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TIGSource ForumsPlayerGamesTransistor - New game from Supergiant Games
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Author Topic: Transistor - New game from Supergiant Games  (Read 5775 times)
ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #20 on: March 21, 2013, 08:50:11 AM »

if unspecific and vague characters are what it takes to get someone to like a story, there are plenty of other games that do that, i don't really see the difference between the storytelling in bastion, and, say, gauntlet

why did a valkyrie, elf, wizard, and barbarian team up? why are they fighting all those ghosts? what exactly is "death"? why does shooting food destroy it? is the wizard really THE merlin (that's his name)? is the barbarian THE thor? why do we never learn more about the land of rendar? what is morak's motivations? who is the "dungeon master" that provides random hints to you? how does the sacred orb work? is the narrator of gauntlet a real person, is he the same as the dungeon master, or is he just a narrator? (gauntlet beat bastion to the narration thing by about 20 years, as an aside -- "elf shot the food", "valkyrie is about to die")

all of those questions are left to the players' imaginations. but i'm not sure i'd necessarily call that good storytelling

in any case, people like different things, and have different standards, and notice different things about games, and that's fine. you can't often predict how a person will react to a game, it's somewhat arbitrary and random. so i'm not saying you should not like it when you do, and similarly other people shouldn't say i should rate it higher than average (which is after all a pretty good evaluation -- it means half of all games i've played i'd consider worse than bastion; i just wouldn't put it in my top 100)
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« Reply #21 on: March 21, 2013, 06:07:41 PM »

I think vague storytelling is a legitimate tool, but too many people use it as a crutch without explaining the story in the end, and tying up all the loose ends. They claim that vagueness makes it deep, while merely not bothering to develop those aspects. However, it worked for Bastion because the world was destroyed, and knowing about how it existed before didn't matter.

I know that if I wrote Bastion, I would probably show how Caeldonia looked before, but I'm not sure it would have made a difference. Regardless, I wouldn't rank it among one of the best games ever made because the brevity of the story made it hard to get "into" it.
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« Reply #22 on: March 21, 2013, 06:30:05 PM »

the 3d on 2d was a bit jarring, and i expected them to make the narrator a lot more reactive to your actions than he was. couldve done more than just "kid takes a dirt nap" every time you die
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« Reply #23 on: March 21, 2013, 07:05:49 PM »

the visual style of Bastion was the best thing about it...hopefully the gameplay in this new game will be something fresh and this isn't just a retread.
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« Reply #24 on: March 22, 2013, 06:38:39 AM »

Bastion seemed to be one of those games that either clicked with you or it didn't. For me it definitely didn't, I never liked the gameplay and wasn't drawn in by the narration, but enough people that I know adore it so it's just a taste thing.
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« Reply #25 on: March 22, 2013, 06:58:25 AM »

Yeah, it's definitely a taste thing - a particular aesthetic which, well, you either like or you don't. For those to whom Bastion was the right kind of aesthetic, it did a great job - and whether or not other games had already used its """USP""", it still felt relatively unique.

If you're not a fan of the art style, or the music (the

is pretty memorable though!) then you probably won't like it.
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« Reply #26 on: March 22, 2013, 07:05:28 AM »

This is a thrice edited, pre-coffee, bumbling, ranting post, but bear with me.


also, you may be thinking my standards are too high for art and music in an indie title. but keep in mind the game had a two MILLION dollar budget. for two million i'd have expected better

Man, when I say I loved the art, I'm holding it in competition with every other game released ever, not just indie darlings. It's gorgeous, and it's kinda weird to me that you find it busy (in a bad way) -- the designs are really elegant and well constrained, I thought. There's a lot going on, yeah, but it's never unclear -- are you one of those guys who wants art to exclusively serve the purpose of communicating gameplay ideas? I guess if so it would seem a little pointless.

As for the gameplay, I played it for like... 20 hours? 30? I beat it, all the arenas with all the modifiers on (holyshit), and almost all of the game on ng+ with all of the modifiers on. It was a little awkward to me at first and felt like a shitty top down shooter, but after I got a little bit deeper i fell in love. I think it's a game that does a bad job trying to introduce its mechanics. There's actually a lot going on with picking pairs of weapons and ways to dodge/block enemies, as the activated shrines start to pile up the specific, tactical uses of your two weapons become dramatically important, but the game does a lot of hand-holding on the default settings to let you just slug away if that's your thing. Which I think does it an injustice -- a lot of intricate, cool combat design falls away if you lower the difficulty to a point where it isn't meaningful.

Because of this, though -- that bastion is a game with brilliant design that doesn't really make the most of it -- I have very high hopes for supergiant's future games. Slightly better balance and teaching of mechanics to players and they could have something that knocks everybody's socks off.


Lastly, paul, as for the story, I think it either totally failed to get to you and you tuned it out, or you didn't play very far into the game? There's a pretty personal story of betrayal and loss and hubris and regret that goes on with the companions and the (obvious) twist. It's a sorta ham fisted look at the tragedy of war blah blah blah, but it's certainly not 'the valkyrie, elf, wizard, and barbarian team up.'
« Last Edit: March 22, 2013, 07:10:35 AM by Catguy » Logged

ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #27 on: March 22, 2013, 09:24:55 AM »

@catguy - i already said i got to the end of the game; i'd consider that "pretty far"

no, i'm not someone who wants art to exclusively serve gameplay. i made immortal defense and saturated dreamers, for goodness' sake
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« Reply #28 on: March 22, 2013, 09:47:15 AM »

You are still working on Saturated Dreamers, actually.
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #29 on: March 22, 2013, 10:17:10 AM »

it's not released yet, but it's basically done. right now i'm doing some finishing things like making a demo version of the game, recording footage for the trailer, setting up the purchase page, stuff like that. in any case i'd still consider someone to have "made" a game if it's unfinished: for instance, even before minecraft hit version 1.0 and was officially finished, it was still correct to say that notch made minecraft
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« Reply #30 on: March 22, 2013, 10:35:12 AM »

Man Catguy is like super pissed that other people don't like the shitty game he likes.
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« Reply #31 on: March 22, 2013, 11:28:38 AM »

I liked the narration and the overall story, if I found anything forgettable it probably be the gameplay. I mean it serves it purpose but it wasn't really a step up from anything I've played before in the genre.

I like the look of Transistor but it does bear a lot of resemblance to Bastion and that is worrying, but I'II give them the benefit of the doubt for now.   
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #32 on: March 22, 2013, 11:38:06 AM »

also, to be clear, when i said that the problem i had with bastions art was that there was too much on the screen, i did not mean it was busy or that i was unable to figure things out, all i meant was simply that there was too much stuff on the screen at once, because the camera was zoomed out too far, and the sprites were too small. indie games commonly have that problem; the number one visual problem of most indie games is having a really large map with a really big field of view with really tiny sprites

if anything i'd say its problem is that it tries too hard to focus on gameplay, by giving a wide field of view which is good for gameplay, but bad for appreciating any of the art, because everything is so zoomed out that you can't see any details. bastion could easily have halved its resolution (so that you only see a much smaller area of the game) and still been playable, and it'd have looked a lot prettier

here's an example

http://supergiantgames.com/site/wp-content/uploads/Bastion_092010_00021.jpg

notice the sheer amount of stuff on that screen, and how the action is happening near the center, but it's zoomed so far out that you can't appreciate any individual sprite. each of the objects is individually pretty, but there's so much of it shown at once that you never have time to appreciate any of the individual objects

imagine if the field of view were just a smaller rectangle in the center surrounding the player. i think that'd have worked a lot better.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2013, 11:44:25 AM by Paul Eres » Logged

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« Reply #33 on: March 22, 2013, 05:28:05 PM »

Bastion is a game that looks ok in motion, but looks like a child playing with clipart if you look at a screenshot too long.

I mean, that screenshot looks like a joke if you look at it for more than 30 seconds.  Ignoring the background, the player, and the powerups there are 12 unique assets on the screen.  The rest are just the same thing scaled, rotated, and tinted.  Which means the shadows, lighting, etc. are all manners of fucked.  The wall in the upper right looks like it is floating on top of the crate next to it. The flipped over vendor stall in the upper right looks hilariously awful. 

Individually, the pieces look good, but all together it's a goddamn mess.
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #34 on: March 22, 2013, 07:06:46 PM »

haha, i didn't even notice that stall! that does look weird yeah

and yeah that's a good point; the constant flipping and scaling and recoloring of art assets seems like a way to hide how few of them there are, but it has problems (e.g. shadows going two different ways for flipped objects)

and like i said, it's surprising that that's the best they could do for two million dollars. you'd think they'd have more than like 12 art assets rotated and recolored and resized for that amount of dough
« Last Edit: March 22, 2013, 07:14:54 PM by Paul Eres » Logged

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« Reply #35 on: March 22, 2013, 07:10:48 PM »

those kind of errors look ok playing it on tv at whatever the console res is
i didnt even notice the character was 3d when playing it on xbox
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Derek
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« Reply #36 on: March 22, 2013, 07:35:32 PM »

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the artwork, either, although I think the artist herself is quite talented. Agree with Fallsburg that it doesn't come together well and falls well short of the high bar set by Vanillaware for that type of painted look.
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« Reply #37 on: March 22, 2013, 10:19:03 PM »

Man Catguy is like super pissed that other people don't like the shitty game he likes.

You tigsource guys are wound TIGHT. I wouldn't say super pissed...
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #38 on: March 23, 2013, 06:06:21 PM »

gameplay video: http://www.gamespot.com/events/pax-east-2013/video.html?sid=6405837

it seems more strategic than the trailer has you believe; seems more interesting than bastion so far
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ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)
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« Reply #39 on: March 23, 2013, 06:07:43 PM »

Man Catguy is like super pissed that other people don't like the shitty game he likes.

You tigsource guys are wound TIGHT. I wouldn't say super pissed...

it's not that, it's more that people on tigs (due to being game devs themselves) usually know how to live and let live. if someone likes or dislikes a game we don't like, who cares? it's all taste. arguing over whether a game is good or bad is something most indie game devs have moved beyond

and when devs do criticize games, they tend to make it very specific what they like and don't like about them (e.g. the discussion over the 12 reused and flipped resources) rather than calling a game all bad or all good
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