip entirely? It existed in VII and X, but I'm not really sure about VIII.

Seriously how the hell does the Universe regenerate its planet so fast!!!
Destruction begets Creation. Creation begets Interaction. Interaction begets Society. Society begets Use. Use begets Destruction.

Thus the cycle begins and ends.

Offline Soul Reaver

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Re: SO I HEARD YOU LIKED LONG ATTACK ANIMATIONS
« Reply #3 on: June 30, 2010, 11:47:51 PM »
Also, Soul, if I recall correctly, there should be an option in the games that allow you to either shorten or skip entirely? It existed in VII and X, but I'm not really sure about VIII.

I don't think so.  Final Fantasy VIII had no option to shorten the summon cinematics, all the more so because one of the abilities you gain in the game (boost) requires you to annoyingly tap buttons throughout the animation to boost its final damage.

VII definitely had no way to skip or shorten them, but because they tended to cost a fair amount of MP to use I never really got too bored of using them in-game... plus the animations were typically on the short side.

I don't know for sure about X - I don't hink so either actually, but then summons in that game worked quite differently, since you directly control the summon after it's summoned.  I don't think there was any way to skip their special attack animations though.  I really hated Final Fantasy X, by the way.

Final Fantasy IX did have 'shortened' summon versions, which would often trigger instead of the full one - but that was a bad thing, since the summon would only do full damage in those instances where it displayed the full animation.  So again, the more time you spent staring at the animation, the better your chances.  But IX gets some slack again because the summons cost a lot of MP and thus tended not to be overused as ridiculously as they could be in VIII.
« Last Edit: June 30, 2010, 11:51:55 PM by Soul Reaver »

Offline Angie

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Re: SO I HEARD YOU LIKED LONG ATTACK ANIMATIONS
« Reply #4 on: July 01, 2010, 01:48:55 AM »
Also, Soul, if I recall correctly, there should be an option in the games that allow you to either shorten or skip entirely? It existed in VII and X, but I'm not really sure about VIII.

Dunno if Final Fantasy has that, but Super Robot Wars does. Usually. Thank god.

It's rare to find an attack UNDER thirty seconds long that isn't BEAM SABER or BEAM RIFLE.

I mean, yeah, it's awesome, but still.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2010, 01:52:05 AM by Angie »

Offline john greymore

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Re: SO I HEARD YOU LIKED LONG ATTACK ANIMATIONS
« Reply #5 on: July 01, 2010, 02:39:03 AM »
Never played VIII, but why do you hate X?? X-2 was huge fan service but I thought X wasn't too bad.

In X the animation's only when you summon them, but that's all it does and it just looks flashy. I remember shortening them. You also have the option for them to just be summoned with no animation at all. The attacks and abilities couldn't be shortened though. Can't remember whether their overdrive could be affected too... Haven't touched it in ages :(
Destruction begets Creation. Creation begets Interaction. Interaction begets Society. Society begets Use. Use begets Destruction.

Thus the cycle begins and ends.

Offline Soul Reaver

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Re: SO I HEARD YOU LIKED LONG ATTACK ANIMATIONS
« Reply #6 on: July 01, 2010, 03:41:43 AM »
Never played VIII, but why do you hate X?? X-2 was huge fan service but I thought X wasn't too bad.

My God, don't even get me started!

Warning: 'Sperg mode activating!

I hated almost every single character (with the exception of Wakka and to some extent Auron), but Tidus (who is the main character) was one I absolutely could not stand, and Yuna (the female lead) was almost as bad.   Combine this with the horrendous, faux-dramatic dialogue and it only gets worse.  Plus the story was mostly hokey as hell: Tidus was a dream all along!  Various people are actually dead (not that it really matters)!  Tidus' deadbeat dad is now a bad guy (for someone that I never even remotely liked, this was neither interesting nor shocking)!  The only interesting bit (that the Summoner has to kill herself) can be averted by killing a funny-shaped cube!

So that's strike on, the characters and storyline.

Then you've got the tiny world size - it never really feels like you're exploring a large area at all.  You've got the 'ice place', and the 'village place' and so on... but they're all relatively small areas and never feel like part of a larger whole.  It might be artificial, but the world maps of previous games gave a much better sense of scope.  In Final Fantasy X, I always felt like I was restricted to a few very linear paths.

So that's strike two, the environments and sense of exploration.

But then comes the worst thing: the game system itself.  There is usually very, very little point in using magic, as physical attacks are almost always superior, and don't cost any MP.  While the characters start off differentiated and interesting, as they advance through the sphere grid they all start to become more and more the same.  And there's no actual even remotely believable, explained, or understandable reason of what these 'spheres' are, or how they work to help you 'level up', or anything.  It's a phenomenally artifical system imposed almost entirely for the purpose of being 'different'.

That would be three strikes, but none of this matters because of the game's worst crime:

It's designed in such a way that that more thorough you are, and the better you do, the more boring and tedius the game becomes.  The game would be MOST fun for the casual gamer who whips through it and doesn't look any deeper than than the surface of the gameplay.  Woe be to the perfectionist/completionist (like me) who dares to try and do more!  To do 'everything' in the game, you have to do a phenomenal amount of completely illogical crap, for which there is no rhyme, or reason, or even clue.  For example, you want your Celestial Weapons?  Well, better go to some place you couldn't go to earlier, but which you can go to now (for no particular reason), and read a plaque that's there (that nobody ever said anything about) and get a magic item from it.  Did I mention that you have to win a really annoying and largely luck-based minigame with a ridiculously perfect score to get another item that you didn't know you'd get from it?  Oh, and that you need to take another item (whose purpose is not explained) to a specific orb in a forest that is full of other orbs that all look exactly the same, and use it on that one specific orb to activate the weapons?  Wait, what's that, you had to read a guide to figure all that shit out?  Why, me too!  I guess Tidus and his party must be insane or psychic, because there's abolutely no remotely logical reason why they would ever pull this shit in the game!

And yet another travesty in game-making: one of the 'challenges' to get one of the Celestial weapons is to succeed at the lighting-dodging minigame.  The game works as follows: you stand in a certain place.  There will be a flash of light (these happen intermittently), so you quickly need to press a button to dodge the lightning that follows.  To get the ultimate weapon, you need to do this successfully 200 times IN A ROW.  Make a mistake?  Too bad, start again.  Gone to save the game after doing 100?  Haha, you'll need to start again.  The whole thing, if you don't make a mistake, takes about half an hour of solid staring at the screen waiting for these stupid flashes.  But you'll never make it in one go anyway, so good luck with that.

And should you want to take out all the Dark Summons, then you'd better level all your characters up to max stats (and I mean max stats) first, by endlessly farming the incredibly, incredibly long battles at the monster arena.  You have no idea how long that takes.

Sound like fun?  You're right, it's not.  The more you try to get done in the game, the more it makes itself repetitive, illogical, and downright painful to play.  It effectively punishes you for seeking out everything there is to see in it.

Yet since I shelled out money for it, I would certainly hope to see everything there is to it in my playthrough.

And that, my friends, is why I despise Final Fantasy X.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2010, 05:06:30 PM by Soul Reaver »

Offline Danyael

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Re: SO I HEARD YOU LIKED LONG ATTACK ANIMATIONS
« Reply #7 on: July 01, 2010, 12:41:38 PM »
Wow. the Danyael character would be so at home with all of these people.  :o
"Yeah, well, ya' better have a spatula where we're goin' cause my ass is frozen to this yak!" :o