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Post by Flip on Apr 13, 2008 18:23:42 GMT -5
I actually fell on the "Like" side of "Lukewarm" when it comes to Kingdom Hearts. My biggest problems with the series have already been highlighted by Trust the Fungus:
Otherwise they were fun games and it let me interact with Nightmare Before Christmas and Pirates of the Carribean more directly than ever before, and KH2 introduced me to the godliness that is Tron, king of all B-movies. So far as gameplay is concerned, KH1 felt too platformy (which KH2 resolved), and both main games have a few issues with too many controls and not enough buttons, but those are minor points I'm willing to overlook. I just don't care for the plot's involvement of "Hearts"...to me, that's an intangible concept that's far too wide to interpretation to drive an entire game's story, especially one as big as Kingdom Hearts.
Which brings me to my own gripe with the franchise: the overuse of metaphor. While metaphor is an important part of literature and storytelling, and I don't mind it in video games, the overabundance of it causes a story to become soggy and deteriorate. Basically, Square has a problem "holding it in," so to speak, and due to the stinky, messy, insufferable nature of this problem, I call it metaphor diarrhea, something I've mentioned a few times in the past. I wouldn't mind if the Heart metaphor in KH was used conservatively - for key plot points, you know - but instead the concept is shoved in our faces even in combat, where we face the result of a person having their Heart removed. It's irksome, and makes campy something that could be epic.
As for Final Fantasy, I'm more annoyed by the characters than the quality of the games themselves. I'll be the first to admit that I've never, not once, touched a Final Fantasy game; they're long and involved as JRPGs are supposed to be, and I'd rather not dedicate that sort of time to 'em. (The only ones I've ever fully invested myself into are Skies of Arcadia and Tales of Symphonia.) I can't pass judgement on the quality of any FF game. I have, however, become familiar with the "big" characters...Cloud, Sephiroth, Aeris, Squall, that lot. Back in the late nineties, the character archetypes they filled were unexplored territory, so far as video games were concerned: silent, emo badasses carrying big swords and occasionally having just a single angel wing because it's stylish. (Okay, not Aeris...she was more of a gunless, female, human version of Megaman X, who is likewise an insufferable peace-loving character.)
Now, these traits on their own - whatever, I could care less. But the fact that they're persistently popular despite the shallowness of their personalities is more than a mite irksome; combine this with the fact that, after several verbositally challenged sword-wielding emo badasses have come and gone in the past decade's worth of gaming, these characters haven't had an ounce of depth added to them makes them frustrating and intolerable.
So yeah, there's my tangent of the day. This is getting to be too habitual XD
EDiT: Sorry, Teev, It'd been a couple hours between me starting and finishing this post, so I didn't see your last response till after I'd posted this. Don't mean to drag it out any longer than necessary. XD Well, to be frank, those sorts of personalities have been the staple of Japanese animation for over two decades now. Another soulless medium, regardless. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2008 16:11:49 GMT -5
Anime is a beast, yeah. I'm very picky about what I watch of it because there's just so much tripe. So it doesn't really help my opinion that Cloud and Sephiroth had been spurned along by characters from Gundam or whatever.
CRAWWWWWLIIIIING IIIIIIIN MY SKIIIIIIN and etc. etc.
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Post by TV Eye on Apr 14, 2008 17:58:03 GMT -5
Urgh. I...hate...ANIME!!!
People see me draw, and they say "Do you like anime?"
NO!!!!!! FUCK!
Sorry to go off on that little tangent there, just anime pisses me the fuck off. Ever single one is exactly the same.
Except for FLCL. That show fuckin' rocks.
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Post by kirbychu on Apr 14, 2008 18:10:58 GMT -5
You're quite right, though. Every time I watch the Kirby anime, all I ever think is, "Man, this show is exactly the same as BLOOD+!"  |
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Post by TV Eye on Apr 14, 2008 21:03:58 GMT -5
You're quite right, though. Every time I watch the Kirby anime, all I ever think is, "Man, this show is exactly the same as BLOOD+!" Not a good comparison. Kirby's geared toward kids. Shin Chan's another good anime because it's freakin' awesome. Basically anything that doesn't follow the plotline of "I'm an outcast who has mysterious powers that I need to learn to control." And kids that wear Naruto headbands. That also pisses me off. You know what, I just feel like naming things that piss me off, ready? No? Okay. |
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Post by Dasher Misire on Apr 14, 2008 21:47:12 GMT -5
To me, SSE is one of the strongest points of the game. People nitpick. If you liked KSS, you're going to love the SSE. If you like Nintendo history coming together to fight a new evil (or just Nintendo history), you'll love it.
Great Maze is basically Great Cave Offensive 2. Otherwise the rest of the game reminds me of KSS' modes like Dynablade, Milkyway Wishes (there's an area that's just like Floria, the season changing doors planet), and of course RoMK.
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Post by Luke Groundwalker on Apr 14, 2008 23:56:48 GMT -5
Complaints about anime from people who've only seen mainstream stuff like NARUTU: SAND NINJAS and Bleach?
Wuuuut?
As a big anime/manga fan (as in, a big one, someone who's read probably around 500 different manga and favorites include Berserk and 20th Century Boys) I can confirm to many people that only a few anime out of the thousands out there actually have the Cloud or Sephiroth types. Yeah we see them in Naruto and other garbage anime but looking at the whole spectrum of every anime I've seen and manga I've seen...yeah, I hardly see 'em.
That may be because I stay away from the bad ones most of the time, though.
Enough of that rant, though, let's get back to Brawl.
My main complaints about the SSE isn't because I KNOW WHO'S BEHIND IT like someone said earlier. It's because the person behind it pretty much, as TEI puts it, puts metaphoric diarrhea in his work. And I don't mean that metaphors in stories that actually have a meaning relating to the character development, just the random metaphors that make you just go, "Uuuugh, that was stupid."
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Post by Fryguy64 on Apr 15, 2008 3:31:01 GMT -5
I dunno, I quite enjoyed watching all the characters with their different personalities coming together to fight a common enemy. And I especially love the dynamic between King Dedede and Kirby - usually at loggerheads, but always happy to see each other when fighting a true villain.
It's the small moments like those that overpower the massive story of world conquest. PT and Ness showing Lucas how to be brave. Peach making Fox a cup of tea to calm him down. Diddy physically forcing the Star Fox team to join the fight rather than go it alone (both hilarious moments). Dedede giving up his badge in order to save Peach/Zelda.
But surely, to allow so many characters from disparate backgrounds and allegiances to come together, only a massive story of defending the world from a devastating plot will work, right?
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Post by Spud on Apr 15, 2008 9:48:23 GMT -5
Defending the world from a devastating plot. I love this sentence for some reason. Yeah what were they going to do have Bowser be the main villain? And the main boss is a Butterfly Man (with a bellybutton?) how can you not just love seeing Mario and Sonic beat up on a butterfly man? |
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Post by Dasher Misire on Apr 15, 2008 15:20:13 GMT -5
What I love is Dedede basically realized he missed Kirby. And I'm considering these to be the real deals so Lucas might have gotten extra courage from Ness and Pokemon Trainer for the rest of Mother 3.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2008 16:24:03 GMT -5
Actually, I do have one more thing about the Subspace Emissary that I wasn't very happy with: a lack of branching paths. In the "Brawl Secrets" post a couple days ago on the Dojo, Sakurai mentions "at least three" different instances where the story splits to yield different results; unfortunately, there aren't any more than three, either, and none of them really affect the game's outcome or playstyle. Two of the three are just choosing who you play as in a one-on-one Brawl (Mario or Kirby at the beginning, then Meta Knight or Lucario partway through the game), and then the last one is you saving one princess from Petey Piranha; the first two only present one different (and very short) cutscene depending on your choice, while the second hardly affects the game at all but yields a substantial difference in how the story is told.
I would have loved more of the second type of branching paths, if only for the variation in cutscenes; I mean, you only ever played as the Kirby and Peach/Zelda team through one chapter, so it was pretty lacking either way. Being able to choose, say, between DK and Diddy Kong being turned into a Trophy by Bowser, or Ness or Lucas being captured by Wario, would have been neat, too. Would have added a little more gameplay value IMO.
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Post by Smashchu on Apr 16, 2008 18:40:44 GMT -5
My main complaints about the SSE isn't because I KNOW WHO'S BEHIND IT like someone said earlier. It's because the person behind it pretty much, as TEI puts it, puts metaphoric diarrhea in his work. And I don't mean that metaphors in stories that actually have a meaning relating to the character development, just the random metaphors that make you just go, "Uuuugh, that was stupid." Do you have an example? |
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Post by Fryguy64 on Apr 17, 2008 5:06:33 GMT -5
I'm going to come back to the trophies again, as I think this needs a better look. In 2001, the trophy mode led me to create Nintendo Database, as it was a showcase of characters from throughout Nintendo's history.
Now, clearly Melee had already done this, so all Brawl could have done was tie up any loose ends. Sure enough, a few of those loose ends were covered by Assist Trophies, such as Little Mac, but a lot of them were simply shifted to the much-less-impressive sticker mode.
So I've been thinking of ways they could have made the trophies more interesting, while using the same characters that appeared in Melee's trophy mode, if necessary. Partially inspired by the Final Smash trophies, why could they not have done "diorama" trophies, showcasing events in each character's history?
I mean, how cool would it have been to see a 3D fight over lava between Mario and Bowser, or the original confrontation between Link and Ganon? And it's not just the main characters! Bubbles being pursued by Boss Unira through a maze of turning posts, Balloon Fighter dodging the fish, and more recent examples such as a Pokemon Gym battle, or Jill attacking hordes of thugs with the Drill Dozer.
If the purpose behind the much-berated game demos was to show you where the characters come from, I don't see why the game couldn't have gone one better and shown us fully 3D scenes from these games. It seems to me to be the obvious step from Melee's static character profiles to move into more dynamic territory. A Tamagon trophy might get someone curious about Devil World, but seeing Tamagon being besieged by enemies in a maze by the Devil would surely make that person want to play it?
Just a thought.
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Post by Sqrt2 on Apr 17, 2008 9:05:23 GMT -5
That would have been brilliant. Really brilliant.
But I think it would probably take too much disk space for all the trophy's to be done this way... and it'd probably take a lot of time to code each trophy's 'scene'.
Maybe for SSB4 they'll go down this road, though...
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Post by Game Guru on Apr 17, 2008 10:24:37 GMT -5
Should I point out the contradiction of wanting dialogue in SSE and the hating the man who helped write it because he writes "metaphoric diarrhea"? Should I point out that the trophies and stickers this round were actually rounded up from in-game models and official artwork respectfully? Should I point out that Sakurai basically got Nomera BECAUSE he wrote Kingdom Hearts and wanted SSE to be the Kingdom Hearts of Nintendo?
If SSE had dialogue, we'd have our various metaphors about the Shadow Bugs being ones who fight without mercy or some such crap. In essence, telling the story with no words is indeed better than adding words to this story. About the only things we know about SSE is what is on the trophies and in the Story Summary on the Dojo. Everything else is left to interperatation.
Obviously if they are just going to use in-game models and artwork for trophies and stickers respectfully, then you obviously can't expect characters who've NEVER been in a 3D game to have a trophy, can you? Any character who got a model made for Brawl are either Fighters, Assist Trophies, Bosses, or enemies in the SSE and needed a 3D model. I'm a bit disappointed that Nintendo didn't get trophy models in Melee and added a bit more information to previous trophies.
It's like how people complain about Geno not being here, when Nintendo would need permission from Square Enix, or complaining that Nintendo hates Earthbound, when it could be that it is suffering from rights issues.
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