#ANYWAYS... gameplay in sims 2 is just superior | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

enkisstories · 3 years

Text

Sims 4 storytelling playstyle, or: I’m NOT writing a dollhouse story

This started as a reply in a thread at the official forums, but while writing it I noticed how far I was veering off the actual discussion and just yelling my own viewpoint into the universe, that I think it’s better to post it as a standalone.

I think there's some general misconception of what storytelling gameplay actually is. In short: Storytelling =/= Dollhouse story.

For a dollhouse story you control every little thing, the setting, the plot, down to each gesture and reaction of your sims. Pose, add caption, post. I do that, too (my blog is proof of that), it is fun, but I have telemetry off because I do not want EA to think using Sims 4 to create comics is how I people play the game.

Storytelling gameplay to the contrary is adding context to what happens on screen and setting up a backstory that determines what the sims are allowed to do and what their goals might be. For example my main save's backstory is android (servo) rights. Each newly created family must fit the theme in some way, be it that they want to buy an android for themselves, or maybe they want to buy as many free as they can or they may take up blogging about the topic.

Now when such a blog post gets nominated for an award, that will catch public attention and potentially steer the story into a new direction. Instead of just "Look, my cute sim has made a good blog post and now she's famous, I think I may select a perk now that will help her get even more famous" the interactions gets a deeper meaning. But we storytellers still want the game to participate in our creating of the story.

In the abovementioned blog post example the game deciding whether the android rights blog will get noticed or not is important, because it adds chance and risk. We WANT a solid simulation, we just want it to know its place. Therefore Sims 4’s fill-in-the-blanks approach works better for us than "strong" personalities and storyprogression.

(Personally I see too much of that already, with sentiments and the eco lifestyle phonecalls being the worst offenders, but it’s also small things like every parent scolding their toddler for tossing food while sitting in the highchair, regardless of whether that is true for that parent’s personality (the one time I tried the highchair this was what put me off from using it forever).)

In many respects storytelling playstyle is closer to playing a challenge than to maxmotives lala-land. If one allowed every feature Sims 4 has with no restrictions, the economy would break within the first week of play. In fact, a story that reigns in the madness that is money overflow is not just nice for flavour, it is required. Without buying free the occasional android, a job shortage in the backstory and a basic understanding of that people do not come to your house and buy your veggies or paintings if you do not have the proper connections, my sims would all be millionaires. But in storytelling playstyle we come up with restrictions (and privileges) automatically, in general long before we load the first household in a new save, therefore we often do not notice Sims 4’s balancing problems that will jump a more gameplay oriented player into the face. Or rather, notice them we do, but they are a minor nuisance only. That damn high chair is worse.

I may come off a bit as a hypocrite seeing that I praise Sims 4 for suiting my playstyle so well, while playing and posting Sims 2 at the moment. I didn’t return to 2 because of wants and fears (they are actually an annoyance that I tolerate) or being a better challenge (not with Nightlife dates and Freetime perks anymore anyway). I just think Sims 2 handles community lot time and generally keeping each lot its own self contained save superior to Sims 3 and 4. It’s much more relaxing.

#simblr #rant probably #opinion #unpopular opinion maybe #sims 4 #the sims 4

4 notes · View notes

latibulesims · 4 years

Note

any tips on making sims? like i've seen a few a few bodyshop tricks but most ppl tend to keep that type of stuff to themselves. (if you'd be open to doing a speed vid of you making a sim would be cool 👀👀)

Hi! I currently can’t make, or more accurately put, upload, a speed vid (WiFi problems), but I’ll share all the bodyshop tips I can think of!

NOTE: These tips are for realistic looking sims, not sims you’d typically use for gameplay (maxis match is superior with game play don’t @ me). So these tips might not be for everyone! What works for me, might not work for someone else, so keep that in mind going in! I hope they help, anyway. <3 Let’s go.

1) Diversify. I try to never make two sims that are of the same race back-to-back. This is may be the most important tip I can think of, because once you venture outside making all of your sims the same race, you’re just forced to go a different direction than the sim you made prior. Also, you’ll have the added benefit of your sims world having a real-life world touch, and your game becomes way less vanilla. That is, if you don’t end up with your sims all looking like same, with just a different shade of skintone slapped on them. This brings me to my second tip,

2) Reference pictures. This one is something I’ve just recently (in the past 2 years or so) started doing myself and it is a GAME CHANGER. What I do is look up, mostly on pinterest, models for reference. I then try and use those references while creating the sims. This really helps because you get to have an accurate representation of the race you’re trying to create, without having to depend on your sole memory. I’m an Arab, but I find myself constantly blanking when it comes to making Arab sims. I literally forget what Arabs look like, LOL, so I always go back to the references! Here is an example of the same sims from 2017 (before I started using reference pictures) vs. 2020.

3) Age. This is also a really important factor that I don’t think many people account for, which is totally fine if you’re creating sims to play! But if you’re creating sims for machinima (which I, 90% of the time, am) then it’s not something you should overlook. You need to show your sims aging. Most people only do that through CC (namely, wrinkles). That sometimes works, but most times it’s just not enough. You’ve got to also use the sliders. Fact is, a sim that’s supposed to be in their 20s, and another sim that’s supposed to be in their 50s, will share the same age in the game (Adult sim), but realistically won’t have the same face. You can show age by giving them thinner faces, a less defined jawline, eyes that are less open, etc... I tend to use reference pictures from tip 2 to help with that. Here are pictures of two of my characters from my series, The Rivers, as an 18 year old and as a 28 year old (all as adult sims). The pictures are from four years ago, back when there weren’t custom sliders omfg i can’t even fathom a world like that anymore, and my sim-making has thankfully evolved since then, but it’s the only example I can think of where I used the same adult sim to represent different age groups!

NOTE: If you’re just making sims for the sake of playing, and you still want to show age progression in adult sims, I highly recommend these great graying hairs by @deedee-sims Always my go-to when I’m playing!

4) Base. If you’re just starting, or you’re beginning from scratch and don’t know where to start, I’d recommend downloading default face templates - because maxis face templates are horrendous. LOL Or, and only if the creator ALLOWS IT (always read the TOU!!!), use another creator’s sim as a base sim. BUT, if you are going to use someone else’s work (templates or base sim) as your blank canvas, then make sure to make it your own, or else you’re going to end up copying someone else’s style. A lot of people tend to do that subconsciously. You can use references pictures to guide you with that. This tip is only if you’re starting from scratch. If you already have some sims lying around, I recommend to use your own sims as your base sim. That way, you can avoid accidentally copying someone else, and you’ll have your own style of sims that is unique to only you, that I believe every simmer has/should have eventually.

5) Don’t give up! I literally make, like, a minimum of half a dozen sims before I kinda like one of them. And that’s after 10 years of making sims for youtube and sims machinima (not just sims to play!). So, don’t be discouraged if you haven’t yet found your style, or if you’re not happy with the sims you make. Practice makes perfect, you’ll get there eventually. Just venture outside of your comfort zone, try things you haven’t yet tried, and be confident in the work you’ve had so far because you’ll only get better from here!

Hopefully, my WiFi will get better some time soon, and I’ll be able to make a speed CAS video. Until then, I hope these 5 tips help and feel free to ask me more questions or privately DM me if you need anything else!

#ask lati #latips

8 notes · View notes

sims2shrine · 5 years

Text

“This soulless game isn’t really ‘The Sims’ for me”

I am starting off this blog with a review for The Sims 3 from Amazon.com user Valentinegirl. Why The Sims 3 on a blog dedicated to The Sims 2, you ask? Because this review details just about everything about The Sims 2 that makes it so special and endearing. Whenever I come back to playing The Sims 2 after a long break, I like to re-read this review because it always excites and inspires me to play this game that I am so passionate about. Note that the opinions expressed in this review do not necessarily correlate with my own -- I do enjoy all of PC versions for the most part. I just believe that The Sims 2 is far superior to the others, hence why this blog was born.

“Like many of the other reviewers here, I have been a HUGE fan of The Sims franchises, losing many pleasant hours to The Sims 1 and its wonderful sequel The Sims 2. Even before The Sims came out I was a Maxis fan, playing games like Sim City and Sim Tower with pleasure. I can't say that The Sims 3 has ‘disappointed’ me because the more I heard about the new game over its development period the more I thought to myself ‘why are they including this feature or dropping that feature? It sounds like they are tampering with the heart of the things I enjoy about The Sims’. But I bought the game anyway in good faith. Needless to say I am now back to playing The Sims 2. The Sims 3 has no interest for me at all in comparison. Despite all the ‘improvements’ - and I admit there are some surface ones - the heart and soul of what The Sims means to me is absent from this game. Unlike other reviewers here, my negative review of this game is not due to any technical difficulties. Perhaps I haven't played long enough to experience any, and at any rate - every hard-core Sims fan has learned to live with the bugs shipped with the game and love it anyway. The modding community has always done a sterling job of cleaning up our games and making them more playable and enjoyable. So my negative rating is not due to bugs or crashes - it is purely based on my perception of the game's enjoyment factor, especially when compared to The Sims 2. To be fair, I will sum up what to me are improvements to the game compared to The Sims 2: - the ‘open neighbourhood’ - the ability to go from one place to the other without a loading screen is a fine idea and works well in principal. But I found that it really didn't impact my playing habits as much as you might think at first. While playing a large, busy family there would be very little time to go rushing off to the park or elsewhere and I found I was ‘household’ focussed in my game playing just as much as in The Sims 2. I actually prefer in some ways the way community lots worked in The Sims 2. If you could organise your sims enough to go off to a community lot, time would actually stand still in the meantime, taking the pressure off your enjoyment of this change in pace for your sims. - No doubt about it, the ‘Create a Style’ colour wheel/pattern maker is the one thing that is far superior to recolouring in The Sims 2. It's great fun and so easy to go through and match up clothing, furniture, wallpaper, etc in an obsessive fashion that suits my type of playing down to the ground. But even here is a caveat - there is no Body Shop type program to truly customise textures. You can recolour only which is hardly satisfying in a creative way compared to being able to extract a texture and import it into Photoshop, thereby putting your own personal stamp on the texture. For example, in The Sims 2 you could export a dress texture and by pasting on a texture of your own you could make the outfit appear to be a cardigan and skirt instead. I am sure custom content creators in time will come up with ways of importing new meshes/textures into The Sims 3, but it is obvious that EA is trying to limit this type of thing to the ‘regular’ user right from the beginning by eliminating a ‘Bodyshop’ program from their development tools. - The ease of angle rotation is an unmixed blessing in this game - something that I wish had happened in The Sims 2 - The outdoor scenery in The Sims 3 is gorgeous from the beach, the shimmering water, to the parks, rolling hills etc. But the limitations put on being able to make this neighbourhood your own again shows up the inflexibility built into this game. Whereas in The Sims 2 you could completely customise your neighbourhood, building it up from a terrain created in Sim City, to decorating it and laying out your lots etc, in this game, EA gives you this beautiful scenery and then severely limits your ability to customise it. You cannot create your own terrain, the community lot buildings are the same everywhere and are not even properly functional, and there are a limited number of lots for your houses. It feels like a ‘dumbed down’ version of a neighbourhood to me that even the ‘open plan’ of the game cannot make up for. - There are a lot more surface details to gameplay in The Sims 3 by the way of person and object interactions and the little missions/opportunities that pop up. I do appreciate the amount of thought that has gone into a lot of these things, like adding depth to the career paths and making such things as painting a picture personal to every different type of sim. But again, when playing a busy family (six kids!) I found that I would just click the opportunities away as an annoyance without even reading them. There was no way my busy mother or father could go running off to the town park for a chess tournament when they were caring for screaming toddlers at home! - The lighting of the new game is a nice update and beautiful. It is also flexible if you have the time or inclination to mess around with the many options provided So even the improvements included in The Sims 3 are mostly mixed blessings for me! Here are the things that have decided me against the game: - The sims themselves. Try as I might, I cannot bond with these weird looking people and that bond between the player and their ‘Simmies’ is the major factor that holds many Sims fans in thrall. For a start, these creations just don't look like sims to me. It is laughable that the creators of this game are claiming that the sculpting tools given to create a sim are more flexible and customisable than in The Sims 2! In fact the sliders are very limited in their scope and have less points of difference than those provided in ‘Bodyshop’. That round-faced, chinless look that we all noticed and wondered at in preview pictures of this game is there for the very specific reason that you can't provide your sim with a proper chin and all of them look blobby and quite fat in the face. The noses look like they are just stuck on anyhow and look very unfortunate in profile. And the empty-looking eyes roll in a very disconcerting and unappealing alien manner. The sims toddlers and children - one of my prime delights in The Sims 2 - all look very ugly and all look exactly the same. One couple I played had six children, just to check out the genetics and all of them looked like peas in a pod until they got to their adult years, and even then the differences were minimal. It was very unsatisfying spending so much time and energy raising these unappealing little clones! - Obviously, I have had trouble creating sims I like to look at. That wouldn't matter as much if I could love the way these sims act and interact. If you think back to The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 what charmed fans of these games was how cute, quirky, funny, unexpected and unique all these characters seemed to the player. I don't accept the criticism the developers of this new game kept stating that ‘all previous sims games had sims who were all the same and all they wanted to do all the time was go to the toilet!’ Well really - do they think The Sims 1 and 2 would have been such world-wide successes if this were actually true?? Of course not! Our sims charmed us, made us laugh, surprised us and often took their own little lives in their own hands and pulled the game in a direction all their own. The two things promised by The Sims 3 creators about how the new sims would behave were 1) There would be a lot more time to attend to the sims' lives and less need to run around after them caring for their basic ‘needs’ - such as sending them to the toilet or to bed; and 2) the new ‘traits’ system would ensure truly unique behaviour from the sims and open up entirely new vistas of personalities and interactions for sims fans to enjoy. I'm sorry to say, but I have to rebut both of these stated improvements. 1)I think every Sims 3 player, no matter how dedicated a fan they are will admit that you spend more time waiting for your sims to fulfil needs than ever before. You spend ages just watching them sleep every night. They seem to have bladder and hunger needs that are never satiated, and you spend more boring time staring at their work building while they are off at work. So between taking them to work, watching them sleep, fulfilling their needs and trying to skill up, there is actually zero time left in a sims' busy day to take them to the park, the beach or visit a neighbour! How is this the ‘new balance’ of life over needs that the developers were so proudly proclaiming?? 2) As for the ‘traits’ system - that has to be the biggest disappointment of all. Sure, picking different traits for your sims will give them some very superficial differences, such as different interaction possibilities with other sims, or different animations. but at a deeper level, each and every sim seems the same over and over again. I think the main reason I say this is if you watch a household full of sims who all supposedly have a unique set of traits, you don't see them acting differently unless you tell them to. In fact they barely interact with one another at all if you don't tell them to. They ignore one another and spend their time being boring - fulfilling the endless needs or perhaps using a skill object. They don't care to interact with one another at all! It is quite possible to have two sims living in the same house forever and they remain total strangers to one another. You have to force them to interact which I find really annoying - I had hoped that they might work out their own relationships as they did in The Sims 2. Another annoying thing is the lack of familial affection between sims. Unlike The Sims 2, you never see a parent hug, kiss or play with a child unless you tell them to. You just don't feel that these sims love/care about one another at all, and I remember that feeling that ‘love is real’ between sims being the primary and most striking point that charmed me when The Sims 2 came out. I am sorry to say, if I compare the depth of personality of a houseful of Sims 2 and 3 sims, the Sims 2 sims would win hands down. In Sims 2, they would take one another in like or dislike, be attracted to some and repulsed by others. The parents would hug their kids when they got home from work, and kiss them goodnight. Husbands and wives would find a quiet corner and canoodle in a very romantic way. In Sims 3 they all coldly ignore one another and act in boring and one-dimensional ways, totally uninfluenced by their so-called ‘unique traits’. This lack of true feeling for my sims and between the sims themselves is my primary reason for calling this latest instalment ‘soulless’. How can you feel attached to these ugly, alien-like people who all look and act the same? - I do not care for one of the key selling points of The Sims 3 - the so-called ‘story progression’. Which sim fan really wants to leave their playable family for a little while only to come back and find they've moved out of the neighbourhood, or had a family while you're not looking with kids you didn't get to name? Where is the appeal in that? Most sims fans love to micro-manage their sim's lives - who they love, marry, have kids with, what they name their kids, where they choose to live, etc. Even more frustrating, the ability to turn story progression off is broken!! Good one, EA!! Another one of my criticisms is that EA has written out some of the most enjoyable and endearing elements of The Sims 2. Eliminating these things really proves to me how little the developers of the game understood the things that true Sims fans love about their games. Here are some as an example: - Story mode is gone. Yes I know there is a camera and yes I know they have all this fancy equipment that enables you to easily upload stories and movies onto the web to share. But I bet 90% of Sims players are not all that interested in sharing stories on the world wide web. The Sims has always been a highly personal game - a fantasy world unique to each sims player, and making up and sharing sims stories is not the driving reason to play the game for most. It is to get lost in your own little self-created kingdom and fall in love with the little pixels that people it. In Sims 1 & 2, using the camera as I played and building up an album for each little family became a mainstay of my playing style over the years. Most of the time I would not even add text to the pictures. They would be safely stored in each family's little album and every once in a while I would choose to browse through this visual record of my sims' little lives and enjoy again the sentimental, surprising, funny little incidents that marked the passage of that family's life. I would record the unexpected or charming little things that made my sims seem unique, like when my prim little sim teenager fell in love with the neighbourhood ‘bad boy’ all on her own and against any of my expectations. Or when my shy, nerdy sim who lived with a party animal room-mate spent all her time in her room reading on the bed or, of all things - washing the windows! whenever her room-mate threw one of her wild parties! Not having this record at hand of the family's little story in Sims 3 is definitely a contributing factor to the feeling of the game having little forward progression - every day seems like the one before. - Eliminating memories from the Sims is another way EA has wiped out the sense you might have of the family's story and history. I know memories caused all sorts of trouble in The Sims 2 if you moved sims indiscriminately from one neighbourhood to the next, but I think for many of us, having that sim's little milestones recorded in their memories really gave the sim a feel of individuality and personal growth. After not playing a particular family for a long time the first thing I would do would be to flip through the family's album and check their memories. This would put me back in touch with where the family was in their own particular life story. - Another charming Sims 2 feature that was wiped out was the attraction system. I know the original Sims 2 game did not ship with this, but it was added early on in one of the expansion packs and I am sure every Sims 2 fan absolutely loved it. It was another way to differentiate sims from one another. You could create down to the finest detail two sims who you thought would be ‘perfect’ for each other, only to find they couldn't stand each other! Then two of the unlikeliest sims would get together all of their own accord, making you feel that these little people had minds and hearts of their own. I loved this feature so much that my playing style was to resolutely let each sim choose his or her own mate with no help from me. There are other reasons for me not to like this highly polished, highly superficial instalment of The Sims franchise. But in the end, it came down to these basic feelings about the game - I don't care how gorgeous it is to look at if the gameplay is shallow and boring - I feel like EA is really dumbing down long-time sims fans by trying to eliminate custom content, charging like a wounded bull for their sub-standard stuff and doing their best to stifle the creativity of the custom content community - The sims are cookie-cutter clones of one another, and have no charm either of physical appearance or personality. The life and soul has been sucked out of these pixel-people - There is no sense of story, no unexpected interactions, no story mode or memories to record the sims lives. They no longer care about one another at all - parents, children, lovers, room-mates, friends - it doesn't matter what relationship the sims have to one another, there is no desire for these people to interact or develop their relationships unless you force it. I am mad at EA for ‘missing the boat’ on this franchise upgrade. In fact, it no longer feels like The Sims at all to me. All the charm and spontaneity has gone out of the game. I suppose it's not surprising I feel this way - Will Wright and his unique Maxis team of developers are long gone and EA has taken over. EA have no idea, and do not care what made The Sims beloved of fans the world over and instead are forcing something on them that has only a surface relationship to previous games. Much in the same way they ‘improved’ Sim City out of all recognition of the original game (’Sim City Societies’), they have done this to The Sims and that, I think is unforgivable. Fortunately, The Sims 2 will always be here and I am gladly getting back to my cute, funny, irreverent, surprising little sims with the huge added bonus of all the expansion packs and custom content I have built up over the years. I doubt if I will ever come back to The Sims 3 even if they bring out boatloads of expansion packs. If the game has no soul, it cannot be loved.

This review was written on July 27th, 2009. Source: Amazon.com. Link to original review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RCEHMW5QIIA7B/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00166N6SA

#text post #long post #first post #amazon.com #the sims 2 #the sims 3 #amazon review

1 note · View note

strange-boolprop · 3 years

Note

I can't stand all of you sims 2 annoying snobbish players,you act like you're all superior mothefuckers, you're just hyprocrite losers,you wish Sims 2 had the same graphic quality as Sims 4 uh

I don't know where this angry attitude exactly comes from,but let me you,I did play Sims 4 in the past months,the cas is great and I love the detailed customization about clothes,shoes,hair and so on,the build and the buy mode are much more practical to use than ts2,so yeah I can agree with you about the graphics.

But what most players are simply annoyed about ts4 is the gameplay and the personality traits of sims (at least ts3 had better traits and didn't lack zodiac sign,the favourite color for example)

When I played sims 4,I used a lot of mods because the game alone feels empty to me,and unfortunately I'm not the only person who thinks that.

I never made a hate campaign against Sims 4 though,lol,people are still allowed to express their opinion anyway,and you shouldn't feel triggered that much by it,it's just a simulation game.

#anon #sims related

0 notes

junker-town · 3 years

Text

Fumble Dimension: We’re here to fix or ruin soccer, whichever comes first

In Part 1 of their latest project, Kofie and Jon explore the hit soccer simulator Football Manager and try to create the best and worst formations imaginable.

We hope you dig the video just above, which is Part 1 of our biggest Fumble Dimension adventure yet. Part 2 will be ready to roll in a few weeks. In the meantime, Kofie and I spent some time talking about Football Manager, our experience producing this episode, and some thoughts about video games at large.

Jon: Ever since we started Fumble Dimension last year, people have been asking us to make a soccer episode. Even before that, people had been asking me to make some kind of soccer video for years. I never did because I just have such a layperson’s understanding of soccer and didn’t feel qualified, so I think Fumble Dimension was the only type of show where that ever would have been possible. This way, I can play my complete lack of understanding of the sport for laughs.

Despite all the silliness, I actually learned a little about soccer through all the mad experiments we ran. From a nuts-and-bolts perspective, what do you appreciate most about the sport? How did screwing around with soccer differ from messing around with other sports?

Kofie: This was the hardest Fumble Dimension script to write because there was so much going on outside of the game. From the tactics, to the chemistry, to keeping up with all of the friendlies, FA Cup games and Carabao Cup games. I respect the fact that soccer truly seems like a year-round event. We went from July to March and I only stopped there because I needed to end the video. When our Premier League season’s ended, there were more friendlies on the schedule after it. Incredible.

Jon: You talked about it in the video, but I know people like complaining about EA, so let’s give the people what they want. Originally, we wanted to experiment using a game from the FIFA series, but those games just wouldn’t do what we wanted them to. Can you go a little more in-depth into what working with those games is like, and why they drove us to use Football Manager instead?

Kofie: When we came up with the idea for this video, I had my sights set on FIFA 20 (FIFA 21 and Football Manager 2021 weren’t out yet) because we had just done Out of the Park Baseball and I wanted to go back to a game with some dope graphics and funny facial expressions. However, for some reason, FIFA Manager mode wouldn’t let me spectate the games, which got rid of all of the possibilities for gathering footage. I took a look at PES 2020 also but settled on Football Manager because they seemed to have more extensive tactic and strategy options. At Fumble Dimension, we prioritize the potential for wackiness over how good a game’s graphics look, and Football Manager had the highest ceiling for it.

Jon: So you can spectate a game in a standard FIFA match but you CAN’T in manager mode, right?

Kofie: Yeah. Like in FIFA 20, you could spectate in quick play and not manager mode. From what I remember from FIFA 21 (which released midway through production of this video), the problem still occurred. You could sim games, but they would let you jump into matches mid-sim. When you jumped into matched mid-simulation, you still had to control a team.

That’s what I remember, at least. I uninstalled FIFA 21 on the same day I got it.

Jon: That’s such an easy fix, and it’s such a perfect representation of how EA Sports has lost touch with the people who play their games. I have lots of firsthand experience with the Madden series. They haven’t changed anything meaningful about the create-a-player in over a decade. Out of curiosity I recently looked up the create-a-player from Madden 05, I think it was, and compared it side-by-side with a YouTube walkthrough for the create-a-player in Madden 21. The options were all almost exactly the same. I mean, the teams behind Football Manager and Out of the Park Baseball are constantly adding and perfecting new features. They’re practically embedded with their gamers, constantly receiving feedback from their respective communities. Meanwhile, EA is a gigantic company charging $60 for their games every year. What’s their excuse, you know?

Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox. I think one thing people should understand about Fumble Dimension is how much research and experimentation it takes behind the scenes. Football Manager is a really complex game, and since you came into it with no experience, you had to take some time to really learn the nuts and bolts of how it worked. What would you say was the toughest, most tedious part of this project for you?

Kofie: The most tedious part for me was the fact that I felt like I couldn’t skip anything. Unlike OOTP Baseball, Football Manager’s main screen was the emails. There was a lot of tedious reading to see if there was anything worth putting in the video. Most of the time there wasn’t.

I will extend an olive branch, however. Football Manager gave us many options to help make the games go by quicker. I had the option to view “extended highlights” where they only show “important gameplay” like goals, set pieces and close calls. This was very helpful for me as I captured footage for over 60 games. If I watched all the games in real time it would have been over 5,400 minutes of potential footage to fit into a 90-minute video.

Jon: Even then, I hope everyone understands how much work that goes into that. I remember all the grinding and obsessive footage-capturing that went into Breaking Madden. While you’re producing the project, you don’t really know for sure what you’ll need and what you won’t, so you just have to grab all the footage you can and organize it as well as you can. But even that was nothing compared to a project like this. That’s why I kind of see Fumble Dimension as the final form of Breaking Madden. These experiments are just so much bigger and more ambitious.

One of my favorite parts of this entire first episode was listening to Kim talk about her experience with Football Manager. Specifically, she explains that it’s such a sophisticated game with so many moving parts that even some of the best players in the world can’t go undefeated in a season. There are just so many curveballs to navigate and no way you can reliably win out every single time, and that’s something I find REALLY interesting. In that way, Football Manager is almost more of a storytelling tool than a traditional “game.” It’s sort of like SimCity. It’s about the building more than it’s about the winning.

This actually leads me to a more philosophical question when it comes to games. As we’ve learned over the last few months, Football Manager is a superior game to FIFA in many meaningful ways, despite FIFA having a gigantic budget and incredible production values. We see games like Cyberpunk 2077 that are so large that they literally can’t even be made correctly. Do you think it’s possible that video games, or at least the big-budget ones, are on balance getting less good?

Kofie: I think that for a lot of big budget things, the lack of competition leads to complacency in the industry. Why should NBA 2K try to push boundaries when NBA Live can’t get their shit together? Why should Madden try hard when they have no competition? I spoke to a few friends last week and they talked about how NBA 2K18 broke them. I don’t look at these big yearly releases like I used to anymore because I don’t trust them. I also think that there are more and more indie and lower budget games worth my time. Look at Among Us and Fall Guys, simple games that take the world by storm because they’re FUN and don’t feel like they only want your money. Ghost of Tsushima is one of the best games I’ve ever seen. The only thing I ask is that games put effort into them. People ask for Fumble Dimensions of certain games, but if the game doesn’t have effort put into it then we can’t break it.

The Cyberpunk glitches are hilarious, though.

NOW is the time to actually buy cyberpunk, while the bugs are still hot and hilarious, not refund it! cherish this pic.twitter.com/CSEmyKmrQl

— Gene Park (@GenePark) December 17, 2020

Jon: Oh, these are so good. I will say that video game glitches are one of the purest forms of comedy. I’ve noticed that whenever video games actually try to be funny, through dialogue or parody or what have you, it almost always sucks. The accidental shit is a hundred times funnier than any quirky NPC could ever be. Maybe there’s a lesson in that. We don’t necessarily need the huge production values! We don‘t need you to exploit your workforce and make them work unreasonable hours to get these too-large games out on time!

Maybe y’all ought to pay attention instead to what people actually love in games. Maybe it’s not just about beating it, or about immersing yourself in a world. Maybe it’s about taking some kind of ownership in it. Building stuff. Creating stuff. Breaking stuff. If you’re inventive enough, you can give us a game in which we can sort of tell our own story. Don’t worry about making the graphics immersive. Often times, we don’t give a shit.

Anyway. Good talking as always, Kofie. You excited to drop Part 2?

Kofie: Absolutely. People might watch Part 1 and think that this is a pretty tame Fumble Dimension ... bless their hearts. They haven’t seen anything yet.

Jon: Oh Lord. The worst is yet to come. Guarantee it.

0 notes

entergamingxp · 4 years

Text

15 Upcoming Indie Games to Put On Your Radar in 2020

January 16, 2020 12:00 PM EST

2020 looks to be another great year for indie games. Here are 15 of them to keep an eye on as the year rolls on.

Last week, we gave you 10 2020 releases that you absolutely shouldn’t miss. However, that list mostly dealt with the biggest games of 2020. What about all the awesome games being made by smaller studios? Well, here’s the list for them. Below are 15 incredible-looking games coming from the indie scene in 2020.

Before we start, it’s important to note that with the continually growing indie space in games, there are hundreds of games that could easily make this list. I’ve capped the list at 15 mostly for my sanity, but the initial shortlist for this article was a mile long. Here are a few extra honorable mentions you should give a look: TemTem, Boyfriend Dungeon, Griftlands, Minute of Islands, Sable, Roki, Baldo, Garden Story, Ikenfell, Knuckle Sandwich, and She Dreams Elsewhere. I also chose to not include Axiom Verge 2, as that was already covered in last week’s article. Anyways, on to the list.

Lenna’s Inception

youtube

This Legend of Zelda-like from Bytten Studio is actually out this week. You play as an unlikely hero in a procedurally generated world that flips from 8- to 32-bit pixel art. It looks to turn the typical conventions of the genre on its head with a wild storyline that features multiple endings. You can also play the game with a friend in local co-op. A Link to the Past is my all-time favorite game, so any game that looks to iterate on that excellent formula is automatically something I’ll be paying attention to.

12 Minutes

youtube

Time loops are all the rage these days after the excellent Outer Wilds took the world by storm last year. Interestingly, 12 Minutes is another Annapurna-published game that explores the mind-bending concept. While Outer Wilds had you exploring an entire galaxy, 12 Minutes’ experience is a bit more intimate. As a husband trying to share a romantic evening with his wife, you’ll discover the many secrets taking place inside your apartment. On the surface, it might not sound like the most thrilling concept on this list, but everything I’ve seen has been very impressive.

Cook, Serve, Delicious 3

youtube

Before seeing this in action, I wasn’t really sure if the world needed another Cook, Serve, Delicious game. After all, how much more cooking, serving, and delciousing can a person reasonably expect to do? And then I saw that the game takes place in the post-apocalyptic US and you play as the owner of a food truck. As you travel across America, you must both cook food and fight off roving bands of evil cooks. It’s hard to imagine a cooking game with a better elevator pitch than this one.

Eastward

youtube

Earthbound-like games are a dime a dozen these days. The SNES classic made a major impact on the developers of today, and we’re seeing that love play out in games like LISA, Citizens of Earth, and, of course, Undertale. However, there’s something about Eastward’s style that really sticks out to me. While other games have done a great job of capturing Earthbound’s charm and gameplay, Eastward also nails the look. If I close my eyes and imagine what Earthbound would look like in 2020, Eastward isn’t far off. Hopefully, the team at Pixpil can nail everything else it’s going for just as well.

Sports Story

youtube

Golf Story is my favorite game for Nintendo Switch. Full stop. And now Sidebar Games is adding tennis and dungeons and espionage and buried treasure and a meeting with a queen? I need this game yesterday. If Golf Story wasn’t up your alley, this probably won’t be either, but for us beings of superior intellect, Sports Story is set to be one of the most exciting releases of 2020. I cannot wait.

The Red Lantern

youtube

The Red Lantern basically looks like FTL except instead of crossing the galaxy, you’re racing the Iditarod with a team of the best boys. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the book Stone Fox. So, a game that lets me play out the fantasy of racing Searchlight through the Alaskan wilderness is very much right up my alley. My only worry is how brutal the game looks. The trailer has a scene where a bear attacks one of your dogs and I really hated watching it. Hopefully, that’s a rarity or else this might just become an idea I love and not a game I play.

Spelunky 2

youtube

Spelunky remains one of the best rogue-likes on the market. The platforming is tight and the game has so many awesome secrets for you to discover. The sequel looks to be more of the same and I can’t wait to join the community in uncovering all the weirdness that lies within. This spot could also easily go to UFO 50, which is another Derek Yu project I’ve been waiting for with bated breath. Crazy to think both games are likely for 2020.

Spiritfarer

youtube

This is a resource management sim that is all about dying. You play as a ferrymaster to the deceased. As you craft your way across the world, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to improve your custom death ferry. Spiritfarer has a unique setting that is well worth a look. However, the thing that really made me pay attention is the game’s visuals. The hand-drawn art quickly catches the eye and seeing it in motion is even better. I’m intrigued to see if the game’s look and premise are matched by its quality.

Carrion

youtube

Spoiler alert for 2016’s Inside. Carrion is like that ending sequence where you play as the gigantic amorphous blob except that’s the entire game. Oh, and this blob is straight out of a horror movie and is very interested in eating everything. Publisher Devolver Digital describes it as “a reverse horror game” and I have to agree. The way the blob moves through the levels is both deeply unsettling and incredibly cool.

Hollow Knight: Silksong

youtube

Y’all remember how Hollow Knight is one of the best Metroidvania games of the last decade or so? Or how it was a perfect match for Nintendo Switch? Well, how would you feel if I told you Team Cherry was going to do more of that except even more polished? Great news! That’s what happening and it’s going to be great.

Ori and the Will of Wisps

youtube

If you are a fan of sequels to tough-as-nails platformers with Metroidvania elements, 2020 is going to be a great year. Getting both Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Hollow Knight: Silksong in the same year seems like an embarrassment of riches. Plus, Axiom Verge 2 is coming, which is a bit different, but still sits in that same realm. Personally, Ori is the one I’m least excited about; however, I can’t deny that this will probably be great.

Mineko’s Night Market

youtube

Mineko’s Night Market is maybe the cutest game on this list. The “adventure/merchant simulator” wears its Animal Crossing inspiration on its sleeve. However, developer Meowza Games aims to put a much bigger emphasis on narrative and crafting. You play as a young girl named Mineko who has arrived on an island filled with cats. Your options for what to do are varied, but discovering the game’s secrets and preparing for the weekly Night Market is paramount. Mineko’s Night Market looks like it could fill a similar space to games like Stardew Valley. Great experiences to sit back, relax, and let wash over you.

Cris Tales

youtube

Cris Tales is billed as “a love letter to classic JRPGs”, but with a big twist. The game lets you simultaneously see the past, present, and future of your actions, which results in some fascinating situations. Maybe you warp your enemy into the future to make them older and weaker. Or you warp yourself to the past to make you shorter and are able to more easily dodge an attack. It’s an innovative idea that has major gameplay and narrative implications. The best part about Cris Tales is that there is a demo out on Steam right now. So, if you’re interested, you can go check it out and see if this game is up your alley.

Murder by Numbers

youtube

Picross is one of the best types of puzzle games in video games. However, outside of Picross 3D, there haven’t been that many innovations in the genre. Murder by Numbers looks to change that by adding a murder mystery narrative to the game. What a perfect marriage! And the whole thing is set to a score from Masakazu Sugimori who counts Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Viewtiful Joe among their credits. I need this game now.

Emily is Away <3

youtube

Both games in the Emily is Away series are incredibly moving experiences, especially for those of us who grew up in the time of MSN Messenger and AIM. The third game takes the series forward to a Facebook analogue. It’s tough to say if this release will hit as hard as the first two, but given the pedigree, I’m pretty confident in saying that Emily is Away <3 will be worth your time.

Obviously, the number of video games releasing in 2020 is vast. It would be a herculean task to try and cover everything. However, this list should be a great reference point for games to put on your radar. Of course, the best indie game of 2020 might not even be announced yet, but you can rest assured that when it is, DualShockers will be there to cover it.

January 16, 2020 12:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/01/15-upcoming-indie-games-to-put-on-your-radar-in-2020/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=15-upcoming-indie-games-to-put-on-your-radar-in-2020

1 note · View note