Shadow of The Beast, what a pile of crud on the Atari ST.

[dreamkatcha]

Originally Posted by Seiya

It it is ugly on Atari ST, it is ugly also on Amiga.

SOTB is ugly on the Amiga too? It's widely considered the poster child of the system. The visuals and audio are the game's crowning glory. Saving grace even. Anyway, everyone's entitled to their own artistic preference.

I think it's a competently made game all-round, just not necessarily much fun to play. A mediocre title not sufficiently awful to make it worth ranting over, which I suspect is why no-one requested it as a SGT review candidate.

[Cris1997XX]

I agree with most people's opinion on Shadow Of The Beast...it's a great tech demo/audio visual experience, but it's a shitty game

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Seiya

Sotb is not a nice game in general. Amiga could have nice graphics and sounds, but very poor gameplay.
It it is ugly on Atari ST, it is ugly also on Amiga. It is not a good game. It seems an exercize of style exacly as Agony. Nice in everythings, but zero gameplay.

By all means hate on the gameplay, but this is the very FIRST time i've heard that Shadow of the Beast on Amiga is an "ugly" looking game.

Your opinion on that is very much a minority one, and when you consider the year it was released, its frankly laughable that "ugly" is what you saw.

[Seiya]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

By all means hate on the gameplay, but this is the very FIRST time i've heard that Shadow of the Beast on Amiga is an "ugly" looking game.

i don't said that: i said that Shadows of the Beast for Amiga is beautiful in graphics and sounds, but bad gamplay due mainly to a frustrating difficulty. It's the classic example of a Tech demo.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

which I suspect is why no-one requested it as a SGT review candidate.

I have a feeling that you're the only one trying to make this point. Twice, now.

[malko]

My mini-Godzillas found it super beautiful when I showed it to them (~3 years ago)
And they also as well did like a lot the music.
I already mentioned it but like for many others games, it is a difficult game ONLY if you do not remember enemy's pattern. So all in all it is one of the most excellent and good looking ever made game at that period of time.

[slaapliedje]

I would have to go digging, but pretty sure there was an article that basically said the ST version of the game was gimped on purpose. They made it in a short period of time, only supported 512kb of ram, and just basically published it unfinished.
As far as the borders go? Pretty sure all of the computers back in the day supported some overscan. And demo makers have certainly acheived more than 16 colors per scan line on the ST... funny thing is, it had a mode very similar to HAM. For displaying the full 512 colors on screen.
I always tended to think they were pretty close system wise, each had their trade offs (like the ST was overall slightly faster on things that needed direct CPU). If games detected the blitter on newer machines, they definitely could compete better with the Amiga. Unfortunately the ST was cobbled together in a rush to try to beat Commodore to the stores. They designed it in less than a year, and didn't have the genius of Jay Miner on board! Ha, the more you look at the architecture of the Atari 8bit and the similar one in the Amiga, you can see the love that man put into his projects.
I just find it amusing still that most people who were fans of the c64 went to the Amiga, and most A8 fans went to the ST, even though the designers flipped teams.

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by Seiya

Sotb is not a nice game in general. Amiga could have nice graphics and sounds, but very poor gameplay.
It it is ugly on Atari ST, it is ugly also on Amiga. It is not a good game. It seems an exercize of style exacly as Agony. Nice in everythings, but zero gameplay.

I don't think you can compare Agony with SOTB, Agony looks better, might even be technically better, will leave that to the experts to discuss. But I think Agony is pretty playable especially compared to SOTB. Music was great too, the whole presentation of Agony is great

[Konrad]

I was really blown away by Shadow Of The Beast when I first saw it.
And it has mostly (I guess) great graphics, especially when you're outside. I love the player character design and how it is animated.

But still, already back then, I really didn't like most of the enemy sprites. Graphics wise this was a major weak spot to me.

They seemed to me like a collection of remains thrown together or if several artist had a go. Some had contrast and multiple colors, others were dull colored and totally bland (just a color ramp of grey, green).
There were enemies were you were sure the gfx artist put effort in (f.ex. the spider creatures in the tree or the green soldiers with gold acents, the big hands grabbing you) and then enemies which looked like someone had his first go at DPaint or they went out of ideas (skeleton legs in the castle, the small orange rockets outside, huge water drops, psygnosis logo balls, the red bouncing ball in the castle).

Player GFX great. Level graphics great. Enemy graphics > Mostly meh.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by S0ulA55a551n

I don't think you can compare Agony with SOTB, Agony looks better, might even be technically better, will leave that to the experts to discuss. But I think Agony is pretty playable especially compared to SOTB. Music was great too, the whole presentation of Agony is great

I'll always maintain that Agony is the most beautiful game of the 16 bit era. I always enjoyed the playability too, it was a very unique and orginal idea for a shmup, it even got ripped off in Kolibri for the Sega 32X.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

SOTB is ugly on the Amiga too? It's widely considered the poster child of the system. The visuals and audio are the game's crowning glory. Saving grace even. Anyway, everyone's entitled to their own artistic preference.

I don't know if I'd call it ugly, it's not that bad. But it's obvious that 90% of the effort went on the first bit above ground, with all the parallax effects. Once you go underground it quickly reverts to a rather generic looking platformer.

The gameplay is shockingly bad at all points though. It's a beautiful rolling demo of the Amiga's capabilities but not really worth playing on any system.

[Seiya]

Originally Posted by S0ulA55a551n

I don't think you can compare Agony with SOTB, Agony looks better, might even be technically better, will leave that to the experts to discuss. But I think Agony is pretty playable especially compared to SOTB. Music was great too, the whole presentation of Agony is great

because you didn't understand the difference between playability and aesthetic.

Agony is another tech demo: beautiful graphics, beautiful musics, but poor gameplay, boring, tedious, tiring after few minutes. Play with Agony is like watchin a production of demoscene. Shadow of the Beast same thing.

[gimbal]

Generic looking platformer with really good backdrops though. What kind of kills it is how enemies die, most of them just drop vertically out of the level. It looks too goofy. Especially when it's usually a single punch that does it, One Punch Beastman.

[dreamkatcha]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I have a feeling that you're the only one trying to make this point. Twice, now.

Well, one sock puppet account has already been confirmed as Zeus and banned. If you're casting doubt on that, feel free to take it up with EAB's mods who have access to the IP logs.

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

I agree with most people's opinion on Shadow Of The Beast...it's a great tech demo/audio visual experience, but it's a shitty game

sounds like a lot of shit c64 games i still got just for a rob hubbard tune.

[Megalomaniac]

I'd like to think that I wouldn't have been taken in by Beast even then. The outdoor sections look astonishing, and the indoor sections above average for the time, and the sound is phenomenal, but was there enough to the gameplay? Reviewers weren't convinced, The Games Machine gave it 96% but otherwise only Amiga Joker scored it in the 90s. It doesn't surprise me that on LemonAmiga it averages below (for starters) Bubble Bobble, New Zealand Story, Rick Dangerous, IK+ and others from the same time or earlier (most of them ST ports). There's no question that it does things the ST can't, but I certainly wouldn't've sold an ST just to play it (for Hybris and Battle Squadron, I might have considered it) and if that had been the time when I was upgrading from an 8-bit, I'd've already decided on an Amiga.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

Well, one sock puppet account has already been confirmed as Zeus and banned. If you're casting doubt on that, feel free to take it up with EAB's mods who have access to the IP logs.

Oh, I don't doubt it. People do stuff like that all the time. What I want to know is why you're the only person who keeps bringing it up? What's the end game here, so to speak?

[dreamkatcha]

Sure, I'm in the minority, but not the only one who resents EAB being invaded by self-serving, lying spammers who only post to pimp their own money-spinning schemes. Tigerskunk, for instance, flagged up this same sock puppet account over a year ago and yet people jumped on him, instead actually defended the guy who was taking them for a ride while he sat back and laughed with his popcorn. It's not even remotely subtle so there's no excuse for being hoodwinked.

You'd hope the community-spirited thing to do would be to point out when a leech is attempting to profit from a passion-lead hobbyist discussion group so that the members aren't deceived. That's all the end goal is.

[S0ulA55a551n]

Originally Posted by Seiya

because you didn't understand the difference between playability and aesthetic.

Agony is another tech demo: beautiful graphics, beautiful musics, but poor gameplay, boring, tedious, tiring after few minutes. Play with Agony is like watchin a production of demoscene. Shadow of the Beast same thing.

Don't think its any different to any other vertical shump. Has all the elements ...... you obviously don't like it and its not as good as Apidya but not that far off.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

Sure, I'm in the minority, but not the only one who resents EAB being invaded by self-serving, lying spammers who only post to pimp their own money-spinning schemes. Tigerskunk, for instance, flagged up this same sock puppet account over a year ago and yet people jumped on him, instead actually defended the guy who was taking them for a ride while he sat back and laughed with his popcorn. It's not even remotely subtle so there's no excuse for being hoodwinked.

You'd hope the community-spirited thing to do would be to point out when a leech is attempting to profit from a passion-lead hobbyist discussion group so that the members aren't deceived. That's all the end goal is.

So you're mad that nobody at all is even bothered by ... this thing you're bothered about? That they're all just talking about SOTB?