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Harveyjames
the meteor kid
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 3636
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 Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 9:38 am Post subject: |
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| Edge sort of bugs me. |
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Scratchmonkey
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Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439
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| Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:37 am Post subject: |
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Edge bugs most people. Their reviews bug me.
Their features are usually pretty good though. |
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Harveyjames
the meteor kid
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 3636
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| Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:51 am Post subject: |
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| I agree with this appraisal of EDGE. |
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kirkjerk
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 1227
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| Posted: Fri Aug 10, 2007 12:38 pm Post subject: |
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Got the 100 special. Digging it.
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kirkjerk
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 1227
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| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:48 am Post subject: |
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I finally finished this.
(For a few weeks, I kind of had it as my "in between" reading, something to stow in my bag for when I finished my book and hadn't thought to bring another, but that was too slow.)
I admit I almost did a spit take on this thing on Halo:
| Quote: | | It's simple, Halo is never, ever the same twice. |
Now they go on to defend that view, and talk about the AI event model and how the player is likely to react but still, my response was "yeah, with those repeated levels, it's the same four or five times, but never twice."
Also, and I don't mean to sound like such a vendetta-driven fanboy, but how do they slather praise all over Puyo Pop/Mean Bean Machine / Kirby's Avalanche for its head to head play (and also include Bust a Move/Puzzle Bobble) and totally ignore Panel de Pon / Puzzle League / Tetris Attack? Not to harp (yeah right) but it seems to me the way the garbage blocks in Puzzle League are also weapons, while the garbage in Puyo Pop is just obstacle makes the former an *objectively* better game than the latter. Did it just not get much play in the UK, or what?
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Harveyjames
the meteor kid
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 3636
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| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:08 am Post subject: |
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| They just don't care that much about it, and Puyo Pop is more widely recognised and fondly remembered, so. |
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kirkjerk
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 1227
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| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:21 am Post subject: |
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I can understand that nostalgia factor is going to play a weighty role... not sure why Puyo Pop has more nostalgia factor than Puzzle League... Maybe because it was released on both Genesis and SNES?
Oh, right, just Wikipedia'd up that the MegaDrive was pretty popular in Europe, which wasn't as Nintendo-fied at that point. I'd wager that that's the key to the extra nostalgia from a UK magazine at least.
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dessgeega
loves your favorite videogame
Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 6563
Location: bohan
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| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:26 am Post subject: |
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doesn't puyo pop predate panel de pon? if so, it'd make more sense for them to attribute the trend of multiplayer-oriented puzzle games to the former than the latter.
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Shapermc
Hot Sake!
Joined: 14 Oct 2004
Posts: 6279
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| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:33 am Post subject: |
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I like Puzzle Bobble a hell of a lot more than the Puzzle League style games.
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dessgeega
loves your favorite videogame
Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 6563
Location: bohan
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| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:34 am Post subject: |
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i always considered panel de pon to be kinda broken until the ds version.
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kirkjerk
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 12:21 pm Post subject: |
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| dessgeega wrote: | | i always considered panel de pon to be kinda broken until the ds version. |
Such a hater!
My glasses are tinged w/ nostalgia, but ... why broken?
I know we disagree about mascots vs. just general stylishness.
I admit the stylus is slicker than the cursor, but it also promotes a different kind of thinking, glossing over the fact that when you move a square, you're actually swapping 2 squares. It's so easy to zip a piece across a row... I dunno. I haven't played the DS version enough to know that I grok it.
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Harveyjames
the meteor kid
Joined: 06 Jul 2006
Posts: 3636
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| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Stuff like Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Flicking Machine and (on the Amiga) Super Foul Egg got a lot of play in the UK. Panel de Pon, not so much! |
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Cycle
Mac daddy
Joined: 08 Sep 2006
Posts: 2767
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| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 5:28 pm Post subject: |
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I never even heard of Puzzle League until I went to the Insert Credit forums.
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dessgeega
loves your favorite videogame
Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 6563
Location: bohan
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| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 5:39 am Post subject: |
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| kirkjerk wrote: | | dessgeega wrote: | | i always considered panel de pon to be kinda broken until the ds version. |
Such a hater!
My glasses are tinged w/ nostalgia, but ... why broken? |
it's because the premise of panel de pon, what always set it apart in my mind from similiar games (like puyo pop, for example) is the ability to move tiles while chains are going on, to engineer chains actively rather than through premeditation. the problem is that i've never found this actually feasable with d-pad controls. see a tile i could add to the chain, click over to it with the d-pad, tap the swap button, click over a space, tap the swap button again. by this time the piece has already fallen. i've only ever really felt that super-experts were capable of those amazing chains that go on forever.
in the ds version, because of the stylus, if i recognize a tile i can add to a chain, i can drag it over in a single elegant gesture. it doesn't feel like i'm fighting the interface anymore. it feels like i'm allowed to be clever for the first time.
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SuperWes
Updated the banners, but not his title
Joined: 07 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 7:21 am Post subject: |
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Want to know a secret? I think I kinda prefer using the D pad in Puzzle League. Hey dess, think you might want to take me on over Wi-fi and prove once and for all which is superior?
Also: my vote for best vs. Puzzle game design goes to Wario's Woods, but if we're talking Puyo vs. Puzzle League I'm going to give the nod to Puzzle League.
-Wes
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kirkjerk
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 1227
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| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 7:45 am Post subject: |
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Hmm, i always assumed the real problem w/ combos and chains was one of vision, not of timing.
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Cycle
Mac daddy
Joined: 08 Sep 2006
Posts: 2767
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| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 8:13 am Post subject: |
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to be honest, i always thought puzzle league was kinda stupid, and i still do! i really don't see the appeal. seems one of the b-grade falling block games to me.
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helicopterp
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Joined: 13 May 2006
Posts: 1435
Location: Philadelphia
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| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 8:49 am Post subject: |
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No, but see, it's a pushing block game. Come on!
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kirkjerk
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 1227
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| Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 9:08 am Post subject: |
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| Cycle wrote: | | to be honest, i always thought puzzle league was kinda stupid, and i still do! i really don't see the appeal. seems one of the b-grade falling block games to me. |
Nah, it's the best, for two sets of reasons:
1. it is a bit different. It might not even be a "falling block" game, more "rising block", only the garbage blocks fall. Second, unlike other games in the genre, you have control of most of the playfield, except the garbage block areas... most other games limit you to control of whatever piece is falling. In the traditional crosspad version, the mechanism of swapping is very elegant, relative to Tetris-y rotation or Coloumns-y reordering. Maybe I'm biased because I've played it more deeply than any other similar game, but it seems like the combos and chains that emerge are really quite clever, and nifty coming from such a simple premise.
2. This is the big thing: the see-saw, hoist-on-his-own-petard head to head play. Most head to head puzzlers have garbage. usually, that garbage is purely a detriment to the other player, but in this game, it's a danger that can lead to opportunity to strike back in massive fashion. (Something not as likely in games where you control one piece at a time... in Puyo Pop, say, it would be left to chance, and probably cause things to go away that you were saving for later.) Versions of Tetris where garbage from underneath always have the gap in the same location rather than a random square since it makes tetris and other combos more likely, but then there's an unpleasant asymmetry that makes that column different than all the others. Other games like Puzzle Fighter have the seesaw, but for my money lack the simplicity and symmetry, with each player having special reward patterns that maximize damage, and the whole countdown thing seems... ehh, ungraceful.) Dess mentions this one other super cute puzzler that has seesaw was well, but I keep forgetting what it's called and haven't hunted it down yet.
So obviously, if it doesn't appeal to you viscerally an intellectual-ish description of its merits won't help, and saying "well you just have to really get into it" ain't much of an argument. I would say, honing my skill in head to head play w/ my one best gaming buddy and being able to beat the women in my family who previously owned me at it, then going to PhillyClassic and having my ass handed to me in the first round by a guy who got schooled in the second (admittedly by the eventual champion) showed me how incredibly deep this game is. As you play it more and more, you begin to go beyond mere "4s" and "5s" to these ungodly chans and combos, seeing patterns and possibilities where a n00b only sees a scattering of colored blocks.
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RadarScope1
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Joined: 25 Aug 2007
Posts: 24
Location: Missouri
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| Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:41 pm Post subject: |
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I also bought the hard copy of the Edge list. Yeah, the list itself is dubious, but the essays and the artwork and the way everything is presented is very nice. I generally like Edge, though I wouldn't say I've read a ton of it. What I've read, I've liked.
kirkjerk - that meta list you made is great! You should add the EGM Top 200 from a couple of years ago. I really liked that list because they set clear parameters - the 200 best games "of their time." So that kind of elimates some of the arguments about finding the original Metroid boring and unplayable. Yathink? It's a bare-bones 8-bit exploration game from 20 years ago. Of course is kinda sucks today.
Back to the Edge list - they F'ed up by asking for reader input and figuring that into their formula. When you do that, you invite all sorts of dumb stuff to happen. The list trends toward the newer because they specified the games should be ones that hold up today (and as we've seen, that's been debatable).
I'll say this for their list - it's kind of nice to see one that isn't dominated by nostalgia. |
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