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David Jaffe sucks at Metroid

blink-182 wtf GIF


This thread still going?

...And David Jaffe came down to play and is still replying?

Robert Redford Nod GIF


I love this. Please continue.

We surely don't have enough people like Jaffe chiming in these days - regardless of anyone's opinion on him - so this is great and thank you Jaffe for partaking in the discourse.
 

gradient

Resident Cheap Arse
My direct response to the last 4-5 comments. Making a video for me is a lot faster/easier than trying to type it all out.

It's not monetized, it's not on my channel. It's unlisted. I made it just for this post so don't accuse me of trying to get clicks off this topic with this. It is a genuine response to some of y'all...





I'll address you video rather than your last post given you've gone to the trouble of creating and posting it.

You claim to be avoiding using the standing free aim mechanic because you don't like using one of the buttons on the controller. That's not the game's fault - that's yours. It's the equivalent of complaining all fighting games are too hard because you can't win using only the light punches and kicks mapped to the face buttons. If you're unwilling to use the controls available to you then the problem lies with you - it's not the fault of bad game design if you're unwilling to utilize the input options available, particularily when those inputs you're avoiding are in standard layout positions.

Second, you don't need to engage the movement lock in order to fire upwards. Free aim is active even without the movement lock engaged. When traversing samus will shoot in whichever direction the analogue stick is pointed. In order to prevent any inadvertent firing upwards you have to take your finger completely off the analogue stick.

Look here you are shooting upward without the movement lock engaged. It's a subsequent video, but it does nonetheless demonstrate how easily one can shoot up simply while firing with the analogue stick tilted.:



Third. In your original video you claim to have been in that room "like 30 times" yet somehow not even once did you attempt to shoot *up* at the enemies that were *up* as every other person did (see prior posted video for example of everyone else actually trying to shoot enemies).

And in your original video we can see you being careful not to shoot anywhere near the ceiling. Again, you have to be deliberately taking your thumb off the analogue stick to jump and shoot as you were. The means by which you attempted to attack that enemy ran completely against the controls and room layout. And you claim firing *up* is not intuitive, yet climbing to an elevated position with reduced jump room in order to jump up and down with your finger off the analogue and tap the fire button while avoiding use of controls you've already had to use is? Your words "30 times" - and not once did you fire off at an enemy on entering the room nor from a different position, nor even tilt the analogue while firing? C'mon


"I never said I was a great gamer" - And here we go. The problem lies in that instead of publicly ripping into another developer and making some increadibly poorly considered claims against the game's design, you could have just said that. people would have had a good laugh with you and that would have presented a genuine opportunity for game design discussion along the lines of "how can we make this game more accessible for bad gamers like me who don't like using some of the buttons and find aiming unintuitive". Great stuff - everyone gets a laugh, a lot of us aging gamers can totally relate, and we get a segway into some constructive design discussion.

...but you didn't. What you did was attack another developer and denounce the game design from a position of "look at me, I'm a pro, I teach game design and this is unequivocally absolute trash". You don't get to fall back on "I never said I was a good gamer" now because you didn't make that point then. You deliberately placed all of the blame on the game and the developers. And rather than say you were a bad gamer, you set up a video to show you avoiding all of the mechanics available to get you past that room, skipping the explicit instructions it gave you, and using your "bad gamer skills" as proof of bad design. Why did you do that? Outrage? Chasing the views? Baiting a fanbase you know will respond only to cry victim when they do exactly as you would expect and refuted your claims?


"You were watching me experience it in real time". No we weren't.

By your own admission "I must've been in this room 30 times or more"

Nobody needs to psycho-analyse you to see that. They only need to listen to pay attention to your own words and actions.
 
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Fredrik

Member
Old school in terms of shooting mechanics. Diagonal shooting wasn't implemented until Super Metroid, and wasn't really a big part of early side scrolling adventure shooters in general.
Diagonal shooting wasn’t common you’re right but I don’t think that’s the problem, even if you shoot toward the enemy diagonally and break the ceiling you’ll get stuck later at some other scenario if you’re not used to old school trial and error exploration. There are so many scenarios where trying weird things with the tools you have is the only way you’re progressing, there are no hints but it’s part of the game and why fans love it, the devs just throw you in and you’re free to use the tools you have however you want; shoot the floor, bomb the floor, shoot everything you see, fall through the floor, run through the wall, shoot a missile etc. Even at the ending sprint you’ll get stuck unless you try using the tools you have. It’s not as little hand-holding as in Super Metroid but it’s still relatively little compared to many modern games. I love it.
 
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Wonko_C

Member
I don't know if I'm the only one but I was actually expecting Metroid Dread to control like a Twin Stick shooter, It would have been more intuitive and Samus wouldn't always have to be firmly planted on her feet to aim and shoot.
 
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tygertrip

Member
The Metroid franchise was basically designed to sell issues of Nintendo Power. I'd love to see new players to the series pick up the original NES copy and give it a go with no maps, YouTube vids, or codes. True, the games are a piece of cake if you have available resources and aren't spending a lot of time stuck in areas.

It's odd that developers decided not to give players the sonar upgrade until the tail-end of the game.
Holmes, my then 12 year old ass beat that game with NO Nintendo Power. Did get a few tips from friends, who probably got it from NP. I remember spending HOURS lost, LOL. Kids are crazy, I can't even fathom wasting that much time running around blind in a game today! It WAS quite satisfying when I finally kicked Mother Brain's ass, heh. Edit: NP didn't exist yet.
 
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tygertrip

Member
...
I think his real problem is not using the L trigger enough. It should be getting pressed as often as the jump button in this game, as in nigh constantly.
...
ITT, he claims he knew about the free-aim, but the Switch controller is so badly designed that it is too hard for him to use it. Yes, he LITERALLY blamed the controller. The man is a walking, talking, cope machine! 😂😂😂
 

BlackTron

Member
ITT, he claims he knew about the free-aim, but the Switch controller is so badly designed that it is too hard for him to use it. Yes, he LITERALLY blamed the controller. The man is a walking, talking, cope machine! 😂😂😂

I can almost see this with detached joycon. Which I really hope he wasn't using. Use the grip or a pro controller. This isn't Super Mario Party man, why would you do that to yourself.

If he was actually using a pro controller and said this, that's just pathetic.
 

DjMystix

Member
I'll address you video rather than your last post given you've gone to the trouble of creating and posting it.

You claim to be avoiding using the standing free aim mechanic because you don't like using one of the buttons on the controller. That's not the game's fault - that's yours. It's the equivalent of complaining all fighting games are too hard because you can't win using only the light punches and kicks mapped to the face buttons. If you're unwilling to use the controls available to you then the problem lies with you - it's not the fault of bad game design if you're unwilling to utilize the input options available, particularily when those inputs you're avoiding are in standard layout positions.

Second, you don't need to engage the movement lock in order to fire upwards. Free aim is active even without the movement lock engaged. When traversing samus will shoot in whichever direction the analogue stick is pointed. In order to prevent any inadvertent firing upwards you have to take your finger completely off the analogue stick.

Look here you are shooting upward without the movement lock engaged. It's a subsequent video, but it does nonetheless demonstrate how easily one can shoot up simply while firing with the analogue stick tilted.:



Third. In your original video you claim to have been in that room "like 30 times" yet somehow not even once did you attempt to shoot *up* at the enemies that were *up* as every other person did (see prior posted video for example of everyone else actually trying to shoot enemies).

And in your original video we can see you being careful not to shoot anywhere near the ceiling. Again, you have to be deliberately taking your thumb off the analogue stick to jump and shoot as you were. The means by which you attempted to attack that enemy ran completely against the controls and room layout. And you claim firing *up* is not intuitive, yet climbing to an elevated position with reduced jump room in order to jump up and down with your finger off the analogue and tap the fire button while avoiding use of controls you've already had to use is? Your words "30 times" - and not once did you fire off at an enemy on entering the room nor from a different position, nor even tilt the analogue while firing? C'mon


"I never said I was a great gamer" - And here we go. The problem lies in that instead of publicly ripping into another developer and making some increadibly poorly considered claims against the game's design, you could have just said that. people would have had a good laugh with you and that would have presented a genuine opportunity for game design discussion along the lines of "how can we make this game more accessible for bad gamers like me who don't like using some of the buttons and find aiming unintuitive". Great stuff - everyone gets a laugh, a lot of us aging gamers can totally relate, and we get a segway into some constructive design discussion.

...but you didn't. What you did was attack another developer and denounce the game design from a position of "look at me, I'm a pro, I teach game design and this is unequivocally absolute trash". You don't get to fall back on "I never said I was a good gamer" now because you didn't make that point then. You deliberately placed all of the blame on the game and the developers. And rather than say you were a bad gamer, you set up a video to show you avoiding all of the mechanics available to get you past that room, skipping the explicit instructions it gave you, and using your "bad gamer skills" as proof of bad design. Why did you do that? Outrage? Chasing the views? Baiting a fanbase you know will respond only to cry victim when they do exactly as you would expect and refuted your claims?


"You were watching me experience it in real time". No we weren't.

By your own admission "I must've been in this room 30 times or more"

Nobody needs to psycho-analyse you to see that. They only need to listen to pay attention to your own words and actions.

Great writeup. Don't know how how else to explain this better. Unlikely to have any effect on someone who is hellbent on denials and avoiding explanations like this tho.

Funny thing is that the best part of metroid dread is it's amazing controls and fluid animation :)
 
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daveonezero

Banned
OH gosh that EMMI encounter was bad. The dude tells him he has to heat up the head and then charge shot.

And he is literally saying it isn't in the game tutorial.
 
Of course he goes to Twitter to disingenuously demand attention after being called out here for doing exactly that on YouTube. How typical.
 

Neff

Member
I remember spending HOURS lost, LOL. Kids are crazy, I can't even fathom wasting that much time running around blind in a game today!

It's easy to forget just how much time we had as kids, not only because we were kids, but because it was the '80s. People are so indecisive and impatient these days due to the abundance of internet-era content that they like to pretend that they don't even have enough time to pay attention, let alone actually use their brains.

In fact, let's give Sakamoto some more credit than that, he's actually now legitimately bounced back from his "bad game" and made a release worthy of winning back the crowd he had previously scorned. How many other game developers have such a Hollywood-esque redemption arc?

I love Other M but I'm glad the fickle, ungrateful Metroid community has welcomed him back. For now.
 
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Bragr

Banned
I think that people yell "clickbait" far too easily. The term means that you're lying about something, or misrepresenting what the video is truly about in the title/ thumbnail. I've been accused of clickbait before, for giving a completely honest review that some people just disagree with. I wish people could recognize that there's different opinions in the world besides their own.
The problem is that there is so many actual clickbaiters out there, that people assume that EVERY channel is "only in it for the clicks". We're not all Jaffe
Just curious, what sort of money can you make off a video on youtube these days?
 
Metroid is older and games in general were much more diffuse back in the days, so this isn’t about being old school but as you say it’s inexperience. I’m guessing he was mostly into action games in the 80s, Metroid is more adventuring and exploration, the action is manily there to add something to do while figuring out what to do next.

Getting stuck and not knowing what to do was normal in the 80s adventuring games and definitely not just in Metroid games. You often had to try to do whatever there was to try even if it made no sense. There was even telephone numbers you could call to get hints when you were stuck. Today we have internet.

Back then it could be really vague stuff like just walking to the edge of the screen where it looks like there is a wall but once you get close to the wall the screen suddenly scrolls and show you a new path, super common in games like Fist 2 on C64.

There was also common that you should jump into a random hole that in any other scenario would’ve insta-killed you. Used for secrets in games like Turrican, you either die or get an extra life, but jumping into a seemingly certain death was used for main path many times in games like Last Ninja 2.

In some games you had to interact with something you couldn’t interact with before, could be a pixel in size, or give someone a random thing nobody would ever use for that purpose, in Sierra and Lucas Arts games for example. Etc.

Jaffe is perfectly right here that this is archaic game design. I wouldn’t call it shit though. But I grew up with it so for me it’s no problem, and I love Metroid Dread for not dumbing it down, it’s a game for the core fans and I think it’s perfectly okay if not all games are Your first video game™ , it’s about time the fans got something they throughly enjoy.

And in the new video Jaffe says he’s like an inexperienced 5yo in the Metroid genre. Can’t be angry at someone simply for lacking experience. So I’m fine with his explanation now.

That said, there are clearly smoother ways for an inexperienced individual to tackle something they don’t quite understand than to scream to those who do understand that it’s shit.

Experienced or not, invisible blocks are a shitty mechanic and should be done away with. For some reason 2D Metroid hangs onto this. David Jaffe isn’t wrong even if he is coming off poorly. There are far too many apologists trying to explain how the game is guiding them through some archaic way, when it should just be recognized that invisible blocks is fundamentally bad design. It accomplishes nothing else than hiding an over simplistic “puzzle” that is finding a power up that destroys those blocks. Why not just have the environment have some visual cue that it’s breakable? It makes people walk around shooting every surface just on the off chance there is a one or two block sequence that exposes the way forward.
 

Fredrik

Member
Why not just have the environment have some visual cue that it’s breakable? It makes people walk around shooting every surface just on the off chance there is a one or two block sequence that exposes the way forward.
Because it would be like a game for kids. It would be like an highlighted edge or jumping arrow over the next thing you should interact with in adventure games so you don’t walk around the room just on the off chance there is an ”Press A to Interact.” popping up that exposes the way forward. It’s dumbing it down.

And if you’re never lost in a game about being lost then what’s left?
If people want a linear shooter then there are other games to play. It’s an action adventure with exploration as a core ingredient, the game is actually surprisingly linear and dumbed down as it is. What eventually placed Metroid Dread behind Super Metroid for me is the visual cues when going for 100%. There is barely any exploration needed by the end when you can just scan a huge area with a push of a button compared to Super Metroid where you manually controll a scanner cone to find the hidden stuff.
 
I respect Jaffe’s contributions to the game industry in the past, but I swear, the reception to Drawn to Death absolutely broke the guy. It was a decent game and the art style was pretty unique and cool, but reviewers and Reddit were absolutely savage in how they treated the game, and he took it so deeply to heart that he has changed himself to appeal to that audience that completely and utterly rejected his game.
I’m not sure if he would have expressed these same views on Metroid Dread before Drawn to Death’s reception.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I respect Jaffe’s contributions to the game industry in the past, but I swear, the reception to Drawn to Death absolutely broke the guy. It was a decent game and the art style was pretty unique and cool, but reviewers and Reddit were absolutely savage in how they treated the game, and he took it so deeply to heart that he has changed himself to appeal to that audience that completely and utterly rejected his game.
I’m not sure if he would have expressed these same views on Metroid Dread before Drawn to Death’s reception.
By the looks of it he wants to get back into making games, but nobody wants any part of him. His last games were Twisted Metal (2012) and DtD (2017). So by next year, he's got one game under his belt in a decade. An indie shooter.

So he's left to making loud baity tweets for attention in hopes someone notices him from his GOW days, or it perks up his Twitter follower count so his back up career is gaming podcaster for the rest of his life.

His tweet above about the Nintendo guy dying is the kind of stuff I've been saying on GAF many times. It's an odd industry of people who have bottom of the barrel professionalism. You'd think someone like Jaffe who is a gaming vet who worked at Sony on GOW at a high up position would act more maturely on social media. Tweeting badly about a dead guy is so low even I wouldn't think could be done by gaming employees who love Twitter. But here we are. But thats what you get with gaming. Wild west antics.

To be fair, I remember watching one of his videos where he talked with the guy from Days Gone. Excellent video. 100x better than any gaming site freelancer doing interviews and chat about gaming.
 
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I found this Jaffe stuff pretty funny when it first popped up. Recently I actually started playing Metroid Dread and now the mirth has morphed into rage. His take is complete crap, and was delivered so obnoxiously I can't take the dude seriously on any level. I enjoyed the Twisted Metal games I bought (1, 2, Black), but retroactively I just have to assume those games' good qualities had little or nothing to do with him. I have to believe that, because I don't want to consider that such a fall from grace is possible for me or my loved ones.
 
By the looks of it he wants to get back into making games, but nobody wants any part of him. His last games were Twisted Metal (2012) and DtD (2017). So by next year, he's got one game under his belt in a decade. An indie shooter.

So he's left to making loud baity tweets for attention in hopes someone notices him from his GOW days, or it perks up his Twitter follower count so his back up career is gaming podcaster for the rest of his life.

His tweet above about the Nintendo guy dying is the kind of stuff I've been saying on GAF many times. It's an odd industry of people who have bottom of the barrel professionalism. You'd think someone like Jaffe who is a gaming vet who worked at Sony on GOW at a high up position would act more maturely on social media. Tweeting badly about a dead guy is so low even I wouldn't think could be done by gaming employees who love Twitter. But here we are. But thats what you get with gaming. Wild west antics.

To be fair, I remember watching one of his videos where he talked with the guy from Days Gone. Excellent video. 100x better than any gaming site freelancer doing interviews and chat about gaming.
David Jaffe, much like John Romero, kind of represents that edgy era of gaming that the big players of the industry want to hide away from these days. Drawn to Death’s reception was the moment that Jaffe realized that the industry no longer wanted to acknowledge his existence.
 
S

SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member
Experienced or not, invisible blocks are a shitty mechanic and should be done away with. For some reason 2D Metroid hangs onto this. David Jaffe isn’t wrong even if he is coming off poorly. There are far too many apologists trying to explain how the game is guiding them through some archaic way, when it should just be recognized that invisible blocks is fundamentally bad design. It accomplishes nothing else than hiding an over simplistic “puzzle” that is finding a power up that destroys those blocks. Why not just have the environment have some visual cue that it’s breakable? It makes people walk around shooting every surface just on the off chance there is a one or two block sequence that exposes the way forward.
no, you think it is.
 

Boglin

Member
It accomplishes nothing else than hiding an over simplistic “puzzle” that is finding a power up that destroys those blocks. Why not just have the environment have some visual cue that it’s breakable? It makes people walk around shooting every surface just on the off chance there is a one or two block sequence that exposes the way forward.
Exploring and getting lost then poking and prodding the environment of a game to find my next path forward is fun for me. I hope this style of gameplay doesn't go away anytime soon.
 

tygertrip

Member
Experienced or not, invisible blocks are a shitty mechanic and should be done away with. For some reason 2D Metroid hangs onto this. David Jaffe isn’t wrong even if he is coming off poorly. There are far too many apologists trying to explain how the game is guiding them through some archaic way, when it should just be recognized that invisible blocks is fundamentally bad design. It accomplishes nothing else than hiding an over simplistic “puzzle” that is finding a power up that destroys those blocks. Why not just have the environment have some visual cue that it’s breakable? It makes people walk around shooting every surface just on the off chance there is a one or two block sequence that exposes the way forward.
Wrong.
 

tygertrip

Member
David Jaffe, much like John Romero, kind of represents that edgy era of gaming that the big players of the industry want to hide away from these days. Drawn to Death’s reception was the moment that Jaffe realized that the industry no longer wanted to acknowledge his existence.
Jaffe isn’t a pimple on Romero’s ass. Plus Romero likes Nintendo games.
 

tygertrip

Member
Exploring and getting lost then poking and prodding the environment of a game to find my next path forward is fun for me. I hope this style of gameplay doesn't go away anytime soon.
“Noooooo, that’s not good game design! You’re not allowed to like it! Muh Jaffe told me so!”
 
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