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The elegance of movement in Silksong

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Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#311

Post by mjr00 »

rimunroe wrote: post #292
mjr00 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That article doesn't include any ranking as far as I could see, and your use of that article is specifically the thing I'm taking issue with in this thread. Are you referring to a different source? There are 23 entries since 2015 on that page, Hollow Knight included. By definition, it's one of the best 23 games during that period, according to that specific list. > I think when you ask people to come up with a list…

> There are 23 entries since 2015 on that page, Hollow Knight included. By definition, it's one of the best 23 games during that period, according to that specific list. Okay, but that's an argument that it's considered one of the best games of the last decade. Hopefully you can understand my confusion. > It sounds like you're making up bizarre exclusionary criteria to discount the fact that Hollow Knight is widely r…

I feel like you're being pedantic here and transforming the statement "X is one of the best of all time" into "X is one of the top N of all time", where N is a number you've arbitrarily picked to exclude X. To go back to sports analogies, this entire comment thread has been analogous to:

Person: "Who was Kobe Bryant, why does anyone care that he died?"

Me: "He was one of the best basketball players of all time."

You: "No he wasn't. Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson, and LeBron James are better."

Like, yeah your statement may be true. I, too, can pick N such that Hollow Knight is not in my top N games, because it's not my #1 all-time favorite game[0]. However, in the context of "why does anyone care about the sequel to Hollow Knight?" it's fair to say that many people consider it one of the best games of all time. It doesn't really matter that you, personally, may rank it behind 10, 15, or even 50 games.

[0] That title belongs to Doom 2.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#312

Post by ziml77 »

slightwinder wrote: post #165
sfn42 wrote: post #11

> You could play Silksong's predecessor, Hollow Knight, and not be all that good at it. Hollow Knight was a tough game, but I think you could get through it and fall in love with the environmental story telling and the lore and the music and characters. Silksong has all of this in spades, too, but it is so damn hard that you will not be able to access any of it unless you are willing to put in some serious effort. As…

> If you went to Hunter's March as soon as you found it you probably had a bad time but going in there later on was honestly pretty easy. That's probably a significant part, too. Silksong is more open than HK, where the lack of abilities put a natural wall around the areas which are too hard at that point of time. But in SK you can easily stumble into areas where you are not supposed to be, which can be frustrating.

What's also frustrating is not knowing if I've walked into an area that is hard because I'm not really supposed to be there yet or if it's hard because I'm just trash at the game. I ran in circles for way too long at the start of the game because I kept thinking I was going the wrong way due to entering a different named zone without finding any objective in the first zone and also due to the enemies in that new zone feeling awkward to fight, like I was missing an ability.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#313

Post by mjr00 »

vunderba wrote: post #304
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.

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.

Ori + its sequel are not on the same level as HK, in my opinion. The combat in the original is really bad/way too easy, and the exploration is just okay. The sequel drastically improved the combat, but the map is significantly worse; it's essentially just a "hub and spoke" where you go to one of 4 (IIRC) separate disconnected areas, grab the powerup which does more or less nothing in the other areas, use it to finish the area and beat the boss, rinse and repeat until the finale.

That being said, they are still very good games; excellent atmosphere, artwork and presentation, some genuinely haunting, creepy, and awe-inspiring areas. But I think Hollow Knight is a tier above them.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#314

Post by swiftcoder »

zeta0134 wrote: post #88
vunderba wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game". Games are supposed to be fun [...] I haven't played Silksong yet and I know difficulty is rather subjective, but is it really that difficult compared to the realm of punishing platformers like NES Ninja Gaiden, Cuphead, Spelunky 2, the dark world portions of Super Meat Boy, etc? I played the fi…

Silksong starts very difficult compared to Hollow Knight, largely because there are many early foes that will deal 2 masks of damage. Those sorts of big attacks were generally reserved for mid to late bosses in Hollow Knight, and it caught even skilled players off guard. Hornet has a lot of mobility though, and a much easier time dodging out of the way, so once you adapt to her playstyle (be patient, dodge, and punis…

The other big difference, I think, is that Hollow Knight starts you out with a very straightforward downward attack that you can use as a pogo to mitigate a lot of damage/environmental hazards.

Hornet's 45º downwards attacks are significantly harder to aim/time, and pogo chains (where they are even possible) take a lot of practice

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#315

Post by rimunroe »

mjr00 wrote: post #311
rimunroe wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are 23 entries since 2015 on that page, Hollow Knight included. By definition, it's one of the best 23 games during that period, according to that specific list. Okay, but that's an argument that it's considered one of the best games of the last decade. Hopefully you can understand my confusion. > It sounds like you're making up bizarre exclusionary criteria to discount the fact that Hollow Knight is widely r…

I feel like you're being pedantic here and transforming the statement "X is one of the best of all time" into "X is one of the top N of all time", where N is a number you've arbitrarily picked to exclude X. To go back to sports analogies, this entire comment thread has been analogous to: Person: "Who was Kobe Bryant, why does anyone care that he died?" Me: "He was one of the best basketball players of all time." You:…

> I feel like you're being pedantic here and transforming the statement "X is one of the best of all time" into "X is one of the top N of all time", where N is a number you've arbitrarily picked to exclude X.

> Like, yeah your statement may be true. I, too, can pick N such that Hollow Knight is not in my top N games

A) I haven't chosen a specific number. I've even been deliberately hazy about the range because that's how I hear most people discuss their "best ofs" and favorites.

B) As per my previous message I wish you'd stop acting like I'm fabricating this argument just to exclude Hollow Knight. My objection is with your reasoning. I've tried to be as clear as possible about this.

C) You have to bound your category of what qualifies as "the best" somehow, even roughly, because otherwise the term loses what little meaning it had in the first place. I tried to make this point earlier, though maybe I didn't do it well enough:

>> I'm willing to argue that judging something as being "one of the best" because it's in a list of a hundred things isn't very different from saying something is one of the best because it's in a list of a thousand things. I think most people--critics included--don't rank things in such large numbers, and as the numbers get larger then what little meaning the term had to start with diminishes even further.

If you want to say it's widely considered one of the best of all time, that implies some very large percentage of the general public or critics would say "I think X[0] is one of the best games of all time". If you asked a random person to list which games they personally believed to be the best games, they'd probably only come up with a handful. I think that list is probably a decent predictor of what people would respond with if you asked them for the best game in a specific year, but that it would do a much worse job of predicting agreement across all time.

[0] you can take this to mean either an arbitrary game or the Egosoft one :p

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#316

Post by swiftcoder »

buellerbueller wrote: post #280
criddell wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does James Joyce's Ulysses need an easy mode too?

sparknotes exists for a reason

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#317

Post by swiftcoder »

quchen wrote: post #208
whatevaa wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mods already exists which can make game more forgiving. Limiting damage to one is great start. Don't be ashamed to use them on Silksong, developers went hardcore for this one.

I aborted my 3 Hollow Knight attempts because of boss runbacks. Is there a mod that, I don’t know, adds benches before bosses or something? Then I might finally finish the game. I do enjoy hard-but-fair boss fights after all.

So far Silksong seems to be much better about placing benches near to bosses than Hollow Knight was

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#318

Post by [deleted] »

vunderba wrote: post #307
rimunroe wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#319

Post by mjr00 »

rimunroe wrote: post #315
mjr00 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you're being pedantic here and transforming the statement "X is one of the best of all time" into "X is one of the top N of all time", where N is a number you've arbitrarily picked to exclude X. To go back to sports analogies, this entire comment thread has been analogous to: Person: "Who was Kobe Bryant, why does anyone care that he died?" Me: "He was one of the best basketball players of all time." You:…

> I feel like you're being pedantic here and transforming the statement "X is one of the best of all time" into "X is one of the top N of all time", where N is a number you've arbitrarily picked to exclude X. > Like, yeah your statement may be true. I, too, can pick N such that Hollow Knight is not in my top N games A) I haven't chosen a specific number. I've even been deliberately hazy about the range because that's…

> I think that list is probably a decent predictor of what people would respond with if you asked them for the best game in a specific year, but that it would do a much worse job of predicting agreement across all time.

You must have missed the criteria for inclusion that list, which states that games are only eligible if they appear on "all time" best lists, e.g. not just "Best Game of 2017" or "Best PC Games".

> The games are included on at least six separate best-of lists from different publications (inclusive of all time periods, platforms and genres), as chosen by their editorial staff.

i.e. there already is agreement across all time.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#320

Post by swiftcoder »

frisia wrote: post #171
Gigachad wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had multiple friends insist that I absolutely have to play this game. But I just know I won’t like it because I don’t like any of the other games that are like it. This game seems to be the labubu of gamers in terms of social media hysterics.

I would recommend giving Hollow Knight a try, I think it has very good accesibility and I know many people who typically don't like these kind of games that did find Hollow Knight enjoyable. Silksong is a beast though, I love it but very few people I would actually recommend this game to.

Hollow Knight also has a robust ecosystem of mods these days, which gives you a lot of scope to tune the difficulty to where you are comfortable with it.
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