Secrets in video games were really big in metroidvania and fps's back in the day.

The entire point is that you go in knowing that this is what this game is, and embracing it. The entire point of games like this was that there was actually replay value and an open-world feel to genres that otherwise don't have that experience, namely fps and platforming. Modern games by comparison are really bland and focus too much on the multiplayer aspect of things, feeling like a watered down experience in the process.

The reason people really like secrets is because, when done well, they are A) completely unnecessary for beating the game and B) really cool easter eggs in their own right that make the game different every time you play it.

For example, one of my favorite shooter series is Serious Sam. <- The first game, Serious Sam: TFE (or on steam Serious Sam HD: TFE) starts off with a small level where you fight the first basic enemies and get a couple weapons and then move on. OR SO YOU THINK. If you take the time to explore though, you'll not only see several cool extras but you'll end up with better equipment for your trouble. And the kicker? If you actually try you can go out and walk into the endless desert most games would leave as a texture, encountering whole new enemies and experiences much earlier than normal and even getting a rocket launcher at the oasis for your trouble. Can you imagine how cool something like that is the first time you stumble upon it?

When people think of secrets, and lambast the decline of secrets in modern games, they aren't really thinking of "collectibles" in the sense that modern linear games now sort of have. They are thinking of the Luke Skywalker secret in Duke Nukem 3D. The secret bosses of Castlevania. The hidden levels in doom. The things that made those games so great and that make them stand up to modern scrutiny without needing all the high powered graphics that modern bland shooters use to lure people into the next generic multiplayer experience.

I think the achievement system has been a big contributor to the downfall of secrets in terms of hidden rewards, because instead of actually exploring for them, players are on the lookout for specific things (nevermind the other issues with the achievement system). I remember in Ratchet & Clank 2 and 3 back on the PS2 even that had an entire sub-menu which listed all the "secrets" of the game, and used the secrets as a currency for "cheats" -- I specifically bring that one up because they had locations listed with each one.

Personally I feel that more of what's been lost over time is a good level design which both hides things from plain sight yet leaves hints for the astute player to explore their possibilities. As much as I love Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country, it's hard not to look at them with a modern mindset and think that the secrets there were almost stupidly unfindable. Like, I recently got my hands on the Super Mario 64 DS port, and putting aside the fact that watching speedruns of it has kind of ruined me for actually playing it (nevermind you can't play as Mario at the start), the "secret star" levels are really cleverly hidden in the overworld in ways that hide the levels in plain sight, basically.

For me, secrets done well means rewarding players in small ways for going out of their way for something, whether it's the astute player who follows small clues, or the persistent player who tries climbing a mountain just because its there, or the intrepid player who doggedly explores the entire world. As you say, these can't be necessary to play otherwise they become obtuse obstacles to progression, and they can't really be left with nothing otherwise the player has no reason to continue trying to find them and may even feel cheated for their effort. Some of the best secrets, I feel, are the ones hidden in the opening or tutorial levels that are actually obvious once you've played through the game once and understand it. The potion in your PC in the first Pokémon games is a good example, and that one stays there the entire game so you can always get it in the later areas. Earthworm Jim's first level had a hidden area in the first level that was difficult to get to, but rewarded you with power shots and a teleport to later in the level. The way you describe the Serious Sam level sounds good, and I've heard Toki Tori 2's first level has some fantastic hidden areas in the first levels that are only blocked off by the player's unfamiliarity with their own suite of abilities.

By the way, welcome back. I've missed you.

Welp, I did it. The notorious "hardest boss" of Undertale, I beat. It only took me 15.5 times. 13 if you don't count the two purposeful deaths as he changes stages (just before entering stage 2 of the fight, you may think you have an out, but if you take it you are killed with extreme prejudice) and the half-point where I quit for supper before even reaching stage 2.

I'm at once weirdly proud of myself (I know of let's players who spend days and literally dozens of tries trying to get past him) and a little confused as to why people have so much trouble. I had a harder time with the 3rd-area boss (2nd-area if you're not counting the "tutorial level") in both her forms. I think it's the DDR. I was never any good at rhythm games.

Speaking of, I want to make a note here (that I'll probably include if and when I make a full review thing for the game) about how many genre references Undertale makes in its gameplay. Obviously you have the turn-based RPG and bullet hell genres, and a quick overview of the battle system shows the similarities to timing-based attacks like from the Super Mario RPGs (I'm more familiar with Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga myself) that have become more common with action-oriented mobile games. However, there are gameplay references in various enemies to platformers, Snake (of Atari fame), Dance Dance Revolution, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and similar quiz shows, Frogger in more than one form, Flappy Bird now that I think about it, vertical shooters like Raiden (important difference because you can actually shoot back for one fight instead of only dodging), and Super Hexagon. Then there's the overworld puzzles which vary from colored maze puzzles to pseudo stealth games involving lasers, to moving block and switch puzzles, but all of those feel like they'd be right at home in a Legend of Zelda game.

There are two things I want to say:

First, as much as I like the idea of a sequel to Freedom Planet and am excited in my own way for it, after finding out about it even existing I was immediately pissed off by their trailer and info pages. The trailer actually pissed me off twice, first because at the end of it I realized the trailer showed absolutely nothing of the game -- instead opting for stupid CGI like it was a cutscene that isn't even going to be seen in the game -- and then again because I realized that, for a moment, I had actually fallen for getting excited over that piss-poor trailer. I also want to call BS on their excuse for aging up the characters and sprites: they say it's because of their graphical constraints in the original game that forced them to make more exaggerated character designs; but I've heard from multiple sources (though none official I'll admit) that it started as a Sonic fan-game, which for the time fit perfectly because the character designs are obviously meant to evoke the designs of the original Sonic the Hedgehog characters. My point is that it sounds dishonest to say that the graphics they were using, rather than the fact that they were emulating the blue hedgehog, that had led to the original designs.

Second, I've been watching/listening to a lot of Undertale reviews/critiques, and it makes me second-guess my own choice in style for my reviews. I don't think I'm presenting either an enjoyable or informative opinion with my style thus far. It's also making me realize that I really need to sit down some time and write those glowing reviews for Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons, Shovel Knight, and Undertale, because I really love all three of those games and they all handle being a video game in very different ways but all execute it extremely well.

You know, as much as I'm enjoying Badland 2 as an iteration on the gameplay of Badland, design-wise it is an awful game in comparison to the original. The original Badland was a marvelous example of touch-screen gaming, simplifying all controls while still presenting a challenging and fun physics puzzle game with maybe a touch of platforming in it. What made the first game so great design-wise was its slow introduction of new mechanics and steady difficulty curve.

In comparison, Badland 2 introduces new mechanics all the way up to the final level and a lot of them are in addition to or integrated into already fiendishly difficult levels. Basically, it feels like the designers got too focused on the "look what our new engine can do" aspect of the sequel.

And don't get me started on the community levels that got included into the base game as extra levels...

Sputnik Eyes was a free puzzle game on the App Store this week, so I downloaded it and played a bit. It's a simple line/shuffle puzzle game whose actual gameplay and challenge is middling. The sin it commits is making its puzzles solvable by brute force; on the other hand, the feature I greatly appreciated was that you could hide the timer and move counter (necessary for its star rating systems) for pressure-free gameplay. It was reasonably nice to skip forward by level groups to the much harder levels, but even so I didn't really enjoy the gameplay because of that aforementioned brute force solving, and didn't care to go through hitting any of the stars.

EDIT: Apparently Deadbolt, the game I mentioned a while back when I played like 10 free games from itch.io, had a full release? I do not remember clearly, but I wouldn't think that I was playing a beta. Which means that free game I played... less than two months ago is now $10.

Right.

*sigh*

On the flip side a tiny dev team put their product into the wild for free for a short time before release, allowing the generation of word of mouth, and a live bugtesting period before a full release. Having played both games on offer from the team, I cant get behind the implication that asking for 10 dollars for the finished product is some greedy move.

How should they move forward? People are very jaded and negative about paying for alpha and beta states of games due to greenlight and steams general state....and now you're implying that letting an early build be free and then later selling a finished product is also distasteful?

I'll admit that one of the more prevalent things on my mind when I wrote that post was Cave Story+, which I do not think is worth the change in price for being on Steam (being available for purchase on consoles and handhelds is something I can get behind, though).

However, as I stated, I don't actually believe I was playing an early build of the game. The screenshots that I looked at were exactly as I remember seeing them in the game when I played it for free -- although I'll admit I didn't make it that far into the game (because it's bloody hard), so if I only had access to, say, the first four levels, I was none the wiser because I never got past that point.

As for moving forward, I think most games should come with demos. I don't understand the technical and monetary limitations for making demos, but I am absolutely enamored with one of the models that mobile games have taken -- most notably in Phoenix Wright and Ghost Trick ports to iOS and to the Android release of Badland -- in that a portion of the game is available for free, with the rest of the game locked behind an in-app pay wall. I've also played a few demos like for Puzzle Dimension which take choice bits from across the game to showcase what the game does. It seems the best way to judge most games nowadays before making a purchase is to look up a let's play, because seeing a game in motion is vitally important and the number of games, especially on PC, vastly outnumber the people who can review them, and I consider that a sad state of affairs because there are a lot of games that also tend to have things ruined by watching (most recent example that comes to mind is Firewatch).

I have roughly the same issue with movies, by the way. There is no reliable way that I know of to try before you buy, unless you engage in shady dealings.

I think a significant issue here is that you believe the difference between the finished game and an early build needs to be hugely and visibly noticable. Art styles and mechanics can be locked down, and the difference between an early build and a late build can simply be later content or significant under the hood technical workings and bug fixes.

On the one hand, you have a point; if the devs were able to have a larger bugtesting period and actually fix those bugs found in the short while they had Deadbolt available for free, then more power to them.

However, in this day and age of fully digital games with updates, there's no reason to consider a fully released game as separate from an early build just because it's being sold for money now. Why not have released it for $10 to begin with, then add and fix whatever you want to it after launch?

There's also the oddity I find of the itch.io page for Deadbolt now only pointing to the newly-released Steam page. Why do that? Itch.io is a digital store just the same as Steam and GOG, and even has a new client to compete with Steam and GOG Galaxy.

That business model is gaining itself pretty huge notoriety thanks to greenlight/early access. Asking money for an incomplete game is seen as a pretty big foul, due to many cases of spoiling it for everyone.

As for the distribution. Who knows? Could be a contracts thing with it being a tiny dev, not having the time/money to be dealing with multiple retailers. But even then, I was under the understanding he's published by a slightly larger indie studio. Who knows indeed.

You know, as much as I look down on Steam for a lack of quality control (and really, I look at it with the same sense of "touch it only when I need to" as I do Apple's App Store), I continuously forget about the cultural impact that Greenlight and Early Access has had. I don't prowl around either, and usually if I hear about a game being on Greenlight, it's after I've started playing it and it being a good game -- the same as with Kickstarter, really.

There are a small number of Early Access games I'm actively aware of, usually by virtue of being essentially feature-complete (for instance, Starbound or Speedrunners, both of which a friend has) which I avoid more now because I don't want to associate with Steam than because of avoiding Early Access, but I still shy away from anything with an "Early Access" label on it due to the amount of horror stories I've heard on that front.

So yeah, I can definitely see your point. Maybe releasing Deadbolt the way they did was the best choice? I don't know if an open beta or a free demo would not have served the same purpose, but at least I don't think it's that big an issue anymore. I mean, personally I never really liked the game anyway, so I wasn't planning on raising a big stink about it, but I had the need to voice my incredulity.

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In other news, I've been re-playing Badland 2, and once I have finished I plan on re-playing the original Badland to see if my memory holds up or if it's rose-tinted, but I think I was just a smidge too hard on the game at first. But only a smidge.

At some point I'm probably going to do a big long post about it, because at the least the first Badland deserves some praise and I've been meaning to talk about it, but I just don't feel like Badland 2 was designed as well.

I decided to start replaying Badland 1, and take notes as I go along what it does per level -- what mechanics it introduces, how it ups the scale, etc. -- and the first four levels are still really, really good.

Then I decided to switch over to Badland 2 and take notes on its first levels and holy flipping troll jegus. I am actually rather mad at Badland 2 now, and I only replayed the first level.

Here's a quick breakdown:
Badland 1, LVL 1:

• Introduces you to its basic movement mechanics and controls (one-finger tapping)
• Introduces the way the background moves and how it can move you
• Introduces one recurring background thing: gears, and it does so in an integrated way with how the background moves
• The entire level is nearly impossible to die in

Badland 2, LVL 1:

• Introduces you to its basic movement mechanics and controls (two-finger tapping, one on each end of the screen), via really clever background design
• Introduces switches
• Introduces that the background can move in an unlocking way
• Introduces that the background can move in response to you and can move you, and its NECESSARY to move on (as in, if you don't get it before you come up to the section, you can miss the point you need to be at in order to move the background and make it through the section)
• Ups the scale of you moving the background to proceed
• Introduces water (which is actually a new mechanic to the sequel), but only in a movement capacity, although it comes in later levels for actual use
• Introduces tunnels to other parts of the level (another new mechanic)
• Ups the scale of the water
• Introduces gel-pools, which has no purpose as far as I know but recurs anyway
• Introduces cloning (+1 clone)
• Introduces two different kinds of traps by one trap: needles and shooting traps
• Introduces cloning (+10 clones)
• Introduces saws
• Introduces needle interactions to the background, as a shooting needles shoots into a saw and begins rotating with the saw and pushing more of your clones into the saw
• Introduces gears
• Introduces auto unlock-walls, in the form of half-circles rotating around their axis

I would hope people can see why this is bad design. It presumes a level of familiarity with the game mechanics that a veteran of Badland 1 would know, but at the cost of having a high starting difficulty for starting players. I'm pretty sure only the two mechanics that are entirely new to the sequel would actually catch a veteran player off-guard, especially since the tunnel appears to be an end-of-level pipe, but I just can't get over how many things it introduces in this like 3-minute period.

So this was my reaction on Tuesday when I was looking through possible purchases for multiplayer with a meatspace friend:

OHGODOHGODOHGOD HunieCam Studio is out.

I put in a few more hours into Dark Souls (Steam says I now have 5) and I beat boss #1. Woo! At least, I call him Boss #1 because I don't want to count the tutorial boss.

Also I found a good offense is the best defense.

So I played Dark Souls for another like 4 hours today and got a lot done this time. Somehow I ended up playing online after about an hour of not (I have not been playing online up to this point), and it's a completely different experience. I got a lot of help through the messaging system and ended up getting a much more powerful weapon and beating Boss #2. I also found a lot of passageways I need to go exploring down and probably beat more bosses. Currently focusing on my Strength so I can wield a Zweihander with one hand.

Picking up the extra-powerful sword has not dissuaded me from the opinion that a good offense is the best defense. It's how I beat Boss #2 after only 3 tries.

It occurs to me now, months after the fact, how bad a position I had taken on the Zelda series back when mjack called me out on it. After watching Super Bunnyhop's video about Dark Souls' level design, and then thinking about Pokémon today, I realized just what mjack meant when he said I was criticizing a Zelda game for being a Zelda game. Even if it were almost the exact same game, it would still be an iteration that fills some niche, just like a million other games with at least one sequel.

However, I still maintain that on the whole, Nintendo tends to re-release the same handful of titles tied to its major franchises: Zelda adventure games, Mario platformers, Mario cart-racers, Metroid uh... metroid-likes, Smash Bros. fighting games, Pokémon monster RPGs, and a smaller handful of others. Not to say these aren't all polished games (well, not all of them are, but they all still have a high bar), but Nintendo's first-party library feels extremely limited, and I think Splattoon might be their first big new IP in a long while.

Been playing some different things with friends the last few days.

Played Cards Against Humanity for the first time. It's okay I guess.

Played some more of Twilight Sparkle's Secret Shipfic Folder, and I just love the mechanics of the game, as someone who is used to incredibly structured turns from card games such as Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic: the Gathering. It's fun, it's fast-paced, and if it weren't for the ponies it would be such an easier sell. As someone I once played it with said, "you could replace the ponies with anything else and it would still be just as good a game".

Because the one with whom I played the above game with is currently just wading into the greater pony fandom, I've had to play Fighting is Magic more times than I've already cared for (that being once around the roster). While I can understand why people were excited about it and why they're excited about Them's Fighting Herds (which, honestly, I think will be the better game for not having to rely on the MLP world), I found Fighting is Magic so utterly BORING to play. It is a 2d fighting game in the exact same vein as Street Fighter, with seemingly no improvisation or imagination put into it. The art is pretty good for a fan project, but that still makes it kind of barely competent for what I'm looking in a game like that.

I played like 3 rounds of Skullgirls almost as a comparison with Fighting is Magic, and while I have several of the same gripes with Skullgirls being a "typical fighting game", I find it so much more eminently playable. Fantastic animations, simply gorgeous background art, really imaginative character designs, and at least it's got an interesting "team" mechanic. It's still far from my cup of tea, but I find it so well-polished that I can't help but respect it.

Meanwhile personally I'm still stuck in a loop of Monster Hunter and Dark Souls.

Overwatch has some balance issues. That is not what I want to talk about.

Overwatch has a really good gameplay loop. That is also not what I want to talk about.

The two biggest things that "make or break" the experience for me right now are Blizzard servers and loot crates.

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Every time you level up, Overwatch gives you a loot crate. This is a pseudorandom reward system (I believe it has a pity timer?) operating on the same system as Hearthstone card packs but with quite worse odds. It's like Hearthstone back in classic but if we tripled the amount of stuff at common and rare, made like a third of rares unpurchasable with in-game currency, and you could only "disenchant" duplicates. Oh and if you only got 4 cards per pack. Oh and if duplicates disenchanted at exactly 1/5 value at all tiers. Oh and if you could only use 7 cards per class at the time and thus wanted so few of the items that most packs felt like you were opening nothing of value at all. But you could earn a pack for every 1.5 to 2 hours played. If the crappy in-game servers decide to let you. The sole "saving grace" of this system is that it's all purely cosmetic, but since they've SOLD 7 million copies of the game at $40 to $60 a pop to date, this all really begs the question: Why is a full price retail game operating on the free to play model?

BECAUSE THEY CAN!!!

They can and they are getting away with it and not enough people give a ****. The Blizzard fanboys certainly don't care. It's not even that the game has loot crates so much as that the gatcha system they operate on is so much **** worse than actual free to play games that it's just downright disgusting that this has become an acceptable industry standard. The idea and justification behind this is that it will fund future maps and characters and cosmetics for free for everyone. But there are three problems with that:

1) The same justification could work for crates without duplicates. Or as bad rng. Or something else that wouldn't require people getting to well over level 800 to have a reasonable chance at getting everything. There has to be some middle ground between "paid dlc" and "worse than Hearthstone" that wouldn't be as downright disgusting as the current system is. There's also A TON of obvious bloating of crap from everything to skins to sprays that further forces the rng into bad odds. It's just really really hard to get anything you want from a box right now.

2) The in game currency, once you actually start getting it, can't buy player icons. You know, the thing that most people want other than skins. These are at the "rare" tier and completely unpurchasable, meaning you can theoretically open an infinite number of boxes and never get the one you want. The equivalent would be like half of the rares, THE GOOD HALF, being unavailable for crafting in Hearthstone. So you had to get your Knife Juggler and your Blizzard and what have you from pack rng. That's about how much people care about getting specific ones of these.

3) You cannot actually drop $40 on 50 loot crates and guarantee getting enough in-game currency to get more than one legendary skin, at least not until you've opened up a very large amount of crates already. When something that costs 1000 credits is in the in-game shop, only being guaranteed 30 credits per box at 50 boxes doesn't go very far until you are getting mostly duplicates, at which point you are paying about $20 per skin unless crate rng favors you. Since these are bloated as **** with tons of common and rare items people don't want, getting to that point actually takes a decent number of crates too. It's just.... not fun to purchase these. Like, I expect them to stop selling them once people are getting nothing but duplicates too so I don't even know how this system is supposed to work other than putting a $700 price tag on getting everything right away (if you are lucky enough to open all the icons).

^ Overall, I don't like that the game industry has come to a point where this is acceptable.

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Overwatch Errors BC 101 and LC 202 are pissing me off. And a lot of other people. Especially on consoles. Basically.... Overwatch doesn't play nice with a lot of ISP's and routers. And if that happens to you well then you can go **** yourself as far as they are concerned. It's not like they don't have your $60 already. No um... Blizzard is having frequent problems right now and in a large number of cases it is their fault and it doesn't look like it is going to get resolved any time soon for a large number of people. The main thing worse than buying a $60 online only game with tons of focus on microtransactions is buying one you can't play at all at random points in time because of something completely outside of your control. Oh right we haven't even gotten to the leaver penalty.

So um.... Overwatch has a leaver penalty. So if you drop too many times, even if it's their fault, you get hit with a leaver penalty. The math behind it is that you have the penalty until you've finished 18 out of your last 20 games. So um..... drop 3 games in a row due to server issue and that's 20 you are going to have to play to get rid of the penalty. The saving grace behind this is that the penalty is only 75% less exp, making a 2 hour to level up experience into an 8 hour to level up experience. Assuming you can get in at all, which isn't a guarantee. Normally I would criticize this penalty for not preventing game time, but right now I think they should actually turn the **** thing off until they can get their **** together. But that would be admitting there is a problem and most people don't care so why do that?

The actual gameplay loop for the game is very good, but I'm getting so pissed at frequent connection issues right now that I honestly can't recommend the **** thing unless you can guarantee, well ahead of time, that you will have zero issues.

As for me, right now "SORRY, WE WERE UNABLED TO LOG YOU INTO BATTLE.NET. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER. (BC-101)" and "DISCONNECTED FROM GAME SERVER. (LC-202)" are going to start haunting my dreams. I cannot emphasize enough that I can log into psn and play any other game I want without trouble. It's solely this one that is the porblem, and it's obviously Battle.Net and the need to connect to it at all times that is the turd in the punch-bowl here.

Connection issues are a really solid issue, and it sounds awful.

Crying about cosmetic skins and icons 'cause you want em all just makes you look ridiculous.