Worst Amiga games that look great, Best Amiga games that look terrible

[copse]

Originally Posted by Photon

Elite looks and sounds rather terrible on Amiga, but I think anyone who picked it up has average 50 hours in it. Partly due to the sim aspect, but also because it was a new intriguing idea. Same for Sim City and probably a few others - and I'm not a "simmy guy".

Does it? I thought it looked amazing and played amazing as a kid. Try playing Federation of Free Traders ?

Originally Posted by Photon

Any Dungeon Master-like title that made you click on little arrow icons to move instead of using keys must burn in hell ofc. What an arcane and silly idea.

I suspect this is a generalisation of using mouse for fast game interaction. Keyboard just lends itself much better. Even games with keyboard movement still suffer from difficult combat with the hand clicking. A paraj-style whdload patch for each of these games with keyboard bindings to replace the mouse would be doable I expect.

I suspect a lot of the complaints in this thread are more pet peeves than actual worst-isms. Learning and memorisation of the steps to beat a game is something that still has to be done with games of today, and a lot of people seem to enjoy it. I suspect that it is a valid genre of gameplay, avoid it if you do not like it. Whether is Rick Dangerous, Nebulous or even perhaps games in the vein of Dark Souls.

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

I see people are STILL crying over Beast 1 being too much for them, lol get over yourselves already FFS, deal with it lol

Beast isn't too much for people. It's not enough for people. Once you see the first five minutes, you've basically seen the entire game - and the best of the audiovisuals. As I understand it, there's no variety in gameplay, no weapon upgrades, no different challenges to face, no multi-level movement. Just the same walking in one direction, precisely timing each button press, remembering where the spikes are, waiting for lengthy disk accessing - and with graphics that don't seem as good as the initial ones. At least Ghouls N Ghosts has action while you're navigating the ladders, plus sloped ledges and constant-upward-scroll bits, Beast lacks such variety.

I'm one of these people who largely avoids watching videos of gameplay sections I couldn't reach for myself. With Nebulus and the Rick Dangerouses, that means I'm missing out on some fiendish level designs and clever memory-based puzzles. More of the clever rotating tower technique in Nebulus, and more of Rick's daring adventures and charismatic enemies. With Beast, I feel no such sadness in not seeing the rest of it, or any desire to put in the time to master it. I honestly believe that without the graphics and sound it would have sank without trace.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

and with graphics that don't seem as good as the initial ones.

Yet still better than most of what was around back then, and even now. (imo, of course)

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by copse

I suspect a lot of the complaints in this thread are more pet peeves than actual worst-isms. Learning and memorisation of the steps to beat a game is something that still has to be done with games of today, and a lot of people seem to enjoy it. I suspect that it is a valid genre of gameplay, avoid it if you do not like it. Whether is Rick Dangerous, Nebulous or even perhaps games in the vein of Dark Souls.

Exactly. Games with nearly impossible difficulties and try and dies gameplay recquiring a perfect memorization of the moves are still existing. Dark Souls is en excellent example.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Exactly. Games with nearly impossible difficulties and try and dies gameplay recquiring a perfect memorization of the moves are still existing. Dark Souls is en excellent example.

We had Rick Dangerous way before Dark Souls

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by TCD

We had Rick Dangerous way before Dark Souls

As a matter of fact, Rick Dangerous is often presented as one of the ultimate "die and retry" game along with Another World or more recently Dark Souls.

Side note : "die and retry" is the "french" term for this kind of game (This is considered as a whole VG category.

It even have its own Wikipedia article in French but not in english : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_and_retry?wprov=sfla1

[dreadnought]

Dark Souls is a really bad example here. RD and its ilk are about pure memorization and in Souls games you can tweak many things and use different strategies.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Dark Souls is a really bad example here. RD and its ilk are about pure memorization and in Souls games you can tweak many things and use different strategies.

Well there is "just" more than 20 years between the 2 games. Yeah, there is a possibility that the playability evolved just a little. Nobody said that Dark Soul is a 3D version of Rick Dangerous.



2011 platform games aren't carbon copy of 1989 ones. Yet they still are platform games (same thing for pretty much every type of game).

[AestheticDebris]

RD isn't quite memorization, you can get a bit of a feel for where designers place traps (a bit like Tomb Raider to be honest). It is, however, full of cheap deaths like where you have to fall down but steer yourself left/right to avoid landing on something deadly and some of those are guesswork or lucky first time.

Nebulus I didn't think was that bad (at least from when I played it on 8-bit machines), except for the annoying enemies that come from off screen and usually where you're in some position you cannot possibly avoid them. Although that's the sort of cheap move we expected from 8-bit games on 8-bits.

[copse]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

As a matter of fact, Rick Dangerous is often presented as one of the ultimate "die and retry" game along with Another World or more recently Dark Souls.

Side note : "die and retry" is the "french" term for this kind of game (This is considered as a whole VG category.

It even have its own Wikipedia article in French but not in english : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_and_retry?wprov=sfla1

Thanks! That's good to know.

I'd even relate it way back down to a simple card game like "Memory" where you turn over two cards with images on them, then have to remember where people turned over similar cards. Someone could lament about the challenge of the memory exercise, or just realise it is different strokes for different folks and play a game more suited to their tastes.

[sokolovic]

Yep, here is a 2013 review of Rick Dangerous on the Amiga where there is an explicit reference to this gameplay mechanism and to Dark Souls too (no matter what Dreadnought thinks )

http://www.oldiesrising.com/AmanoSki...gerous&cons=55

"Modern players have almost all lost sight of a notion as old as video gaming itself: the 'die and retry.' Behind this phrase lies a simple principle: progressing through experience and knowledge. Indeed, 'dying and retrying' is merely a logical process that dictates one can only move forward by understanding the fraction of future time preceding our advancement. It's about mastering not a form of 'foresight' but having passed through a place enough to know its subtleties and no longer fall into its traps, no longer succumb to its pitfalls. Thus, this is a prerequisite as old as the earliest games themselves, yet it still exists prominently in modern productions when playing solo. One of the most striking current examples of 'die and retry' can be found in the famous 'Dark Souls'."

[AestheticDebris]

I think the difference is that modern incarnations like Dark Souls are mostly the "fair" variety of die and retry. You died because you didn't react quick enough, or failed to observe something etc. You may have to retry often, but it's mostly down to your own skills

Whereas Rick Dangerous is the "cheap" type, where you die simply because of something you could not possibly have known first time and retrying is mostly a case of remembering things.

[gimbal]

Rick Dangerous is all memory indeed. If any game would be like a prototype Dark Souls, I would actually say it is Prince of Persia. Another game which is not actually hard, you simply have skill issues if you suck at it.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Well there is "just" more than 20 years between the 2 games. Yeah, there is a possibility that the playability evolved just a little. Nobody said that Dark Soul is a 3D version of Rick Dangerous.

2011 platform games aren't carbon copy of 1989 ones. Yet they still are platform games (same thing for pretty much every type of game).

Yeah, nope, because Dark Souls is not a supremely linear platform game in which in most cases there is only one possible way to progress. No matter what your rando internet blogger says :P

Though, of course he is not exactly wrong - it's true that in modern days the classic die & replay loop has been extremely diluted by quick/ autosaves and pushing down the difficulty curve to be more "inclusive". So a game series like DS, which refuses to use these tropes is seen as something special.

But it still doesn't make it a game "with nearly impossible difficulties and try and dies gameplay recquiring a perfect memorization of the moves".

Speaking of Rick, I quite like I though and it's a good example of a game which has high difficulty and indeed sometimes unfair gotchas - and yet can be great fun to play. Unlike SotB

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

. No matter what your rando internet blogger says :P

Well it would have been difficult to find a printed magazine review of the Amiga version of Rick Dangerous with a reference to Dark Souls.
The post was just here to show that Copse wasn't the first person to make this kind of comparison.

[copse]

So Dark Souls, a game that requires memorisation of moves in order to stop repeated dying, is nothing like Rick Dangerous, a game that requires memorisation of moves in order to stop repeated dying. Do I got that right?

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by copse

So Dark Souls, a game that requires memorisation of moves in order to stop repeated dying, is nothing like Rick Dangerous, a game that requires memorisation of moves in order to stop repeated dying. Do I got that right?

No, you got it completely wrong, but if you don't already get why this is so then I guess no amount of additional explaining will help.

It's a bit as saying that Cyberpunk 2077 is totally like 3D Monster Maze from ZX81, because both these games use first person view. But at least that would be actually true, while Dark Souls is definitely not a game which "requires memorisation of moves in order to stop repeated dying".

Unless you mean that in some meta-sense, and not in context of comparing it to RD, but then this becomes a "water is wet" kinda statement since every game requires memorization of something in order to be playable. In DS remebering some of the hidden gotchas or enemy weaknesses certainly helps, but this is maybe about ~20% of the experience, while in RD it's ~80%.

This is similar for the die & try again loop - it's actually still essential to most games, even though it's true they have been heavily sanitized in the last decade or so. But if you crank the difficulty up (which is the first thing I do in any modern game) you will most of the time find yourself doing just that, and that applies to games as diverse as Baldur's Gate 3 and Doom Eternal. And the funny thing is that in Dark Souls a big chunk of gameplay is actually built around this mechanic (kinda roguelite/gamble style) thus further differentiating it from RD in which you gain nothing from dying.

If you really wanted to find a game truly comparable to Rick D it sure is possible, there are plenty of similar (mostly indie) games still being released, but I guess it'd be more difficult than just reaching out for that tired "hey, a game is hard, let's mention Dark Souls" trope.

[VladR]

I've sunk hundred hours into multiple Dark Souls games and it's absolutely not memory-based at all, certainly not in the context we are discussing.

It's totally skill-based, ultra-fast reaction style game. And learning the enemies attack patterns. But not memorization.

Constant dying is simply a part of the game design in DS.

[copse]

Learning patterns is not memorisation. Constant dying is simply part of DS. Any comparison with Rick Dangerous is wrong. Got it.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by VladR

. And learning the enemies attack patterns. But not memorization.

This is basically the definition of memorization.