Hi everyone. Amanda here! Or AJ for short, if you want to be gender-neutral about it. Some of you may remember me from a previous article that I wrote on the site as a “celebrity” guest. Since then I’ve been asked to come back and share more things, so I’ll now be up to providing reviews, impressions, and editorials on a regular basis as a Tap contributor!
Now with that out of the way, take a gander at this bizzare thing!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDFnMfJnI7s&w=560&h=345]
The Binding of Isaac was announced over a month ago, but it wasn’t pinging hard on my radar until I stumbled across Edmund McMillen’s blog post about how it actually works. Check out that blog entry to understand the gameplay hinted in the video. Basically this is a hybrid genre, not a “pure” roguelike but an arena-style top-down shooter with roguelike level generation.
So… warped, disturbing aesthetic, brutal difficulty, and randomly generated levels and encounters?
Sounds good! No, sir, it’s fine, you don’t have to box it up. I will be wearing it home.
See I have this love-hate relationship with hard games. I love them. But I am terrible at them.
I can see the future of this game. It involves me purchasing it immediately, sucking horribly at it, getting frustrated within about an hour, and never touching it again. Yet I respect hard games, as long as they are hard in the right way, the fun way.
What do you think: is it hypocritical to believe that games like Super Meat Boy, VVVVVV, or Godhand are absolutely fantastic, even while being completely terrible at them? Because that’s where I’m coming from when I write about this kind of thing. Admiration, awe, and frequent, excessive, embarrassing death.
I want to say by the way that I had to make an edit here: this isn’t “Team Meat’s” game so much as it is Edmund’s directly. Fortunately that doesn’t change the article, just the title. Sorry about that misconception!
I missed Roguelikes completely. I’ve played some Dwarf Fortress, but beyond that I’m a total noob. Thanks for this intel, Amanda, I’ll have to give old Isaac’s binding a try!
Thanks for the article, Amanda – definitely not hypocritical! Certainly having lived through the C64 era helps one appreciate games that are excessively hard. The C64 port of R-Type, for instance, is one of the hardest games I’ve ever played (I can’t even remember if I got past the first level). But, damn, it looked good, had great sound, and the gameplay was interesting.
Ahh… Dwarf Fortress. That’s an addicting game. Though it’s really more of a sim than a roguelike unless you play in adventure mode (I always prefer fortress mode). I’ve been invited in to a legacy game, so, if it actually takes off I’ll give it another mention.
The intricacy of Dwarf Fortress fascinated me, plus, as a lover of Dungeon Keeper 2 it was an automatic plus. However, I just didn’t have the time or patience to learn it. I’d love to see the same game with graphics and a mouse interface and stuff. I might never stop playing.
I’ve not much experience with roguelikes and have only briefly dabbled with the adventure mode in DF (fortress mode is where it’s really at ;-)). Recently however, I purchased Dungeons of Dredmor which is a fantastically accessible but still devilishly difficult roguelike. It’s got a cracking sense of humour and a lovely art style that both remind me of Monkey Island 2. It’s weird though, I’ve only played it so far with permadeath toggled on and I’ve got progressively worse with each new ‘playthrough’. It’s got to a stage now where I’m being gang-banged in the first room. I love it. That came out wrong.
To your question, Amanda, I think it boils down to an individual’s opinion. I’ve played the lengthy Super Meat Boy demo and while there is little room to deny the design quality, I don’t have much interest in the trend of citing how old games used to be so “real” and “genuinely hard,” so beyond its amusing surface properties SMB doesn’t much appeal to me.
Then there is another “hard” game, much talked about around here, which I am not very good at but respect and admire greatly, and that is Demon’s Souls. It’s not hard for the sake of being hard, or to harken back to some non-existent past that pleases some fetishists. Its difficulty plays right into the whole idea surrounding the game world.
To me Demon’s Souls’ challenge means something where Super Meat Boy’s is arbitrary and affection-seeking. But ya know, that’s one opinion 🙂
I love Demon Souls as well, or at least what I’ve seen of it. But I don’t have PS3, so I’m eagerly awaiting Dark Souls so I can die repeatedly in the comfort of my own home.
It may just be me, but I thought that Super Meat Boy’s difficulty had a message about courage, because, the faster you attempt to barrel through often the better you will do. Demon’s Souls is difficult in the opposite direction; its message is about preparation, and about not going beyond your limits without forethought. Almost the opposite game!
I’d say that’s a good description of both. It’s true about games like SMB; your first attempt is usually your best, and nigh impossible to replicate. The more you think about it the worse you end up doing.
A primarily visceral path to success, then. Indeed the total opposite of Demon’s Souls!
I love Demon’s Souls, as I have admitted many times. It does not love me back.
I’m really looking forward to Dark Souls, though I worry that they’re carrying this “make it harder” thing in the wrong direction. Demon’s Souls wasn’t insanely hard in the usual sense; it was the pressure and the penalty for failure that made it hard. If they just make Dark Souls ridiculously hard, that would be sad.