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The elegance of movement in Silksong

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Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#331

Post by japhib »

M4v3R wrote: post #143
par wrote: post #15

Cute article but skong isn’t as hard as op makes it out to be. I wonder if he’s played any soulsborne games or even hollow knight. Git gud!!!

Silksong is objectively hard, and if you're trying to argue otherwise you're either the mythical "god gamer" or just trolling. The game is unapologetically hard and punishing right from the beginning. The very second boss you encounter already hits you for 2 masks (which effectively means 3 hits and you're dead), and each time you try to fight him you first have to run back for a minute before you reach him. He even…

But you can heal 3 masks of damage in about the same amount of time it takes to heal 1 mask in HK ...

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#332

Post by Balinares »

rkomorn wrote: post #321
Balinares wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Sun?!

The very same. XD Hope you've been okay, it's been a while!

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#333

Post by rimunroe »

mjr00 wrote: post #319
rimunroe wrote: post #315

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. > 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". > Th…

> 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".

I, in fact, did not miss that. If you look at that article, it references over 90 lists. By my count, a bit under half of the lists were written after the release of Hollow Knight. Of those lists, Hollow Knight appears in only seven of them, which is tied for the lowest number of appearances of any game in that list released in 2017 onward other than Baldur's Gate 3, which was released in the last year the list has entries for.

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

Eh, fewer than a fifth of lists with what appear to usually be 30-100 games each doesn't seem like good evidence of agreement to me. There are degrees of agreement, and I think "widely" implies a pretty high one.

I think GamingBolt having Hollow Knight on their 2022 list at #14, but then it being completely absent from their 2023 and 2024 lists is testimony of how silly these lists are in the first place.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#335

Post by pharrington »

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…

>How did it manage to do this? What's the formula?

The formula is making incredible art that you're passionate about, giving or selling it to alot of people, and getting lucky enough that word of mouth takes over from there. In other words, there is no formula.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#336

Post by ireadmevs »

bccdee wrote: post #259
zimpenfish wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 seque…

It’s not that bad, you are still able to control your position and nudge the spawned enemies away, and force the boss to kill these enemies for you. And even if you get cornered here and there there’s plenty of time and space in this fight to heal back.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#337

Post by pharrington »

rimunroe wrote: post #333
mjr00 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". > Th…

> 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". I, in fact, did not miss that. If you look at that article, it references over 90 lists. By my count, a bit under half of the lists were written after the release of Hollow Knight. Of those lists, Hollow Knight appears in…

Again, you don't have to believe the people who are sharing their sincere opinion, but A LOT of people regard Hollow Knight as one of the best games ever made. I'm one of the people. I grew up in the SNES era, and I think Hollow Knight is an all around better game than every SNES platformer I've played, including Super Metroid which it's directly comparable to.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#338

Post by rimunroe »

pharrington wrote: post #337
rimunroe wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". I, in fact, did not miss that. If you look at that article, it references over 90 lists. By my count, a bit under half of the lists were written after the release of Hollow Knight. Of those lists, Hollow Knight appears in…

Again, you don't have to believe the people who are sharing their sincere opinion, but A LOT of people regard Hollow Knight as one of the best games ever made. I'm one of the people. I grew up in the SNES era, and I think Hollow Knight is an all around better game than every SNES platformer I've played, including Super Metroid which it's directly comparable to.

> Again, you don't have to believe the people who are sharing their sincere opinion, but A LOT of people regard Hollow Knight as one of the best games ever made.

Why do you think I don't believe that? It's undeniably popular and was critically acclaimed. I never said it wasn't. What I did say was that that Wikipedia article didn't support your assertion that it was widely regarded as one of the best of all time. Just because there are many people who think it's one of the best doesn't mean that most people (or even a large percentage of them) think it is.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#339

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

mjr00 wrote: post #237
echelon wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

There is intense debate in the community to know if it should figure amongst the best of its genre (metroidvania).

It’s absolutely not in contention for best game of all time. It’s not even in the top 3 of its release year which includes Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, Horizon Zero Dawn, Persona 5, Cuphead and Divinity 2. To give but one point, the Game of the Year award went to BotW while Cuphead beat HK as best indie.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#340

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

crq-yml wrote: post #74
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…

Challenging fun is the kind that defers satisfaction to near the end of the process - so the more challenge there is, the more uneven the satisfaction is likely to be. It's the same satisfaction one experiences with language fluidity, and being able to "converse" with the mechanics. That is the cause of an essential problem in the design of such games: enjoying the game means becoming literate in what the game is doi…

I don’t think you can compare UFO50 and Silksong.

UFO50 is voluntarily retro and purposefully use poor design as a kind of homage to video game progress and as a way to foster nostalgia. Part of the pleasure is seeing the changes between the games pretending to be older and the newer ones. Plus, it’s pretty clear it wasn’t made with the idea that most players would finish all the games. Part of the pleasure is sampling the large collection, closing games you don’t like until you find one that sticks. UFO50 objectively contains games which are not that good next to real gems but it is particularly brillant as a collection. Plus independently of how it plays, it’s interesting in itself as a kind of experience. That’s indie at its best.

Silksong is supposed to be a modern game and excels at some parts but the issue is that some design decisions are just, well, bad. I agree with the person you are replying to that it’s not particularly respectful of its player’s time for exemple forcing you to grind and slog repeatedly through uninteresting parts to actually play the fun parts. This is notably something FromSoft entirely solved a long time ago. To me that’s entirely orthogonal to being difficult. It’s an enjoyable game but a flawed one which makes for a tarnished experience.

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