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The elegance of movement in Silksong

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Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#301

Post by bccdee »

npteljes wrote: post #223
rkomorn wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Although maybe I can't say my time is that precious because I'm somehow pretty happy to grind through hours of quests. Heck, I even seem to like job-like games (Hardspace Shipbreaker was amazing to me). I guess the "if you don't pass this, start over!" aspect of boss fights is the thing that irks me.

Yeah... you're right. Ultimately it's not that my time is precious, it's that I get no satisfaction of beating a boss. I hate how overpowered are with scripted stuff, for example, and how they break most game mechanics introduced so far. And so, my time spent seems to be wasted. Looking at how other people describe their experience, it seems like the figuring out part brings them joy. I usually have that with the cor…

> Looking at how other people describe their experience, it seems like the figuring out part brings them joy

It's the pleasure of mastery. To me, the fun of a challenge like that is in gradually mastering something difficult and then being able to perform it perfectly. In fact, I'm sometimes a bit disappointed by the way that a boss fight ends when you get it right. The feeling of getting it right is my reward for the work I've put in, and I want that feeling to be drawn out. This is why I don't mind dying and restarting, at least in a good boss fight. The experience of being in the fight feels good and only gets better. That's why these games are rewarding to replay. It's like you're playing the hits or something.

My favourite boss fights are from Sekiro—there's a nice little video about it here¹ if you're interested in what other people love so much about tough boss fights.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W4li9yfY3o

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#302

Post by Balinares »

rkomorn wrote: post #156
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.

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.

I had a sobering experience with one of the Hollow Knight optional bosses, Nightmare King Grimm.

After a few tries, and getting demolished in a few seconds by its relentless onslaught of attacks that span much of the screen, I realized that I'm simply too old and too slow to beat this boss. No regrets, I've had a great run -- my gaming life started back in the days of analog TV Pong "consoles". But my reflexes just aren't what they once were; and there was a boss simply beyond my physical capabilities. So it goes.

To Hollow Knight's eternal credit, I just kept at it because the fight was so engrossing. There was a borderline meditative quality to it. The speed, the relentlessness. The rhythm of it. Sometimes I would just not fight back, only dodge and see how long I could last.

One time, confusingly, the boss started doing a move I had never seen before. Bosses aren't supposed to do that, right? They've got patterns and phases, they don't spawn new moves out of nowhere.

Yeah, so that was its death animation. I won and I never even realized I was winning.

Later another DLC added a boss challenge area where you can re-fight Nightmare King Grimm with only one hit point. You get hit once, you lose.

It took me two or three tries, tops.

Hollow Knight will always remain very special to me for having a higher opinion of what I can achieve than I did myself, and proving to me it was right about it.

(EDIT: Oh hey didn't even notice your username. Hi dude!)

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#303

Post by ziml77 »

criddell wrote: post #207
glimshe wrote: post #136

I won't play action games without an easy mode anymore. I've beaten all Dark Souls games and I just got tired of proving myself over and over. Nowadays I just want mild challenge and the certainty I will win after trying a couple of times.

I want either an easy mode or just let me skip a boss battle after a few tries. There’s also an accessibility aspect to it. Accommodation for players who may have different physical capabilities is just the right thing to do.

I really appreciated that TUNIC had infinite stamina and infinite life options under the accessibility settings. I would not have completed the game without the infinite stamina. And that would have been unfortunate because the way the game unfolds is incredible. Such a cool design for a game.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#304

Post by vunderba »

mjr00 wrote: post #264
corimaith wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What Metroidvanias do you think are better? I've played a ton of Metroidvanias and I completely disagree. Hollow Knight has excellent combat and arguably the best map layout in any Metroidvania. The only Metroidvanias I consider its peers are Super Metroid and Rabi-Ribi.

While I wouldn't necessarily consider it better, the sequel to "Ori and the Blind Forest", "Ori and the Will of the Wisps" is easily on the same level as Hollow Knight.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#306

Post by mikepurvis »

andrewingram wrote: post #278
mikepurvis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding controls, I have to play precise 2D games with a d-pad or I get immediately frustrated— that said, it was odd playing most of Celeste that way and then having to switch back to the thumbstick for the section at the end with the bubble comets.

Precision platformers are generally _much_ easier with the d-pad. Since hitting some such parts in Silksong, I've exclusively switched over to it.

Yup, Hunter's March converted me to d-pad.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#307

Post by vunderba »

rimunroe wrote: post #269
mjr00 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Metroidvanias do you think are better? I've played a ton of Metroidvanias and I completely disagree. Hollow Knight has excellent combat and arguably the best map layout in any Metroidvania. The only Metroidvanias I consider its peers are Super Metroid and Rabi-Ribi.

Not the person you're replying to, but I personally preferred Ori and the Blind Forest a lot, both in terms of movement and story, but also in terms of the satisfaction of the backtracking and world as a whole. I felt like Hollow Knight did a poor job of nudging players in the right direction, and found the combat to be a bit more finicky than I care for from the genre. I'm not a huge fan of the art style either, at…

I was just gonna say this was one of the most annoying parts to the original hollow night - the environments kind of blurred together after a little while, and I found myself backtracking more than I would've liked.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#308

Post by vunderba »

rkomorn wrote: post #156
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.

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.

I grew up in the era of boss rush segments towards the end of a game to add filler and absolutely hated them.

FWIW, I'm also much bigger fan of difficult levels over difficult bosses.

I also think that the level of perceived difficulty depending on the player plays a large part in the enjoyment. When I play a video game, I'm also imagining that I'm actually that character so every death essentially means that I was defeated in that world for real.

I absolutely hate games where one of the win conditions is to be forced to die numerous times to discover an otherwise inscrutable pattern.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#309

Post by bccdee »

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.

A better analogy than music might be dance: The reward for dancing well is simply the feeling of dancing well. In a properly-designed game, the game feel of successfully completing the technical challenge is itself the reward. A dance that feels unpleasant probably won't be performed recreationally, and a game that doesn't feel fun to succeed at won't see much play.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#310

Post by green-salt »

pansa2 wrote: post #82
SyrupThinker wrote: post #53

A good example of how the experience of something can be so different between people. I also feel the need to write an article about it, but I'm not done yet... At the surface I had a similar experience to what the author describes. The movement feels good to me (until it doesn't), the game is appealing in style and gameplay concept, and I die frequently. But unlike them I dropped it after throwing myself at the exac…

> you are supposed to willingly explore the game world, you know, the core of a Metroidvania This is why I bounced off Hollow Knight despite enjoying similar games like Metroid, Ori etc. The “shade” system actively discourages exploration: when you die, the game wants you to go back to the same place over and over, instead of going a different way or trying something new.

I modded that mechanic out, it was infuriating.
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