Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The elegance of movement in Silksong

theahura.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 358 posts

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#251

Post by BalinKing »

scrollaway wrote: post #158
rkomorn wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The older I get the more I find boss fights off putting. I get literally zero satisfaction out of learning whatever pattern you have to learn to perform whatever correct action, at the correct time, you need to defeat a particular boss. It's just a time consuming chore. Edit: the "boss" escape sequences in the Ori games were also entirely frustrating and and unsatisfying to me.

Your post could be reworded to talk about learning just any musical instrument.

I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end, which is enjoyable in its own right on top of the satisfaction of executing the technical challenge of playing it. A more akin analogy, in my opinion, would be “any musical instrument which has been artificially muted”—this could definitely still be fun, and indeed I’ve played my keyboard without sound before, but it really doesn’t compare.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#252

Post by BalinKing »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #25

Fluid & fun movement feels great and a lot of my favorite games have it - Doom, Hades, Ori, Celeste, Apex Legends, The Finals and more. To me it's an ingredient in a great game, not something necessarily unique to Silksong though.

Titanfall was one of my favorite games ever, largely because of the movement. (I even hated using the eponymous Titans, because they take away your ability to run on walls!)

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#253

Post by simoncion »

BalinKing wrote: post #251
scrollaway wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post could be reworded to talk about learning just any musical instrument.

I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end, which is enjoyable in its own right on top of the satisfaction of executing the technical challenge of playing it. A more akin analogy, in my opinion, would be “any musical instrument which has been artificially muted”—this could definitely still be fun, and indeed I’ve played my keyboard without sound before, but it really doesn’t compare.

> I disagree, because with an instrument you actually get music out at the end...

You've clearly never heard me playing my horns!

I never found the end result of all that practice to be rewarding (as the kids seem to say these days), [0] and -brother- I tried for years and years. So, I switched hobbies to video games and have a leisure-time activity that I like a lot more.

[0] Those unfortunate enough to be within earshot were usually fairly unimpressed with the result, so this isn't just me shittalking myself.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#254

Post by Groxx »

I'll just say: yes, I love the movement too. It's extremely good.

And I just got a speed upgrade (on top of the liquid speed upgrade) with the wanderer crest and it's too much and I love it. Every encounter is a mad flurry of damage on both sides, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it and it's a blast.

Very happy with my purchase. Every win feels earned, most deaths feel like my fault, which is exactly what I like in Souls-likes.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#255

Post by corimaith »

mjr00 wrote: post #250
OskarS wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the sequel to a game (Hollow Knight) which is widely regarded as one of the best of all time. I would say this is overstating it a bit. Hollow Knight was critically lauded, grew an intense fan-base, and often considered one of the best in its genre (the awkwardly named group of "metroidvanias"), but it's a bit much to say that it has the reputation of "one of the best of all time". It's not, like, Tetris or Su…

> I would say this is overstating it a bit. Hollow Knight was critically lauded, grew an intense fan-base, and often considered one of the best in it's genre (the awkwardly named group of "metrovanias"), but it's a bit much to say that it has the reputation of "one of the best of all time". It's not, like, Tetris or Super Mario World. You are welcome to your opinion, but it is literally on a Wikipedia page called "Li…

Hollow Knight was released when a greater portion of the mainstream was going into gaming so that was one of their first encounters of a "great game" hence the rave reviews. It's recency bias clouded by initial unfamiliarity of a genre's appeal that is misconstrued as a sole game's features.

If you ask people who more acquainted with metroidvanias it's not going to be topping their lists.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#257

Post by whalesalad »

BalinKing wrote: post #252
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #25

Fluid & fun movement feels great and a lot of my favorite games have it - Doom, Hades, Ori, Celeste, Apex Legends, The Finals and more. To me it's an ingredient in a great game, not something necessarily unique to Silksong though.

Titanfall was one of my favorite games ever, largely because of the movement. (I even hated using the eponymous Titans, because they take away your ability to run on walls!)

Titanfall 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games of all time. I'm still chasing that high. It's a shame that Respawn went all-in on Apex.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#258

Post by jheitmann »

echelon wrote: post #232
throw4847285 wrote: post #225

I guess somebody found a way to get the Silksong controversy onto Hackernews. Can't say I'm surprised. My take is, it's a good game and I'm enjoying it. I suspect the only reason it's generating so many takes is that it was so spectacularly overhyped that it cannot possibly live up to how much it has been built up. And that enthusiasm, which started within a specific niche fanbase, has spilled out onto the internet a…

I have no idea what this game is, and I'm pretty insulated from gaming news, culture, etc. The amount that this name, franchise, or whatever it is has been showing up on my feed is absurd. Reddit, YouTube, Google news, Hacker News. It's everywhere. What the heck is Silksong and why is it saturating the attention sphere? It's on my feed more than Trump and Ukraine and geopolitics and the latest AI fundraises. How did…

Sibling comments are giving good answers about Silksong in particular. But, a more general point to keep in mind is that gaming by revenue is an order of magnitude larger than movies. In that light it's a little strange that gaming news/events don't hit the general attention sphere more than they do.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#259

Post by bccdee »

zimpenfish wrote: post #176
TriangleEdge wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoilers: Silksong has arenas with 3 mobs that throw discs plus you. Idk about you, but I can't track 7 things moving at once. This isn't fun. Nor is it challenging, you just have to get lucky. I like Silksong, but the only way some the bosses were made challenging was because of constant adds. Hollow Knight rarely had this.

> you just have to get lucky. You can definitely learn and not have to rely on luck - watch a video of someone good playing a bullet hell shooter[0] and getting a perfect score with no hits. There is not a world that exists in which you could accomplish that with luck. [0] Touhou is probably the definitive example here. Something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY7QEEnSGVU

Bullet hell shooters are deterministic. Mob behaviour in Silksong is random. It is entirely possible for a boss in Silksong to spawn several mobs that all do inconvenient attacks at once, boxing you in.

Some of the optional bosses in Silksong (e.g. Savage Beastfly, mentioned in the article) do have that issue: high damage + high health + spawning mobs with uncoordinated random movement. It makes for a prolonged sequence which is ultimately unlearnable but must still be performed perfectly.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#260

Post by michaelsbradley »

OskarS wrote: post #247
mjr00 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the sequel to a game (Hollow Knight) which is widely regarded as one of the best of all time. It had a long seven-year development cycle, with "Silksong release announcement at (upcoming event)" becoming a meme, leaving people wondering if it would ever come out. Last month the developers randomly dropped a release trailer with "by the way it's coming out in 3 weeks". It came out and has been a hot topic because…

> It's the sequel to a game (Hollow Knight) which is widely regarded as one of the best of all time. I would say this is overstating it a bit. Hollow Knight was critically lauded, grew an intense fan-base, and often considered one of the best in its genre (the awkwardly named group of "metroidvanias"), but it's a bit much to say that it has the reputation of "one of the best of all time". It's not, like, Tetris or Su…

“metroidvania”, not “metro”
Post reply on HN