Thirith on 10/12/2008 at 07:49

---

I'd agree with SE on this. What you're saying is nonsensical bullshit.

You choose because you have a choice. You make the choices interesting by implementing them equally well, by making them equally enjoyable (but appealing to different tastes, playing styles or character choices).

Unless, of course, by "flaw" you mean e.g. that going in with guns ablazing is dangerous and likely to get you killed, whereas sneaking in requires patience and careful planning. But those aren't flaws and if you read the posts you're responding to you'd know how your answer simply doesn't apply. "Half-arsed implementation" != every approach has its pros and cons.

BlackCapedManX on 10/12/2008 at 13:40

---

I think one of the fundamental problems with IW as a shooter as compared to DX is that IW is less awkward. I've been playing through IW a bunch lately (I think to acclimate myself to it so I might more properly savor DX when I get back to playing it), and I've been trying to look at it very critically and try a bunch of different things and see how it handles them. The thing with DX is that you simply aren't good at guns until you've invested a lot into them (I've just finished playing thorugh both games with an MGS style play, using silenced pistols and taking guards with one head shot without giving them the chance to go hostile or sound an alarm), in DX you can't get a one hit head shot with the silenced pistol until master level, the assault rifle isn't useful on it's own until mastered or at experienced with a bunch of accuracy and recoil mods, your typical bread an butter FPS weapons are simply awkward to use until you've gotten far enough in the game that you've pretty much found other ways to get around the shooter aspect. In this regard DX functions as a shooter because you have to actually make a conscious decision to play it as a shooter, or just do something else entirely.

IW on the other hand dismisses that whole skill thing, so the minute you find a gun you're as good as you're ever going to get, making shooting at least as viable of an option as anything else (a sin that DX3 is threatening to commit.) Unfortunately this is built into a very small and non-FPS friendly environment that tries to be as much like DX as possible, so the shooter aspect simply doesn't sit well, because it's there, but it never really presents a challange, and it doesn't fit into the rest of the context of the gameplay (where nearly everything you can do is overpowered, but you never really have enough justification to do much of any of it.)

A really good contrast to this is the last level. I played through allied with the Illuminati and had cloak as an ability (also stupidly overpowered, sure, shooting turns it off, but all you have to do is turn it back on and they can't find you, even if they're already in the process of attacking you) I would guide JC and his troupe and the Templar power suits over to the 6 or more Elite Cyborgs and it would usually result in some pretty spectacular firefights. The AI interact with each other really well, with the ECs actually ducking under shots, and rolling out of the way in time (sometimes they do it arbitrarily, but it usually makes to look like a farily intense battle.) Because everyone either has a magrail or rocket launcher (or the Greys' green radiation attack) all of the attacks have travel time, all of the end game enemies have a ton of hit points (i.e. no one shot kills, except maybe on Tracer Tong) so the whole thing smacks of a traditional shooter setup. If the PC wants to mix it up as well it gets that whole run-and-dodge-and-shoot vibe a shooter is supposed to give off. The problem is that this is the only part of the game that dedicates the space for this to happen, so you never actually realize that it has decent shooter elements until the game is over (it's really just that one level, even on the other side of the island there isn't enough enemies or room.)

Having played through IW and looking at it more closely I think all other things being the same, it would be an astoundingly better game if it were simply longer and had much bigger levels. It would have given the game much more opportunity to explore a lot of the things it wanted to get at, and let some of its stronger elements actually show through, instead of everything feeling tacked on and hackneyed.

BlackCapedManX on 11/12/2008 at 05:13

---

The inventory is especially aggrivating due to the inverse problem from not being penalized for carrying larger weapons, is that should I want to carry, say, a bunch of grenades, they take up pretty much all of the spaces (worsened by the fact that proxy and thrown grenades have been separated, yeilding a total of I think 8 grenade types, if, like pretty much every character, you want to carry the medkit/encell/multitool triad, that leaves you one spot out of the original twelve for a gun. When you consider that some of the grenades, like gas, noisemaker, prox emp and prox scramble have less than a half dozen that you can pick up in the whole game it just becomes a stupid "why bother" moment. The game really shoots itself in the foot by adding very limited use items, but punishing the player for wanting to carry them around because they take up just as much inventory as much larger and more usable items. This in particular really kills replayability because I could either have a rocket launcher, rail gun, flame thrower, shotgun, and SMG, with essentially unlimited ammo for each, since they all use ammo that's more than abundant everywhere in the world, or I could carry 7 gas grenades. Like, why would you even bother with EMP grenades once you've got the mag rail? The fact that there's pretty much zero reason to choose the grenades in this case shows a what is essential to the massive failing on IW's part. If you can't tell I'm a bit peeved by this presently, so I feel the need to complain about it.

DDL on 12/12/2008 at 11:51

---

That's not really a valid complaint, though: sure, a situation where "the best char build for this level is a sneaker with lots of points in Sniping" is likely to arise, but as long as that's not the best build for the rest of the game*, it's not a problem. You might as well say "the best build for sneaking past guards is a sneaker"...which is obvious, really.

What heywood is complaining about is the artificial feel some games can have where it's clear they've carefully calibrated each level to present the exact same level of challenge no matter what skill build you have, which makes you feel like your build doesn't matter.
Ideally, different areas should be entirely different in difficulty, depending on your build: that adds interest and challenge, and probably replayability: "Shit, I'm not sneaky enough for this one. Might have to skip it."

Plus with the latter approach, setups can be more extreme, which makes things more interesting than the blander scenarios the former approach takes, where you have stuff like "enough guards to make sneaking worthwhile, but not enough to make non-sneaking impossible", and so on.

Which, rereading what you've posted, seems to be what you're saying too, so I'm not sure where the conflict arises. :)



*Though to be honest, a sneaky player with master in rifles can pretty much breeze through anything, so it's not the best example. :P

BlackCapedManX on 13/12/2008 at 20:21

---

I've heard this argument a couple times, and I really don't understand how it applies to modern single player games (esp the likes of DX.) If a game was about winning and losing, why would there be a plot? Why would developers put so much effort into side stories and character development, why would really good games be riddled with minutia and choices? If you want a game that's about winning and losing, play Halo, or the myriad of online shooters, but clearly games like DX offer a choice because it's interesting and an engaging experience, not because it's a sport (which is typically the epitome of winning and losing.)