#think of a loop with an additional thing added as like a reprise

[aparticularbandit]

so i'm gonna take a moment to talk about the composition of mr. monokuma after class (which for some reason is translated here as mr. monokuma's tutoring, but like. not gonna fight it), and i'm gonna do it in the least musical terms possible because i don't know - or don't remember! - what those terms are.

and like. there are two distinct themes/segments in the piece - the main theme, which it opens with and then repeats once (with variation), and then the second theme, which is kind of like a cool down segment that does a trick where you think it's going to end but then doesn't and goes right back to that double loop of the main theme.

etc.

and you could be tricked into thinking that it's literally just a double loop of the main theme because the change the second time through is subtle, but it's important.

roughly 50 seconds in (52, if i'm precise, maybe 51 if i didn't look quick enough), there's a strings section. it's all of two notes.

but for a song that otherwise feels like junko's out here throwing a party, that subtle, blink-and-you'll-miss-it section is very much not a party. it's a little minor tragedy.

the first time i caught it, i thought it was just there in the end, but no, it's there in the first bit of the theme, too.

and like, yes, you can make the argument that it's about the surrounding all the things and how tense they are, but like. mr. monokuma after class is the herald of monokuma himself. it is his theme more than it is anything else, which means it's just as much junko's theme.

and that little bit of bitter underlying the chaotic dance that is the rest of the song is a signifier of her frame of mind - of the mastermind's frame of mind underlying the chaotic dance that is monokuma.

and it is so important to me.

#musings #danganronpa #thh #junko enoshima #monokuma #playlist #ugh listen to the music you'll catch it in the second time through the main theme #it's not a double loop; it's the whole main theme #you THINK it's a double loop IT'S NOT #i just #i have very strong music feelings sometimes y'all and don't the words to like #express how this is important or why this is important #but when you get the same thing again and it's different that's important #like how reprises in musicals function #think of a loop with an additional thing added as like a reprise #the important thing is /what changed/ #and what does the thing that is changed convey #like in meant to be yours - heathers the musical - when jd switches from the weird not-quite-triplet to the triplet in the final time #through the chorus #that MEANS something #so when you get an addition like that in this #it means something! #-sighs- #i feel like i'm just that xkcd comic #ranting about hey mickey or whatever it was

[fuse2dx]

June '20

Trials of Mana

Maybe not the highest profile remake Square-Enix have put out in recent memory, but one that was pretty exciting for me. I played a fan translation of the Super Famicom original some 20 years ago, so while it's not particularly fresh in my head, there's just enough there to enjoy some infrequent little pangs of nostalgia. The move to 3D has made for some welcome changes to to combat - jumping adds a vertical element to combat that wasn't present before, and enemy specials being clearly telegraphed and avoidable puts a little more control in your hands. There's still a good amount of 16 bit jank though - combo timing feels unreliable, the camera's often a pain, there's plenty of questionable hit detection, and you definitely wouldn't want to leave your fate solely in the hands of your party's AI. Willing to put most of this aside, what actually mattered more to me was that it still had the kind of playful, breezy nature, it looks and plays nicely, and that it progresses at a nice clip. Party selection will change the way you fight moment-to-moment, but only provides minor and very brief deviance from the main storyline, most of which is the kind of schlocky cartoon villainy that will have you looking for a skip button before it would illicit any kind of emotional response. But you know what? Overall, I still enjoyed it a lot.

So while it may not be revolutionising the action RPG, what it does show is that Square-Enix is capable of acknowledging their history of previously untranslated works, and that they also now have a pretty good template for getting a B-tier remake of such titles out in a reasonable timeframe. Where do I send my wish list in to, team?

Sayonara Wild Hearts

As a one-liner found on the back of the box, 'A pop album video game' is about as on-the-nose as it gets. The old "it's not for everyone" adage is definitely applicable, and its defiance of traditional video game metrics is not in any way subtle. How sophisticated is the gameplay? Not particularly. How long is it? Not very. But how does it make you feel? Now you're talking. It presents a simple but deeply relatable story of a broken heart, and leads from there with a catchy tune into a fast and colourful onslaught of new ideas, perspectives, and concepts. That is to say: it has the potential to make you feel all kinds of things. 

One especially celebratory note was how well the game is structured to fit into the album structure it boasts about. Stages flow quickly into one another, and while shorter, more compounding numbers are often about introducing new ideas and themes, moving on to the next is a few simple button presses and a brief, well-hidden loading window away. Inevitably there are more standout stages, those that feel like the hit singles; the longer, verse-chorus-verse type joints that grant the space for more fleshed out visual story telling, and that smartly synchronise their percussive hits, soaring vocals and the like to appropriate beats of play. A lot of the gameplay can easily (and cynically) be reduced to "it's an endless runner", but to liken this to a cheap re-skin of a confirmed hit-maker is to wilfully dismiss so much of what it does better and so much beside. You can play it on damn near everything, and for the time it takes, it's well worth doing. 

Twinkle Star Sprites

I've meant to play this countless times before. I've almost certainly passed it by while strolling through arcades, the Saturn version has never been hoovered up into my collection, and the PS2 collection this particular version belongs to - ADK Damashii - is no longer a cheap addition to anyone's library. The digital version of it for PS4 however was however recently on sale at a point that saw me receive change from a fiver. David Dickinson would be proud.

Having now credit-fed my way through the game's brief arcade mode, there's no doubt in my mind that the nuance of its systems are going to be glossed over in this rather ham-fisted appraisal. At least at face value, there's plenty of character and charm to appreciate in its colourful and cutesy style. As a two-player, vertically split-screen title, its a pretty clean break from a lot of a shooter's typical characteristics - rather than 6(ish) stages of hell, its a series of one on one battles - and all the better suited to 2 players for it. As enemy waves come at you, taking them out in chains can generate attacks to the other player; however if these attacks are too small then it's entirely possible they'll be killed off again, and an even bigger attack will come straight back at you. Think of a bit like competitive Tetris, but with shooting rather than puzzling. It's a neat and curious little game, that's likely best experienced properly, with a friend on the other side of the sofa to hurl abuse at. 

Blasphemous

Let's get the lazy-but-effective description out of the way: it's a 2D MetroidVania Souls-like. You've got "that" type of map, definitely-not-bonfires and definitely-not-Estus Flasks. You are encouraged to return to your body upon death, the combat system is very reliant on parries and dodge-rolls, and there's even a dedicated "lore" button to use on every item you pick up. 

While this likely sounds dismissive, it's more about addressing the elephant in the room. To give some context, these are both types of games that I love, and the end product here has done a pretty good job of bringing them together. The exploration is pleasantly open - gatekeeping is typically done less by specific items and abilities, and more by just which areas you're brave enough to poke your head into. It's a little bit of a shame that most of the new abilities have to be switched out for others rather than adding to a core arsenal of moves, but at the same time its base setup gives you plenty of ways to deal with any number of combat scenarios. This is of course best demonstrated by the boss encounters, which are wonderful affairs - big, gruesome, thoughtful variations on approaches to combat, which drop in at a nice pace to keep you from ever getting too cocky. The theming in general is wonderful, and the name is certainly appropriate - there's a lot of deep catholic inspiration in its gorgeous backdrops and environments, but then layered on top are some chilling elements of religious iconography, along with a cast of disturbing devotees and martyrs to sufficiently unsettle you. It's arguably a small intersection of the gaming population that it'll appeal to, but if you're in there, it's a real treat.

Death Come True

The first thing you see upon starting is the game's central character breaking right through the fourth wall to tell you directly not to stream the game or to share anything that might spoil the story. The first rule of Death Come True, and so on. I consider myself fairly well versed in such etiquette, so to then have the screenshot function entirely disabled for the whole game felt a little like being given a slap on the wrists for a crime I had no intention of committing. I don't envy the team trying to market it, that's for sure. 

The reasoning behind this is clear at least - it's a game that is in total service of its plot. Consider a mash-up of a 'Choose your own adventure' book and a series of full-motion videos, and you're mostly there. Unless you were to walk away from the controller or perhaps fall asleep, there seems very little chance that your play time will deviate from the 3 hour estimate - which will certainly put some people off, but is understandable given the production values, and personally, quite welcome in the first place. In terms of replay value, there are branching paths that a single route will obviously skip: as an example of this, in looking up a screenshot to use in lieu of taking my own, I found a promotional image of the central cast, only to not recognise one of them at all. One thing that such a short run-time does ensure though, is that minute-for-minute, there's plenty of action; without wanting to speak about the story itself (rather than in fear of reprise for doing so, I might add), it kicks off with plenty of intrigue, shortly thereafter switching to full-on action, and then strikes a pretty fine balancing act between the two for its run time. It doesn't get quite as deep or as complex as I would've hoped given the team's pedigree, but I do like it, and think it'd actually be a pretty fun title to play with folks who normally don't concern themselves with games. By the same token, it's probably not for the 'hardcore' types looking for something to string out over dozens of hours. 

Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight 

After the generous main course that was Persona 5 Royal, I figured that I'd follow up with dessert. I did however wait until a weekend where I knew my girlfriend would be away, so as not to trigger any unpleasant flashbacks to looped battle themes, and the chirpy, indecipherable voices of Japanese schoolkids that made it so painful to endure as a non-gaming cohabitant.  

Immediately, it's clear that very little has changed since Persona 4's take on the rhythm action genre. The core game, while still functional and fairly enjoyable, hasn't changed a lick. Perhaps the most notable improvement to the package as a whole is in scaling back on a dedicated story mode, and instead just having a series of uninspired but far less time-consuming set of social link scenes that pad things out. The biggest flaw is repeated wholesale though, in that trying to stretch out noteworthy tracks from a single game's playlist into a dedicated music game leads to repetition - and there is a much less prolific gathering of artists involved in remixes this time. I'd be willing to wager that it's a very similar story once again with Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, but I'm not about to ruin a perfectly good dinner to start with the sweet just to find out, if you'll excuse a second outing of the metaphor. Still, again compare these to Theatrhythm though - where Square-Enix plundered the Final Fantasy series in its entirety, along with spin-offs and other standalone titles to put together a library of music worthy for the one single game. Cobble the tunes from Personas 3-5 together into one game, and you're still coming up very short by comparison.

#trials of mana #seiken densetsu 3 #sayonara wild hearts #twinkle star sprites #blasphemous #death come true #persona 5 dancing in starlight

[symbianosgames]

Chicago's own NetherRealm Studios is best known for its work on the long-running fighting game series Mortal Kombat, but in the space between Kombat outings the studio has also tried its hand at other projects.

One of those ventures, the 2013 DC Comics tie-in fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us,  seems to have done well enough for the studio that it's now poised to release a sequel next year. But Injustice 2 is interesting from a game developer's perspective because it takes an established fighting game chassis (based upon the Mortal Kombat games) and bolts on an item system that players can use to change the way their characters work.

In brief, players basically get loot drops at the end of every match that they can then choose to equip on characters in their roster (everyone from Aquaman to Wonder Woman), changing those characters' stats. It's not totally unheard for a fighting game to include items that change characters' stats (see Street Fighter x Tekken's "Gems" system) but it is rare, and notoriously tricky to pull off without upsetting the game's balance.

NetherRealm's Adam Urbano served as lead producer on the original Injustice, and he's reprising his role for the sequel. At E3 this week, Urbano chatted with Gamasutra a bit about why, exactly, NetherRealm is making another Injustice game and what he's learned about how to build a balanced, tournament-grade fighting game.

Why are you making Injustice 2? What shortcomings did you see in the first game?

Urbano: One of the things is, we wanted the game to be accessible. We wanted Injustice to be something casual people could jump in and play. Thats why you saw the environments and the interactions and a lot of the one-button things you could do that just looked powerful. Unfortunately, it's extra difficult in just the short amount of time in the [training] mode in Injustice to really get good at things. So the gear system is a fundamental redesign to address things like that.

The goal is that you start out with a much more accessible easier-to-play character, and then you're going to grow with that character, over weeks and weeks and weeks if you choose, giving you a chance to customize it and make it play the way you want it. Actually getting to learn how to play, as well. Instead of just presenting you with 26 or so completed characters from the start, this is 26 sort of...character templates, for players to take and turn into what they want.

That sounds incredibly tricky to balance.

You correctly identified the core issue: we've been working on it for years. Throughout development of Injustice 1, really, because that's when we started thinking about how to do this. So this has been in development for a long time. You can expect a sort of arena system, like you'd see in something like a MOBA, that will give players a chance to use the gear but still keep everything balanced.

So balancing really involves the modes, the gear itself, and then making sure the changes players can do with gear and acquiring specials and all that are balanced. To do that, we have a dedicated little team that focuses on the tournament crowd. Because we love them; it's part of our studio culture at this point. And it's really hard, it's our great challenge.

Wait, how did studying MOBA design influence this game's development?

I think MOBAs, RPGs, this is a game where we've looked at all the genres we love to play and tried to integrate the elements in a way that makes sense for a fighting game, for the first time.

How do you adapt those elements to a fighting game?

So, itemization. It became something that....we had to hire experts, and it's really a core piece of the game and a whole new skillset.

Let's circle back to the tournament crowd for a minute. What is it, do you think, that defines a tournament-grade fighting game?

I think it has to be easy to learn and take a lifetime to master. I know that's kind of a platitude, but for the most part it's...can I get in there, can I learn my specials, can I beat up on somebody, if I I'm new to the genre. And then as I go, can I learn some of the enhanced moves, things like footsies, and other advanced elements of the game that probably mean nothing to most people.

One of our goals is to get people to learn and understand that throughout their play experience, so that they can do those sorts of things. Because there are a ton of people that play our games that don't know it's there, and we spend years designing all these intricate details that are so fun once you get them. But we have to start teaching people that they're there. We have to give people progression.

How do you ease players into the deeper intricacies of your fighting game, as a developer?

So...it's time. Time is the variable we've never had before. We've tried training modes, as many have; we've tried many different things, as many other developers have. But we tend to be asking people to go into a separate mode, that's typically a short experience, to learn to play, and then we say "okay now here's the actual game."

So with Injustice 2 we'ev taken that time variable away and we're designing it so that people can play characters for weeks, through all sorts of different single-player and multiplayer experiences, and you'll progress. You'll be able to try out different things. You'll be able to spend the time that other genres give you to train, finally, in the fighting genre. Without the time, it's a very hard problem to bring players up speed on a decade of evolution in the fighting game genre.

Fair enough. What's one key piece of advice you'd give to fellow developers looking to build a great fighting game?

My generic answer is risk. One of the things that developers tend to do, as time passes, is assume things are the ways they need to be and never go back and rethink them. A good example of that is like, holding back to block in the first Injustice. It was unthinkable for us at the time; it seemed so weird for us!

Yeah, if you're coming from Mortal Kombat you're supposed to have a block button.

Right! And so that was a decision where we said okay we've done this forever, let's change it up. And that worked out, so on Injustice 2 we were like okay, anyone who makes assumptions on this team, you have to go take a time out and come back. Because everything is up for debate. So we started talking about things like back to block, that came up again, but also things like the new tech roll, how and why we wanted characters to evolve. Every single thing in a fighting game, we went back and said...do we have to have blocking? Do we have to have running? What do we have to have? And then we rebuilt from there.

That sounds like it could turn into a self-destructive loop at some point. Like, you have to eventually ask yourself what you're even making.

Yeah. Well, it is Injustice, to begin with. So we wanted to have similar gameplay: transitions, super moves, all those core elements. Because those are the things people loved, when we went back and looked at it.

But to be a fighting game, competitively, really what you need are: the basic attacks, two people one on one, with semi-equal health bars. And we did experiments from there. And at the end of the day we still loved how Injustice played, but we wanted to incorporate an entire new overarching system that kind of tweaks and pokes and changes all that basic stuff.

So if there really were no sacred cows during development, you must have been trying to distill the core elements of a fighting game. Why add in a whole new overarching system of gear?

The item system is essentially choice. In a fighting game, people always ask "what's the roster?" It's a valid question, but in this particular instance it's way more than that. There's the roster, but it's more than that: it's your roster. Batman could play a million different ways -- with some balance built into the overall equation -- so if you love Batman, you could just play Batman a million different ways, forever. Characters have completely different gear, different styles, different classes.

Seems like a handful of god-tier builds would bubble to the top. How do you keep players from clustering around a small number of optimal builds?

We have a balance team for that. We're also going to have a live team in place, and their job is to sit there throughout the lifespan of the game and do nothing but work with pro players, listen to the community, and make adjustments on the fly.

So we've actually increased the frequency with which we can update, even from what we could do with Mortal Kombat X, so we can make changes to these thousands and thousands of pieces of gear, the special abilities, and so forth. 

We're at a point now where microtransactions and post-launch DLC are an expected part of big-budget game design. How do you balance a gear-based fighting game, knowing you might add additional paid gear options down the road?

The idea is the game is going to have thousands, tens of thousands, of pieces of gear on disc at launch. The thing we've always done is try and get as much content as humanly possible, up until the last second we have to submit. So at this point, we're not even thinking about that sort of microtransaction DLC stuff. There's going to be enough content. There's stuff to level up, change your character, customize your build, for weeks and weeks and weeks.

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