Child of Eden

[StriderKyo]

RAD

+1, that was fucking awesome, like Justice conducted by Philip Glass. I'd love to know what they were using (I know it's mostly just super overdriven/hypercompressed detuned sawtooths with some Q thrown in, but there's some other craziness going on).

[Razor Ramon]

Rez sucked the biggest of dicks.

[Destro777]

+1, that was fucking awesome, like Justice conducted by Philip Glass. I'd love to know what they were using (I know it's mostly just super overdriven/hypercompressed detuned sawtooths with some Q thrown in, but there's some other craziness going on).

The crazy thing is, that gantz graf vid is from 2002! Really cool stuff. Thats an official video but theres another one some fan made thats just as cool. I'll try looking for it.

[Frogacuda]

I think Rez actually has deeper gameplay than 99% of shmups, but people never get angry about those.

Challenging scoreplay and depth aren't really the same thing. Rez is pretty simple and there's not a lot of room for freestyling.

[MechDeus]

Rez is cool looking and sounding, and it's worth playing once or twice, but I can't call it a good game when Travelling mode could have replaced the main mode without anybody noticing. More of a toy, I guess? Without trying to make it sound like it's for children, I promise.

Sounds like someone never bothered to play Direct Assault. There is a huge difference between Trance and any of the chill modes, but since you have to beat the game like six times to get to that most people who aren't big fans will likely never experience it. Shame, really.

But then, anytime an experience game gets made the majority of the complaints seem to be it's terrible just because the threat of death tends to be fairly low, with complete disregard to how good the mechanics or flow actually are.

[MechDeus]

Challenging scoreplay and depth aren't really the same thing. Rez is pretty simple and there's not a lot of room for freestyling.

Like DDP amirite?

[Space Pirate Roberts]

Like DDP amirite?

?

[Tain]

But then, anytime an experience game gets made the majority of the complaints seem to be it's terrible just because the threat of death tends to be fairly low, with complete disregard to how good the mechanics or flow actually are.

Games with little room for failure are bad as games. They might be okay movies or music videos or digital toys or graphical chat rooms or construction kits or whatever ("experiences"), but they're weak games. And while there's no doubt that the focus of Rez during development was on the presentation, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Rez doesn't get comparison immunity simply because it's gorgeous; I can still compare how good it is as a game to how good Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon or Sin & Punishment 2 are as games. Way worse, slightly worse, and significantly worse, fwiw.

And while people are talking about 'em, exactly how good are the scoring mechanics in Rez? Scoring is pretty unappealing to me in most games, as it's usually clearly supplementary rather than the main focus (yes, even in arcade games), but even if this game were to not involve failure at all, isn't the scoring mostly hitting as many 8x shots as you can and making sure you get all the green items? I mean, that's not bad or anything (sounds roughly as complicated as Rayforce, system-wise), but is there anything else I'm missing?

[Frogacuda]

Like DDP amirite?

On the contrary, DDP is quite flexible. It takes memorization, but when I see high level plays, they're doing shit I never thought of. In Rez they're just doing the same shit as me better.

[MechDeus]

Games with little room for failure are bad as games.

Why? Planescape Torment is one of the best RPGs ever made but has less punishment to the player than Rez has, Sam & Max has no losing of any kind whatsoever and yet remains a good adventure game, etc. While you might enjoy many games simply because of a punishing death factor, that does not give any reason why games without such are automatically bad.

They might be okay movies or music videos or digital toys or graphical chat rooms or construction kits or whatever ("experiences"), but they're weak games.

Wouldn't games designed more around invoking emotions and ideas as opposed to using the same basic design of 8-bit action games but now with shiny 3D graphics be the very thing that helps to differentiate the media from just being digital toys? This starts to get into the can games be art debate, but most video games (like all the ones you mentioned in comparison to Rez) are digital toys. Sorry if that's somehow an upsetting thought.

Not to say Rez is an emotion-invoking piece of art, mind you.

On the contrary, DDP is quite flexible. It takes memorization, but when I see high level plays, they're doing shit I never thought of.

I recall there being a fairly set "best" path that gets used due to how the the rigid chaining system works, but you're right in that just playing for fun has no restrictions on where you should be going. Ikaruga is the same.