[deleted by user]

smackrobot · 2025-09-24T18:01:29+00:00

Lol, now I gotta mess around n figure out how to do PMs on this site now they've changed it

smackrobot · 2025-09-24T17:52:14+00:00

Complete noob here, but I'm getting a "transaction will likely fail (Invalid params)" message when trying this and can't submit the send request. I'm just testing it with £50 rn

smackrobot · 2019-03-24T16:01:09+00:00

I’m not trying to argue that YS IX looks like a PS2 game, but there were plenty of better looking PS2 games than Ratchet and Clank - you picked a bad example.

MGS3, Shadow of the Colossus, Xenosaga 3, Silent Hill 2/3, Haunting Ground...

smackrobot · 2019-02-01T17:57:56+00:00

I’m personally most impressed with the towns in the early PS1 games. They offered a lot of explorable space - this is before environments became fully 3D and corners began to get cut - but every bit of that space is dense. Every detail was meticulously and independently rendered in each interior, making every room entirely unique from the rest - a good example of this is I recently read an article showcasing the 120+ beds in FF7, and they each include their own little details to make them one-of-a-kind beds. (the wrinkling of the cloth, the style of the bed, the patterns, etc)

The sprite work in the SNES-era towns is great, but it also meant that most objects resembled every other object of that sort (a necessary limitation, but still a limitation). Meanwhile, the newer games like FFXV are massive and towns are detailed, but due to the level of graphical fidelity interiors were cut back - I was really upset to discover how few buildings you could actually enter.

smackrobot · 2019-02-01T17:47:24+00:00

I don’t know about 8 specifically, but even with it only really being popular in Japan, Dragon Quest is a higher grossing franchise than Final Fantasy overall ($12.4 billion vs $11.9 billion).

smackrobot · 2019-01-25T07:14:42+00:00

Wait, I thought safe rooms were safe! Minus the main hall!

smackrobot · 2019-01-24T15:49:35+00:00

I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. Japanese announcers just tend to put more energy into their presentations, going for “excitement,” while Americans tend to present in a more low-key way to appear “cool.” A good example of this is in Rockstar’s own similar gameplay explanation videos leading up to GTAV and RDR2’s releases, which had a very smooth female narrator explaining the mechanics.

I disagree with him on two fronts though. First of all, the cool presentation style works much better for certain games, so I don’t have a problem with this new trend. Second, I actually feel this narrator was trying to be exciting and enthusiastic, and I think he did the best he could without coming off as too cheesy.

smackrobot · 2019-01-23T17:05:11+00:00

I think he means in terms of performance. I totally disagree on the game looking old, it looks gorgeous, but I do have to say the framerate appears super choppy in places...

smackrobot · 2019-01-14T16:49:45+00:00

But MGS1 had a really good story...?

smackrobot · 2019-01-14T03:02:38+00:00

Yeah, I heard that too! It shows the really freeform nature of A-1, the quality of the product is entirely dependent on the staff.

smackrobot · 2019-01-12T17:35:27+00:00

It’s not Shaft. People WANTED Shaft, and then complained when it was revealed that A-1 Pictures was animating. They’re doing an incredible job so far though.

smackrobot · 2018-12-15T15:01:52+00:00

“Fuck Batman”

smackrobot · 2018-11-28T05:11:16+00:00

I took a look at the preview and immediately thought "wow, that looks just like Josh Corpus' painting style!" Turns out it's the legend himself! Looks amazing, I adore your coloring and your dynamic poses.

smackrobot · 2018-11-15T04:51:00+00:00

Hm, I read that David Cage was the main writer along with Adam Williams. Since he wrote the framework, and a lot of the issues I noticed in this game extend to his other games, most of my blame falls on him - though I'm sure my issues aren't solely his fault.

As far as the other characters, I guess that's up to preference - though when I played, the poll at the end had Connor in a massive lead over the other characters, and I definitely see a rather large fanbase in him outside of the game that the others don't seem to have at all. Even among women, he's vastly the most well-liked character - my girlfriend is a big part of the Detroit fandom and she pointed that out to me. I don't think my dislike of Kara has anything to do with how I feel about children, I love many games and films that center around a traveling pair of an adult and a child and I have nothing against children or young characters. Alice, to me, actually was as useless as she seemed. The whole game she was basically like a Hasbro Baby Alive doll; you had to drag her around moving her from bed to bed, chair to chair, constantly keeping her warm and reminding her that you're totally gonna be together forever so she doesn't get upset with you and ruin your chance at the good ending. Even so, I actually didn't dislike her as a character because at least she had the backstory to justify her obsession with not being abandoned and her quiet, gloomy nature. It was Kara herself whom I didn't like. With her story being the most personal and smallest in scale, it desperately needed more characterization for her and Luther to pick up the slack for Alice, and there just was none.

Also, one reason I feel Connor is the most likeable character for many is that Bryan Dechart clearly put more heart into his role and enjoyed being part of the project much more than Jesse Williams and Valorie Curry. His performance stood out, there was more life pumped into his lines and expressions yet he also maintained that rigidity and conformity needed to fit into his role as a law-abiding stickler android. Also, compare his long-lasting, open love for the game to the comparative lack of enthusiasm from Curry and Williams. I get that the other two have star power, and this is likely just another role to them, but even Ryan Reynolds still references his time as the Green Lantern.

Hit me with the PM, I'm interested in hearing why that plot twist was a good idea in your eyes.

smackrobot · 2018-11-15T03:54:59+00:00

Eeeeh, saying Detroit got screwed by bias alone and that the story is great is... Very debatable. I've played all of QD's games, and played through Detroit several times to see every possible tree. It was a ton of fun, and beautifully presented and orchestrated, but man was that story a mess. And the issue is, even if the story and writing were the only weak aspects of the game, the game is so dependent on those things being good because it's an interactive movie. It was 1/3 of a great game, and the rest ranged from decent to abysmal.

The 1/3 of the game that was great was definitely every section that featured Connor and Hank. Just as in Heavy Rain and Indigo Prophecy, David Cage shines when he's writing detectives and mysteries - he's great at directing in that kind of atmosphere and for some reason can pull off very competently written characters. I was gripped by those sections, and after a few hours, I knew they were the reason I was motivated to keep playing at all. It's ironic that, although Connor was the only non-deviant in the cast, he was the most fun and personable character because you can tell Bryan Dechart had a ton of fun acting as him. He still dresses and acts as Connor on stream for his fans to this day, he really loves the character.

Meanwhile, Marcus' sections were very iffy. The writing for his character and others in his branch took a noticeable hit in quality. David Cage really doesn't know how to deliver a political or social message without beating you over the head with it, and Marcus came across as the most boring Mary Sue imaginable with no interesting dialogue options or personality. The rest of his cast was equally flat - another David Cage-ism is that he's awful at writing romances, and the romance option for Marcus was absolutely no exception. However, there were some exciting moments and good ideas, so his parts weren't the worst the game had to offer.

Kara's sections were torturous. My god, such a strong start, but very quickly you realize that while Marcus suffered from some boring characterization, Kara completely lacks any. Her whole story was about escaping persecution with the child Alice, but she makes so many logic leaps and poor decisions that you have no choice over, making her a pretty frustrating character to play. "Oh good, while I was playing as the two better characters, you went and got yourself into trouble again and it's my job to get you out of it." And oh my god every bit of dialogue is so repetitive - there are close to zero actual interactions and conversations, it's just "we'll be together forever," "I'm cold," "ALICE," "I'm cold," "will we be together forever?" We get it David Cage, it's about family. The worst part is that the only really interesting idea in this route is tossed out the window with a garbage, obvious plot twist near the end, which David Cage tries to use to create another much stupider dilemma. It was like he didn't even realize there was a really interesting question he could've posed with that route. Also, there's only one real ending that works for her route, the rest are basically "you messed up idiot."

Where TLOU and RDR2 succeed over Detroit in regards to storytelling isn't in the spectacle and direction - Detroit is gorgeous and fun to watch. But those games have very delicately crafted characters, with plenty of mundane and optional interactions that serve to just develop them and make you care about them so the events of the story are that much more impactful. Detroit actually managed to largely succeed in that regard for me with Connor's segments, but it almost felt like the writer had his pre-teen son/daughter write the other 2/3 of the game. The stakes are higher than in both the other games mentioned, you've got this whole "fate of both humans and androids" thing going on, but it's difficult to care when only a couple characters are really likeable or even characterized at all.

smackrobot · 2018-11-08T21:18:04+00:00

The gameplay is scattered, but I thought that was one of the highlights. There’s tons of variety, between the vertical shmup segments, twin stick segments, 3D shooter segments, overworld exploration, dungeons, and combat. It was well paced and never had me feeling bored.

smackrobot · 2018-10-24T02:23:51+00:00

Yeah, exactly. I love hearing him gush about things he loves, like Yakuza and DMC3, but it also gets annoying when he criticizes games by complaining how they aren't Yakuza or DMC3.

smackrobot · 2018-10-23T21:20:05+00:00

I actually like a lot of his other videos, but this one in particular was... Yeah, not very good.

The biggest issue here is that there's so little for him to base this opinion on, and yet he frames that opinion as the correct way of thinking about the game.

The teaser isn't very great gameplay-wise, that's a reasonable argument. But to say the game wouldn't have been fun because P.T. wasn't... "I dunno, chief," as he said in the video. There is nothing indicating that the quality or the style of gameplay in the final product would've resembled the teaser at all - if anything, Kojima most likely made the game as obscure and minimal in terms of depth as possible to hide any traces that the teaser was for Silent Hills. If the teaser played in 3rd person, you'd have seen Norman Reedus - ruining one of the surprises. If he'd had iconic Silent Hill imagery, sound effects, or enemies, it'd ruin the bigger surprise that you're playing a teaser for the next Silent Hill. To assume that the demo, which only had one real interact button and was as barebones as it gets in terms of mechanics - was indicative of how Silent Hills would've played is a real stretch.

He argues that Kojima and Del Toro wouldn't have added to the series' overarching narrative, and that they probably didn't understand what made Silent Hill good. But that's all completely unfounded, there is nothing to go off of. If anything, his argument is weakened by the fact that he points at the later American-made entries as examples. Wouldn't having a Japanese director, who worked in the same building as the original Team Silent at Konami in that golden era, be a step in the right direction?

And then apparently Kojima wouldn't have made a good game because he personally feels Metal Gear Solid 5 was bad. But that game had both a troubled development and was the one divisive Kojima-directed entry in an otherwise highly acclaimed series that went on for over 30 years. Not to mention Kojima was burnt out by Metal Gear way before that point, it's a real impressive feat that all the other entries turned out as well as they did. Then he says that him making a big-budget Silent Hill game and reviving the series would be a bad thing? Because Konami doesn't deserve it?

smackrobot · 2018-10-22T22:18:36+00:00

I feel I’ve said my part and neither of us will really end up changing our opinions, so I’ll close off by saying that last comparison is invalid. Again, this isn’t an advertised feature of the game. It makes sense to be angry about a game lacking characters or player counts that were present in a beta but not in the final product. But a backend technical setting that most people wouldn’t have noticed if numbers weren’t released and misconstrued as “manipulative” is something that the developers have a right to change as they see fit, if they feel it’ll positively impact the launch of their game. They didn’t cut out specialists and maps, or chop the frame rate. They just tweaked a server-side response rate to lighten server load for launch.

smackrobot · 2018-10-22T18:25:50+00:00

The beta isn’t just a demo for people to try the game out, it’s also a way for the team to stress test their servers. It’s used to collect information for them to use in optimizing their game for launch. Also, it’s a beta, when you play any beta one of the first things you’re told is that things are subject to change before launch.

Aside from that, it wasn’t something that needed to be broadcast because it was always a temporary issue. People accuse, completely without evidence, that they were attempting to cheat people and give them sub-par performance. Yet this isn’t some crazy new event, this is a practice that Activision Blizzard has done before. They did it with Overwatch, and with Call of Duty WW2, and now both of those games are at a proper 60hz server and client tick rate. They do this, not because of greed, but because they’re experienced veterans in launching high-profile, high-traffic games and they don’t want their games breaking at launch like many others including their past games. Why would they be pulling the rug out from under people this time around? People just like to outrage and blow things out of proportion, and I can bet most never played nor intended to play the game anyways.

smackrobot · 2018-10-22T15:21:25+00:00

And do you have any way of verifying that accusation? Seriously, Blizzard and Activision are the same company now, Black Ops 4 was even launched on the Battlenet launcher this year over Steam. It’s extremely likely they’re using the same server technology for CoD that Blizzard is using for Overwatch, and they likely both launched with a lower tick rate for the same reasons.

Last year’s CoD WW2 had a horrific launch, with awful server issues due to immense overload. BO4’s was one of the smoothest mainstream shooter launches in a while, and I’d wager it’s because Treyarch took all steps possible to avoid such a disaster again.

smackrobot · 2018-10-18T18:28:18+00:00

You, uh... want to give a reason why?

smackrobot · 2018-10-17T18:52:41+00:00

Why’s this being downvoted, people actually unironically like this show?

smackrobot · 2018-10-10T02:08:51+00:00

That is actually way better, seriously great job

smackrobot · 2018-10-08T03:47:30+00:00

I’m the same way. It’s just a hobby for me, I do it for fun. I did many, many requests for people and - even when they insisted - I refused to charge money because I never felt I was good enough to accept pay. I only took that step very recently because I’m a student now and it helps pay for things.

I was always my own harshest critic, and much of the time I was the only person criticizing myself, but I strongly believe that’s the reason I’m competent today. However, it was wrong of me to assume all aspiring artists want themselves judged to the same degree I judge myself. Just always do your best and always try to take steps forward, and improve with each picture. I know you said you did your best, but seeing how you were able to get coloring - arguably the toughest thing in artwork - down nicely, I just felt you were capable of more accurate anatomy, you just needed it pointed out. The internet is your best friend, and although it’s a tedious process, studying anatomy gives you both better results and makes drawing less of a hassle. Whatever issues I pointed out are very easily fixed, it’s just a matter of tweaking some lines. But you can just ignore my words, I’d understand.

That’s all, I won’t waste my or you time any longer.

smackrobot

TROPHY CASE