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David Jaffe sucks at Metroid

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SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member


Metroid was always about exploring the environment, including finding shootable blocks. This isn't nearly as cryptic as he makes it out to be.

I'd also like to mention how he keeps missing with the "jumping shot" and apparently never uses diagonal shooting.

sorry David, but you are starting getting to old for this shit. The only thing that fell apart is your career.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Metroid Dread (and the genre as a whole) has tons of obscure, weird shit being hidden. This part was not one of those. If THIS is ridiculous according to mr., what’ll be his reaction when the truly weird shit starts happening?
 
It's weird the game goes from showing you shootable, explodable points in walls with the pink wall fractures/tumors - to having no indication at all and temporarily boxing you in until you figure out the stuff to shoot. This isn't even the hardest wall to figure out, the worst one comes about 40min further in.

Jaffe's criticisms of this wall are sound. I think it's strange for him to quit the game in disgust though for one design decisions that is hairpullingly annoying. If I did that with every game I played I'd never complete anything. Dread does do a better job than earlier Metroids of sort of... closing off your route behind you with locking doors and obstacles so you don't backtrack too far off where you need to go when you get stuck.
 
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Xyphie

Member
Is this progression gating or just some optional thing like an energy tank? If it's the latter I think it's fine, otherwise I agree there should probably be a stronger visual cue either on the wall or map.
 
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the game literally tells you to shoot around when you are at a dead end.
It's not a dead end though. And after backtracking a bit you probably forget what the latest room you unlocked was, so you don't know which room in the maze is the one that is the dead-end. And a lot of people just skim text and don't read, or forget since you would have been told this at the very least 30 minutes ago - or at the worst a week, months, years earlier if the player put the game down for a time. Or the player might not know English very well and are trying to learn it, or are too young to effectively read. Good design is intuitive. It shouldn't take a text box.
 
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kuncol02

Banned


Metroid was always about exploring the environment, including finding shootable blocks. This isn't nearly as cryptic as he makes it out to be.

I'd also like to mention how he keeps missing with the "jumping shot" and apparently never uses diagonal shooting.

sorry David, but you are starting getting to old for this shit. The only thing that fell apart is your career.

It's new for you? His Ace Combat video was so painful to watch that it made me question his ability to even talk about game design, let alone his ability to design games. It looked like someone playing video games first time in his life.
 

Abriael_GN

RSI Employee of the Year
It's new for you? His Ace Combat video was so painful to watch that it made me question his ability to even talk about game design, let alone his ability to design games. It looked like someone playing video games first time in his life.

To be fair, that's how I felt about a lot of videos of press people and "influencers" playing Ace Combat 7... Let's not even talk about Microsoft Flight Simulator.... 🤔
 
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As much as I love Metroid seriea but Dread have sooo much of bullshit moments. There ia basically no exploration until end. Its VERY restricted game.
Also why everyone refers to his carrier? I have no clue who he is and I don't care if a person explains what he means with arguments.
 
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SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member
Haven't played it yet but this does look sus, if you have to go around shooting every random wall as there is no indication then its bad game design plain and simple.
So, do you think an enemy walking over you isn't an indication that you could possibly go there?
It's not like you have to shoot at every wall. Far from it.
It's not a dead end though, and a lot of people just skim text and don't read, or forget since you would have been told this at the very least 30 minutes ago - or at the worst a week earlier if the player put the game down for awhile. Or the player doesn't know English very well and are trying to learn it, or are too young to effectively read. Good design is intuitive. It shouldn't take a text box.
The game is literally designed around exploring a maze and every mechanic is as smooth and easy to pull off as possible. The game gives you every tool necessary. If you're stuck or something, one of the first responses as a player should be to experiment, to try and figure things out. It's really not that hard to do and the game is very intuitive.

And I mean, Jaffe literally made games where you had to input cheat codes to perform the fun stuff. I just thinks it's ironic.
 

Portugeezer

Member
Have to agree with Jaffe. Shooting non-descript walls to progress is horrible design. They don't have to put bright red objects like in Mirrors Edge but some sort of indicator is needed if that's a normal part of the game
If you see something on the other side of a wall, is it hard to try shooting the wall? The game does tell you to try shooting things early on in the game.

People are used to modern handholding.

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RoboFu

One of the green rats
Have to agree with Jaffe. Shooting non-descript walls to progress is horrible design. They don't have to put bright red objects like in Mirrors Edge but some sort of indicator is needed if that's a normal part of the game
A lot of people have beat Metroid now without the need or want for a guide.
it doesn’t seem to be an issue. The whole point is exploration and reaching new areas when you receive new power ups.

it’s like games use to be about REALLY solving puzzles not super guided way points and hand holding.
 
The game is literally designed around exploring a maze and every mechanic is as smooth and easy to pull off as possible. The game gives you every tool necessary. If you're stuck or something, one of the first responses as a player should be to experiment, to try and figure things out. It's really not that hard to do and the game is very intuitive.

And I mean, Jaffe literally made games where you had to input cheat codes to perform the fun stuff. I just thinks it's ironic.
It's not really a maze until the player makes it a maze, because your first reaction at entering this room is to turn around and backtrack - now you're in a maze as you look around and then start experimenting trying to figure out the way forward. It didn't take me long to figure it out, but I can see why he's right. I don't know what the right balance is. The answer to this is to just put a big pink crack in the wall and now figuring this out is so straight forward and not the challenge its supposed to be, so I'd prefer they not do that.

I think if they're going to not make the wall non-self-indicative like this they should lock the door behind the player so they don't waste their time backtracking in these situations. It would have saved me 30min later on with a similar wall, especially when those SDCard load times start to kick in between sections. I mean, is it really a challenge if you're not even sure what you're being challenged with or where the challenge is? I dunno, doesn't seem like fun gameplay. I'll replay a boss for an hour and a half rather than wandering around for 30min.
 
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Bartski

Gold Member
I think the enemy is indicator enough.
no it isn't, also
So, do you think an enemy walking over you isn't an indication that you could possibly go there?
It's not like you have to shoot at every wall. Far from it.
Come on man. Of course, it is an indication that you can go there somehow but in no way does it suggest the way to get there is to shoot through the ceiling that just happens to be destructible in that one spot.

I haven't played it, maybe it does effective condition you to shoot at walls earlier on. Is that fun? I love obscure difficult games with no handholding but this is just silly if it's not a secret but the main progress path.
 

Spaceman292

Banned
It's weird the game goes from showing you shootable, explodable points in walls with the pink wall fractures/tumors - to having no indication at all and temporarily boxing you in until you figure out the stuff to shoot. This isn't even the hardest wall to figure out, the worst one comes about 40min further in.

Jaffe's criticisms of this wall are sound. I think it's strange for him to quit the game in disgust though for one design decisions that is hairpullingly annoying. If I did that with every game I played I'd never complete anything. Dread does do a better job than earlier Metroids of sort of... closing off your route behind you with locking doors and obstacles so you don't backtrack too far off where you need to go when you get stuck.
Seems like everyone in this thread who agrees with him haven't actually played the game.

If you need arrows constantly pointing at where you need to go then don't play games that are designed to be mazes.
 
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SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member
no it isn't, also

Come on man. Of course, it is an indication that you can go there somehow but in no way does it suggest the way to get there is to shoot through the ceiling that just happens to be destructible in that one spot.

I haven't played it, maybe it does effective condition you to shoot at walls earlier on. Is that fun? I love obscure difficult games with no handholding but this is just silly if it's not a secret but the main progress path.
come on, you make shooting in a game about shooting sound cryptic. Also a game that LITERALLY tells you to shoot at things if you're stuck, a game whose franchise from the inception was about exploring the environment and figuring things out by yourself.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
If you start saying its a problem with a player, not the game, then there is a problem with the game.
This is factually wrong because NOT every game needs to hold your hand.
Not every game is for every player.
Same thing with people saying Souls games need to have an easy mode.
Or that its too hard to get into Siege today.
Or that Fortnites building ruins the game.
Or that fixed enemy levels make rushing the game hard because you meet enemies you couldnt possibly defeat.

There is not a universal standard of "good" game design, and some players go through life playing games that spell shit out for you so when faced with a problem that hasnt been spelt out in its entirety suddenly the game is badly designed.

Not every game is for every player, some players legit just suck at game type X so yes its very possible for the problem to lie with the player.
 

Porcile

Member
No idea with what mindset he is approaching the game but the progression in the game is very telegraphed. I mean it is obvious when the game is forcing you to go in a certain direction so any situation like it's pretty obvious that you just shoot around
for a couple seconds until you find the path forward. Or do I have an 180 IQ or something?
 
Everyone learns different lessons in life and understanding patterns, especially in games. He pointed out why he didn't think it was logical to shoot that floor and for all of his reasons, they made sense. Not everyone playing the game is going to think the same. It has to accommodate a wide range of thinking, and so long as the player doesn't have a poor thought process, the game is the problem. This isn't about it being too hard or holding your hand, its about being non-intuitive and even the design of the minimap working against an intuitive thought process showing you the other entrance/exit with a locked door on the right side of the room the player is currently in. For every intent and purpose you could easily conclude you eventually go through the locked red door to your right at some point far into the future, and have to enter the top room above this one, and the game by an act of god will eventually break the floor so you can re-enter the room you're currently standing in.

This stuff actually happens in other rooms later in the game.
 
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I didn't say there has to be more than one answer I said there will always be multiple ways of arriving at the correct answer. That's just how people think.
 
I don't know. Put a hundred gamers at that point in the game and you'll probably find at least thirty unique ways of arriving at having to shoot that ceiling and all at varying amounts of time before figuring it out. I don't understand why its a difficult concept that people think and solve puzzles in different rates and manners.
 

N30RYU

Member
Later in the game you got that radar thing that show you special blocks... so any nondestructable looking block in the game is just to get bonus content.
 
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BbMajor7th

Member
I generally like Metroid and Metroidvanias, but, if it's like he's saying it is and not out of context, this is pretty rubbish (and lacklustre) design. My rule of thumb is that figuring out puzzles should make you feel smart, but I know that if I'd have figured that out by myself, my reaction would have been 'really?' I don't think it's something that would cause a game to 'fall apart' though - it's just a slightly dumb decision that you can look up in about twenty seconds, roll your eyes and get on with your life.
 
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