I Wanna Be The Guy
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I disagree.
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Masochistic platformers are not rewarding
- Thread starter FloatOn
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djplaeskool
Member
Awww hell naw
Let me know when you get all gold medals in NSMB: U.
Spirit of Jazz
Banned
I don't understand you saying there's no learning curve OP. All the games you feature new elements as you go through the games which you need to learn and adapt how your play-style. From a raising difficulty in level design, to new enemies like homing missiles in Meatboy, to the absurd amount of things you can do in SHoDN. The only time things become "binary" is if you want to speed run them which is identical to every other game ever made and even then they are elements on RNG you need to account for.
sixteen-bit
Member
If anything the stakes in maso-core games are too low.
Die in Super Meat Boy? Restart immediately and lose what, 10-15 seconds of progress.
On the other hand, miss a jump in Ninja Gaiden? Beginning of the level, homie.
Die in Super Meat Boy? Restart immediately and lose what, 10-15 seconds of progress.
On the other hand, miss a jump in Ninja Gaiden? Beginning of the level, homie.
southerncross
Member
Well, they don't demand excellency. I remember my friend telling me how it let him down when he told his little nephew beat one of the later levels in SMB with small preparations - it took him twice as much time, but he just learned the level with his muscle memory. So much for that feeling of victory he felt earlier!
I would not say that there is no challenge in SMB, but it can be nullified by memorizing the levels. That's what checkpoint-heavy structure does to games - and it's the reason people play through all these indie masocore releases, but can't be bothered to finish classic NES platformers. It's a challenge, yeah, but a challenge even kids can overcome thanks to bite-sized structure.
But to imply bullet hells are the same? Lol. It just happens that skills obtained in one of them translate well to other ones, and first levels are easy to beat once you got the basics down.
Some hate the bite-sized structure of Super Meat Boy's levels, and i can sort of see where they're coming from, but i will take that over NSMBW's waste of my time, any day.
A game that has a million easy ways for you to have virtually endless lives, but instead of respawning you instantly at the start of the level, it wastes your time with several loadings and booting you into the world map every time.
Live have almost zero meaning in modern Mario titles, and all they imply is time wasting, might as well give me infinite lives, since they're so easy to exploit anyway (but again, require you to waste your time).
Personally i also find the super tight controls of Meat Boy much more fun to play than the ice skating going on in 2.5D Marios.
However i haven't played the WiiU ones yet.
I don't have any sympathy for game dynamics that provide no challenge, but simply waste your time with trivial bullshit, be it having an unnecessary loading or a surplus menu or what have you.
I don't see much of a difference between playing 50 times the same stretch of level and instantly respawning, and playing 50 times the same level with a loading and other bullshit in the way before the respawn, aside from time wasted for the player.
Granted if you take a SMW the structure of the game is fundamentally different, to the point where you could skip entire levels, depending on what power up you had on, but i don't see one being fundamentally better than the other.
And as far as "rewarding", that's a very subjective concept, as most people obviously don't feel rewarded enough by old school games, and everybody's threshold for challenge is different.
A game that has a million easy ways for you to have virtually endless lives, but instead of respawning you instantly at the start of the level, it wastes your time with several loadings and booting you into the world map every time.
Live have almost zero meaning in modern Mario titles, and all they imply is time wasting, might as well give me infinite lives, since they're so easy to exploit anyway (but again, require you to waste your time).
Personally i also find the super tight controls of Meat Boy much more fun to play than the ice skating going on in 2.5D Marios.
However i haven't played the WiiU ones yet.
I don't have any sympathy for game dynamics that provide no challenge, but simply waste your time with trivial bullshit, be it having an unnecessary loading or a surplus menu or what have you.
I don't see much of a difference between playing 50 times the same stretch of level and instantly respawning, and playing 50 times the same level with a loading and other bullshit in the way before the respawn, aside from time wasted for the player.
Granted if you take a SMW the structure of the game is fundamentally different, to the point where you could skip entire levels, depending on what power up you had on, but i don't see one being fundamentally better than the other.
And as far as "rewarding", that's a very subjective concept, as most people obviously don't feel rewarded enough by old school games, and everybody's threshold for challenge is different.
Roland1979
Junior Member
Triple post... V
clem84
Gold Member
The more difficult a game is, the more rewarding it is when you eventually achieve anything in that game. This might sound simplistic but I've always found it to be true. Super Meat Boy was very rewarding for the time that I've played it. I didn't play all the way through it because at some point I had had enough of the brutal difficulty but it was fun while it lasted. To this day I know that if I want a real challenge I can just go back to the game and pick up where I left off.
Roland1979
Junior Member
You might not know it but people have different tastes. You bought. You should have informed yourself before buying it. Invalid complaint.
To a certain degree it is all of the above. The very nature of these types of games is to spark very precise twitch neural impulses. This varies on a person to person basis and of course can be improved with conditioning (like anything really)
It is comparable to the carnival game Whack-A-Mole. The success or failure is not based on a thought provoking process you learn, it is how precise and how fast you can react to stimuli.
I Wanna Be The Guy
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You make a good point and a bad point. The good thing you pointed out is the difference between a game like Super Meat Boy and 8-bit platformers. There is significantly less punishment and therefore less frustration in a game like Meat Boy. The challenge comes purely from the challenge itself, not the fact the game sends you back really far and you have to repeat large sections.
The bad point you made was implying that this is a bad thing.
Roland1979
Junior Member
Sry GAF weird-ed out on me.
Senor Kami
Banned
I'm all for hard games but I like the Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Street Fighter approach. The appeal of those feels more like learning and mastering the system until you're an untouchable (or in SF case really hard to touch) death machine. A lot of these indies seem like the appeal is to get kicked in the nuts until you're numb to it.
justjustin
Member
Super Meat Boy was not very immersive. To me, it was like someone only remembered the most superficial "hard" aspects of NES action games and strung them together with a bunch of emulator save states-- basically a buffet of shitty platformer game moments. I never felt like I had to be thoughtful when I would never lose more than 30 seconds of progress. There is no overarching sense of progression to motivate one to try harder the next time. There is no motivation to be any better at the game except for the sake of score. Super Meat Boy is an amusing novelty with no depth beyond the most immediate moment in time. Any stage could be anything; and that's what it was-- a hodgepodge of mini-games tied together by aesthetic themes.
The worst aspects of any game are usually the easiest to point out, and its always hard to really nail down what makes a game truly great. Super Meat Boy represents those moments we remember first in NES games-- stuff like the pixel-perfect jumps in Castlevania III and the swooping, respawning birds in Ninja Gaiden-- but instead of cutting them out and making a better balanced action game, the developers made a whole game out of it, and made it kind of playable by adding checkpoints everywhere and infinite lives. It's a game tailor-made for all of us who have selective memory, like to laugh at those ridiculous "NES HARD" moments, and simply haven't played enough sweet action games (or don't really like them).
So the game was 100% not for me.
The worst aspects of any game are usually the easiest to point out, and its always hard to really nail down what makes a game truly great. Super Meat Boy represents those moments we remember first in NES games-- stuff like the pixel-perfect jumps in Castlevania III and the swooping, respawning birds in Ninja Gaiden-- but instead of cutting them out and making a better balanced action game, the developers made a whole game out of it, and made it kind of playable by adding checkpoints everywhere and infinite lives. It's a game tailor-made for all of us who have selective memory, like to laugh at those ridiculous "NES HARD" moments, and simply haven't played enough sweet action games (or don't really like them).
So the game was 100% not for me.
I agree.
By that logic, every game could improve from being rogue.
"If you die in Mario, you die in real life".
Or at the very least put a 5 minutes cool down between one try and the next in whatever is your favorite game.
Despite offering more variety of possible approaches, i disagree that a game like SMB3 isn't also greatly dependent on level memorization and muscle memory.
It's just that the levels are longer, so you have to memorize more, and more open, so you have to first find the right approach. (which are potentially good things)
Everything else is wasted time.
This is actually quite an interesting discussion, i am currently doing research on the Masocore genre, it is interesting to see a discussion happening on these very forums about that subject! 
But the genre in itself and its genesis is still somewhat unknown, but the fact is that mascore is a genre broader than just games like super meat boy and the like. Dark Souls in particular is a great example of a Masocore game, but in a completely different genre. This might suggest that masocore isn't a genre, in the sense that we understand genres but more of adhering to a set number of design principles inspired by older games, where the difficulty wasn't nessacerily a result of what we today would call. Good game design.
But the genre in itself and its genesis is still somewhat unknown, but the fact is that mascore is a genre broader than just games like super meat boy and the like. Dark Souls in particular is a great example of a Masocore game, but in a completely different genre. This might suggest that masocore isn't a genre, in the sense that we understand genres but more of adhering to a set number of design principles inspired by older games, where the difficulty wasn't nessacerily a result of what we today would call. Good game design.
Aquamarine
Member
I completely agree...I can't stand the games that entice you with simple controls but deceive you with a crushingly-hard difficulty right at the beginning.
However, I'm quite a casual video game player, so my idea of what's fun is completely skewed from someone who enjoys an intense challenge from the outset.
Crab Milk Mickey
Member
Can't say I agree with Super Meat Boy and Super House of Dead Ninja's as your examples, as they're the correct way on how to handle the concept (for a 2D platformer).
The former gradually teaches you how to deal with new obstacles or jumping rhythms as they tend to be carried over to the following level (or the one after that, or...) whereas the latter merely suffers from 'rogue-lite' syndrome, where the ease of your progress is directly tied to how many items or bonuses you've unlocked in previous runs. It isn't nearly as bad in Super House of Dead Ninja's when you compare it to Binding of Isaac or Rogue Legacy, and the actual 'difficulty' of the platforming in SHODN lies with its faster-than-your-average-game speed - as well as learning how to frequently use your ninja's aerial spin attack - rather than treacherous layouts that border on trial-and-error. VVVVV (which I haven't properly played yet) also doesn't seem to deliberately put you into situations that are way over your head, never mind the liberal use of checkpoints that someone else in here mentioned. These are the ones where I feel the developers really thought about their game's mechanics and how they want to subconciously prepare the player for their next hurdle.
Cloudberry Kingdom is fucking shit though and Electronic Super Joy didn't feel very well-executed either compared to your other examples. AVGN's game also seems like one of those platformers that are purposefully 'cheap' and frustrating just for the sake of it as a bandwagon gimmick game of sorts, now that the genre's popular again. If these games aren't your cup of tea regardless though, that's fair.
The former gradually teaches you how to deal with new obstacles or jumping rhythms as they tend to be carried over to the following level (or the one after that, or...) whereas the latter merely suffers from 'rogue-lite' syndrome, where the ease of your progress is directly tied to how many items or bonuses you've unlocked in previous runs. It isn't nearly as bad in Super House of Dead Ninja's when you compare it to Binding of Isaac or Rogue Legacy, and the actual 'difficulty' of the platforming in SHODN lies with its faster-than-your-average-game speed - as well as learning how to frequently use your ninja's aerial spin attack - rather than treacherous layouts that border on trial-and-error. VVVVV (which I haven't properly played yet) also doesn't seem to deliberately put you into situations that are way over your head, never mind the liberal use of checkpoints that someone else in here mentioned. These are the ones where I feel the developers really thought about their game's mechanics and how they want to subconciously prepare the player for their next hurdle.
Cloudberry Kingdom is fucking shit though and Electronic Super Joy didn't feel very well-executed either compared to your other examples. AVGN's game also seems like one of those platformers that are purposefully 'cheap' and frustrating just for the sake of it as a bandwagon gimmick game of sorts, now that the genre's popular again. If these games aren't your cup of tea regardless though, that's fair.
EsotericManiac
Member
I would say i wanna be the guy and I wanna be the Boshy are better examples of this
I never cared for the art style of Cloudberry Kingdom so I won't touch that game
I never cared for the art style of Cloudberry Kingdom so I won't touch that game
jacksepticeye
Member
Some aren't and some are I've found. Super Meat Boy was for me but Cloudberry Kingdom pissed me off
Wasted time is a necessary punishment because it provides the proper impetus to not die.
This is where balance comes in. Obviously just sticking longer Meat Boy style levels into a standard structure won't work because it's way way too easy to die in Meat Boy so it just becomes frustrating.
AcceptableGhost
Member
using the terms punishment and frustration to describe when games ask a lot of you is a quick way to being a scrub
I Wanna Be The Guy
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Speaking of Cloudberry Kingdom, is there still going to be a Vita version? I never got the game because I decided to wait for the Vita version, but it's still not here.
I think VVVVVV works well because its checkpoints are every few seconds. It's always about the immediate challenge in front of you.
Super Meat Boy, on the other hand, eventually got under my skin on the second-to-last level. I enjoyed the rest of the game, but that one specific level frustrated me more than Veni, Vidi, Vici ever did. It frustrated me because the part that was difficult for me was at the very end of the level, and the monotony and the gradual rage build-up of constantly replaying it made me start screwing up earlier parts... to the point where I couldn't just easily ace the rest. I would forget the specific angle I last jumped at by the time I got to it again.
Super Meat Boy, on the other hand, eventually got under my skin on the second-to-last level. I enjoyed the rest of the game, but that one specific level frustrated me more than Veni, Vidi, Vici ever did. It frustrated me because the part that was difficult for me was at the very end of the level, and the monotony and the gradual rage build-up of constantly replaying it made me start screwing up earlier parts... to the point where I couldn't just easily ace the rest. I would forget the specific angle I last jumped at by the time I got to it again.
Rodney McKay
Member
VVVVVV only has a few sections I'd call extremely difficult, and most of those are for optional goodies. There's only ONE part I'd call Masochistic (if you've played it you probably know the one, haha).
The game is all about learning the different ways it uses its mechanic. This area swaps your direction when you pass a line, this section you're leading another guy around, etc.
Each area starts off easy and builds difficulty between the "rooms," which makes for a great learning curve.
The game is all about learning the different ways it uses its mechanic. This area swaps your direction when you pass a line, this section you're leading another guy around, etc.
Each area starts off easy and builds difficulty between the "rooms," which makes for a great learning curve.
Tertullian
Member
I didn't really find SMB especially satisfying, but as everyone's been saying, it absolutely has a difficulty curve. It's quite smooth and logical.
This is actually quite an interesting discussion, i am currently doing research on the Masocore genre, it is interesting to see a discussion happening on these very forums about that subject!
But the genre in itself and its genesis is still somewhat unknown, but the fact is that mascore is a genre broader than just games like super meat boy and the like. Dark Souls in particular is a great example of a Masocore game, but in a completely different genre. This might suggest that masocore isn't a genre, in the sense that we understand genres but more of adhering to a set number of design principles inspired by older games, where the difficulty wasn't nessacerily a result of what we today would call. Good game design.
Dark Souls is the antithesis of what I'm talking about here.
Dark Souls required you to learn a handful of various systems. It's true that Dark Souls is a difficult game but it is also fair and requires thought/planning to achieve any measure of success. It's not twitch-oriented in the slightest.
Well except for maybe Bed of Chaos
I Wanna Be The Guy
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So I'm a scrub at platformers now am I? Ok show of hands. Who here has beaten I Wanna Be The Guy on very hard mode? Either raise your hand or be quiet.
The second most terrifying part for me was getting to the very end... realizing I forgot one trinket in a pretty simple room... and then realizing there was no warp at the end. I decided I didn't want to go all the way back to get it lmao
thats not very difficult at all. Getting all the "KONG" letters, puzzle pieces and doing the speed runs in donkey kong country returns is hard. The speed runs are nice
Yeah there's no balance or learning curve in the games you listed, you're absolutely right. Super Meat Boy is decent but falls apart on the last world. Agreed on schmups too. Everything really, 100%.
Schmups like Sine Mora come to mind. Easy mode where you have half the game locked out. Oh goody. What an idiotic idea to make quality classic style games impossible for everyone but 1%.
What awful game design. Throw that stuff in hard mode.
Challenge is fine but not at the expense of fun.
And some of you wonder why you don't get sequels.
Nah they're horribly balanced. They can make a hard mode but they don't.
Schmups like Sine Mora come to mind. Easy mode where you have half the game locked out. Oh goody. What an idiotic idea to make quality classic style games impossible for everyone but 1%.
What awful game design. Throw that stuff in hard mode.
Challenge is fine but not at the expense of fun.
And some of you wonder why you don't get sequels.
AcceptableGhost
Member
Crunch King
Neo Member
I think having to redo the whole level in, say, Super Mario World, is punishment enough, without having to boot me out to the world map, for example.
Aside from that, i think the incentive "not to die" is simply implicit in the will to finish the level and, in the case of Meat Boy, wanting to best your time.
Surely most of the levels of Meat Boy are fairly straight forward and simple to complete, but having to skim off that .01 second is what brings out the replayability, the challenge AND the creativity.
Again, i don't see petty frustration as a good mean to obtain high stakes in a game.
Dying and having to redo a challenging part is a good mechanic, dying and having to reset all the audio options is a petty mechanic (to use an hyperbolic example) both involve you not wanting to do it again, but one stimulates creativity and is enticing, the other is just plain frustrating busywork.
Having to reload the stage and collect lives in completely mundane manner is the second example.
Having to replay the entirety of a challenging level because you died at the climax of it, is the first one.
So i feel classic mario games (well, even newer ones) fall into both categories and could do well without the second one.
I Wanna Be The Guy
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IWBTG is balanced nicely enough. Save points are very frequent. Less so depending on the difficulty you're playing on, but at the end of the day if you're finding the game too hard then just play the game on a lower difficulty for more frequent save points. You'll die from a bunch of things you won't see coming in IWBTG, but as soon as you do die and know what's happening in that particular section it's all about mastering that section with platforming skills. Those deaths you don't see coming are often pretty funny and due to save points being so frequent I rarely found the game too punishing. Level design is fantastic in IWBTG and I find the difficulty curve just right for me. One of the best and most satisfying platformers ever made.
Kuramu
Member
Veni, Vidi, Vici in VVVVVV was the most satisfying 2 hours of my gaming life
edit: awesome, some dude getting killed by veni vidi vici for 40 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qbFDBL4kSE
edit: awesome, some dude getting killed by veni vidi vici for 40 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qbFDBL4kSE
Even if the analysis by OP has it's merits, it only tells devs that these types of games are too niche to be worth investing.
This post pretty sums up they are okay to make, and okay to enjoy. We need more diversity not less in this industry. I can hate the hell out of some of it, and push it to be better. But If I have it all wrong than it will fall on deaf ears and everyone will be the better for that.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
I'm playing through Crash Bandicoot right now, and when I finally collect all three of the secret collectable in the level and am whisked away to the bonus stage with the save point only to fail that bonus stage right away, knowing that when I die I'll have to play through several difficult levels all over again... well, it's painful. That's definitely a "weep bitter tears" kind of game.
I Wanna Be The Guy
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Oh no you fucking didn't just say that. IWBTG was mindblowingly good. One of the best platformers ever made.
I'm sorry you didn't enjoy Super House of Dead Ninjas! We set out to make a game that we would enjoy, that would appeal to like-minded gamers while not completely alienating the more casual gamers (which is why unlocks such as extra timer and hearts occur after playing enough times).
It's difficult for some of us developers to judge the overall perceived difficulty level for a game based on reception, though; while I've seen videos of people losing all their continues before even beating the first boss, we've also seen videos where people have absolutely DESTROYED the game in ridiculously quick times. To be truthfully honest, I thought we had made the game too easy even before it released, hence adding a higher difficulty in the DLC.
To weigh in on my thoughts on masochistic games in general, though; if the rules are simple and the controls are good, and you have plenty of options available to you in order to challenge stages, I can keep dying as many times as I want because progress and learning is being made. When you get utter bullshit like I Wanna Be The Guy, though, which is nothing but a string of pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you situations... that isn't something that I find in the least bit appealing. Having a compelling narrative, interesting world or amazing-looking bosses helps immensely in the reward section too (obligatory Dark Souls mention) but generally, the act of bettering yourself at something ought to be a good reward for tough games.
It's difficult for some of us developers to judge the overall perceived difficulty level for a game based on reception, though; while I've seen videos of people losing all their continues before even beating the first boss, we've also seen videos where people have absolutely DESTROYED the game in ridiculously quick times. To be truthfully honest, I thought we had made the game too easy even before it released, hence adding a higher difficulty in the DLC.
To weigh in on my thoughts on masochistic games in general, though; if the rules are simple and the controls are good, and you have plenty of options available to you in order to challenge stages, I can keep dying as many times as I want because progress and learning is being made. When you get utter bullshit like I Wanna Be The Guy, though, which is nothing but a string of pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you situations... that isn't something that I find in the least bit appealing. Having a compelling narrative, interesting world or amazing-looking bosses helps immensely in the reward section too (obligatory Dark Souls mention) but generally, the act of bettering yourself at something ought to be a good reward for tough games.
we.are.the.armada
Member
I love that time cherished saying, "one man's masochistic platformer is another man's treasure."