@hussin005: Yeah but Tolkien was born with two Rs in his name. Martin made it up. literally changed his name to add a second R to his name so he can pretend to be Tolkien. That's pretty pathetic if you ask me.
I clearly know shit about writing cause I just gave all the reasons whyMartin sucks. I've read the best and Martin ain't no Tolkien not even close.
@simmons5533: I didn't believe in 4K until I got one. 4K is a quantum leap in resolution from 1080p. It looks like reality, I couldn't believe my eyes when I started watching some of these videos. So I think its here to stay. Also they are dropping in price like nothing before. You can get a 4K TV for like 600-700 bucks nowadays.
I think MS is right in trying to create a true 4K system, because in a year or two the demand will be pretty high.
I think Nintendo would be better suited to just eat the loss and create a 4K NX console and get themselves ahead of the console curve for a change. Because if they release NX with specs on par with PS4 and XB1, they will once again find themselves playing catch up once again, and whenever you play catch up you lose fanbase.
Sega took three consoles of cutting their console life span short to completely lose all their fanbase. Nintendo really has no lives left, the 13 million users that they currently have on Wii U represents there entire home console fanbase and one more console that's not in line with current tech trends is all they need to lose the home console market.
Personally, 4K is here to stay and MS has it right when they announced Scorpio. Its the future.
@savagerodent: Honestly I don't mind a genuinely difficult game that does not rely on over powered enemies ala Souls games.
How about a Boss who uses genuine AI who doesn't fall back into any flowcharts or any patterns, or enemies who are genuinely smart, ie they lure you into ambushes or retreat when hurt to heal, etc, etc.
The hardest Boss in Souls is considered Fume by most, and he amounts to nothing more than a super strong boss with two separate flowcharts that change mid-battle. So the difficulty isn't that Fume is smart, its that he has tons of HP and hits very very hard and has a two movesets that change his attach pattern, and really memorization or simple brute force (level up) is all it takes to beat him.
There is a whole bunch of hoopla about these Souls wannabe games about hard, etc, etc. But all they really are a simple pattern based action RPGs where you die quicker then before, so you must be better a memorizing and avoid more attacks and hit the enemy more times.
Give me a genuine difficult RPG where enemies are smarter not beefier and I will commend them for it. Because after beating several DS games, I find the franchise to be nothing more than blind memorization and muscle memory that can be easily breached with high stats.
These games aren't hard, they are tedious, and suck up a lot of time, but other than that they are nothing special, design wise.
Now a boss that I remember is The End in MGS, that was good game design. A geezer who hides in the bushes, is by far one the best designed bosses of all time.
@simmons5533: Yes, Wii U should have been the Wii if they had released the Wii U instead of the Wii, they would have most likely beat Xbox 360 during last gen, and would not be trying to play catch up with NX. They would be in synch with current consoles and would still have 100% third party support.
That's what happens when you try to pull a fast one on people.
Nintendo is pulling Sega right now, its history repeating itself.
They ditched Wii early because PS3 and Xbox 360 were having such a long console life span, then they released Wii U which they are planning on ditching early AGAIN, because it literally one generation behind. Once they release the NX, they will again find themselves ditching it early because it cannot play 4K.
This is the end for Nintendo, its an exact repeat of Sega.
@groowagon: Artificial difficulty is difficulty that can be changed with a simple stat change. Like I said, you can have 6 million hearts in Zelda but the dungeons remain the same, and require the same logic and same time to figure out and finish.
You boost the stats of any Dark Souls game and the game can be finished with your eyes closed. That's artificial difficulty 101.
I can boost the stats of Link in Zelda but the game remains exactly the same in difficulty, if you are stuck in a dungeon you are still stuck in a dungeon, that's good game design.
Anyone can make a game where the enemy is overpowered and the heroes swords break every 2 minutes, that's artificial.
What I want is CHOICE. I never said that you can't have your artificial difficulty, if you want to memorize boss patterns all day long and farm weapons all week long, fine, but don't force it on everyone.
Nothing wrong with creating a NORMAL and HARD mode, The Witcher 3 has a Hard mode for people like you.
I don't want artificial challenge I want a choice on what I find challenging. I don't consider weapon farming and memorizing boss patterns to be challenging, I consider it boring and unnecessary.
I beat Fume in DS by memorizing all his attacks and dodging all his moves, was that challenging or fun? No I found it boring as fck and a giant waste of my time, different stroke for different folks, choice is the key.
@groowagon: I prefer choice. if I wanna be masochistic, I play Witcher 3 on death march, key word "If I want". If I wanna memorize a bosses flowchart to nauseam so I can beat the boss without taking a single hit in damage, I can do it on my own will.
Back in the old days all games came with NORMAL and HARD modes just for people who wanted to memorize boss flowcharts to nauseam.
I prefer to have a choice than to have artificial difficulty shoved down my throat. I may have bought this game, cause I loved Onimusha, but given that its a DS clone, I'll pass.
See how choice works.
As developers chase this DS fad, they remove choice and in the end lose sales.
That's why Witcher 3 sold 10million and Dark Souls 3 only sold 3 million. Artificial difficulty should be a choice not a necessity.
@groowagon: Its not. Old games didn't rely on this artificial hard crap to be good. I didn't play Onimusha or Gaiden for its hardness. I played cause the games were fun.
What I'm saying is that this new artificial hard fad is ruining good games. The enemy doesn't need to be stronger than the hero for a hack and slash to be fun.
I played The Witcher 3 and loved it more than any Dark Souls game, and I never bothered memorizing enemy and boss patterns to nauseam.
What I'm saying is that in chasing this so called "hard" moniker, designers are ruining perfectly good games. Just like Nioh, it would have been a perfectly good Onimusha spin-off game and still sold millions but in trying to make it supposedly hard, they are losing more fans.
II for one don't care for these DS ripoff games, so i'll skip Nioh, play something else. The same can be said of tons of people like me.
Instead of trying so hard to skew the game stats and making weapons break easily and all sorts of other fake hard mechanics, they can just create a normal mode and a hard mode like games of the past. No need alienate fans by forcing everyone to play in DS mode.
@groowagon: People can finish Zelda with 1 heart, so what, that don't mean jack squat, just means people have no lives.
You keep missing the point. Back in the OLD days aka Ninja Gaiden and Onimusha days it was considered good game design to make the hero stronger than the enemy.
DS came and said wait if we make the enemy stronger than the hero, wouldn't that make the games more difficult, and yes it made the games more difficult, forced you to be better at memorizing enemy patterns and boss flowcharts cause you now die quicker and do less damage, but all this so called new difficulty does not come from intelligent level design, but simple math. Make enemies stronger and hero weaker and game becomes more difficult. This is classic artificial difficulty.
Great game design comes from level design not how stats. Take Zelda for example, the hearts barely make a lick of difference, its all based on puzzles and intricate level design that makes the games fun, not blind stats. If I gave you 20 hearts in the beginning of Zelda, you'd take equal amount of time completing each dungeon from the sheer dungeon design alone, now that's good game design.
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