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It's been Mm picked so I'm sure a lot of people are aware of it, but I thought it deserved a thread. I'm not sure whether it should be in News and Media though, so mods please move it to Recommendations if I've made a bad move!
Anyway, here it is. I can't see one thing wrong with it in comparison to the original. Discuss!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvw1wsFmPHI
Maybe this should be in recommendations, but yup quite awesome.. I played that last night and was literally stunned.
It does indeed "look" perfect and has a really nice start screen....but there's something really wrong with how it plays. It's incredibly easy and just feels wrong...I cleared 5 boards and then quit out of boredom. Still impressive nonetheless, and totatlly deserving of the MM pick, but I didn't buy LBP2 to play inferior remakes of 20+ year old games...where's the creativity? I'd happily play the original pac-man, it's still fun, I'll never play this level again. I'm slightly horrified when I think about how much code and processing power is being used to recreate stuff a modern toaster wouldn't have difficulty emulating. :)
I was pretty stunned by how well it played - I probably couldn't do any better using the LBP2 tools - but I agree with Fullofwin.... it doesn't play quite right, and I did notice many times I just passed right through ghosts without dying.
HOWEVER, the difficulty does, in fact, kick up once you pass the first 6 or so boards. It should have probably kicked up difficulty a bit quicker to keep interest, but once the difficulty picked up I was having a jolly good time.
I wish people would use the tools to kick it up a notch. It's easy enough to create logic that there's no excuse for not making an experience BETTER than the original, or different enough to warrant a LBP2 version.
How does it compare to this?
Wow, Pac-Man is freakin' hardcore.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gui_Rike
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfxzR5nRw0c
Amazing creator skills...but where are this guy's ideas?
This is a waste of talent imho.
Why should I play this and not the original?
I feared that this would have been the destiny of LBP2, and my worst nightmare are coming true.
Really lack of innovative stuff, only copies of stuff...not everyone is a CCubbage or a L1ghtmare that understood the core of a game and deliver something fun of their own, but 1 to 1 copies are sad, well done, awesomely done, impressive, but sad.
In more than a month I can count no more than 15 levels that I really loved.
I don't think there's anything wrong in recreating old masterpieces. Obviously the game would be a nightmare if that's all it was. A healthy mix of both recreations and original content helps make the game become even more diverse and interesting in my opinion. I admit, investing this much time and effort into making something that's existed for decades is pretty loony. But loonies create some of the best stuff. :P
Like with everything else you it's easier to start with something that is already there. I very much doubt that Mozart composed symphonies when he first started and neither does anyone who learns to play the guitar for example. Start with Bridge over troubled water and then eventually once you know a few tricks you start creating your own things. It's not a waste of talent to recreate something. It would be a waste of talent if all you do is recreating stuff. In fact than you could argue that that person is not talented at all, but rather just good at copying other people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Leather-Monkey
How many people has their experiments locked on their own moon?Quote:
Originally Posted by Syroc
No one publishes every thing they do. You don't publish your perfect version of Bridge over troubled water on youtube.
If the purpose is just learning how to build, you can just do it for yourself, in the moment when you publish it you just want to showcase it.
And if you showcase something where you don't risk the judgement on your work, on your art, on your sweat, you basically only say: "Look how much I'm good!"
And I think, again, that MM is doing a bad job promoting these copies with MM picks instead of original works, because people will feel incouraged to copy.
I always hated copies in LBP1, all the Mario levels were just annoying when MrCowboyHat released the Oh!No series, I hate them more in LBP2.
I'm totally fine with remakes & @ what Syroc said: I agree. I wouldn't know 90% of what I know about logic & sackbots now if I hadn't tried to recreate Alucard. It was a huge challenge make a sackbot that controllable to that spec. I always add to it, and work on it every now and then like it's a car I'm restoring in the garage... or a model building hobby or whatever. I can apply everything I've learned and done on that bot to any bot I make. Now it's just a matter of deciding what any character I make for a project should be able to do.
So yeah... I like remakes, and original stuff, and remakes that become something different. I like the "idea" of remaking Symphony of the Nights levels, but I'd rather do like... a new adventure starring my favorite character.
@Omega... it does encourage lames to try and "cash in" and can mold people into thinking that's what they should be doing, but those kind of people are going to be making something terrible anyway, whether it's based on the latest MM pick, or based on nothing. I'd probably have picked this level too, but I'd also pick something original I might've found... like Alic's Knight level.
I have to agree with the majority, this level is just a copy of an ancient arcade that wasn't that impressive to me even when I played it 20 years ago. With all of the new possibilities of creativity, its unfortunate that levels like this are the ones being seen on the main page...
This is the same stuff people on here said about me, Jaeyden, gevurah & the rest of the team when we put out Contra. I can't even count how many game boards and video comments I read where people responding said we were a bunch of talentless hacks who can't make anything original, and that LBP was only good for bad remakes.
I complain about levels not getting played and MM not recognizing quality more than anybody, but I never want anyone to have their recognition revoked... it's not like recognition and plays is a scarce, finite natural resource that we have to drill a hole in the ground to get with only so much to go around by nature... just by design.
I agree with what most of you are saying. If I wanted to play something that was exactly like Pac-Man then I would go and play Pac-Man. Really the only reason people care about Pac-Man is because it's one of the classics, but I think it's one of the most boring and annoying games I've ever played. There's hundreds of things the creator could do to make something better or different than the original, and I'd much rather see that. Even if it's just an LBP twist or a theme change.
Unfortunately I think there's too many people who would criticize a Pac-Man level if it wasn't the same as the original. Even though it may be 1000 times better, the community will mostly only ever be interested in something exactly the same. :(
To be fair, I believe those Contra levels are just a bit more complex than pac man ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by NinjaMicWZ
I'm a bit torn on this..... when I built Vectroids in the beta, it was.... asteroids. I thought it was pretty cool. But, when rebuilding it for the release I started to think "it's pretty easy to build an asteroids game in LBP2 (well, at least FAR easier than coding it). Maybe I should build it WAY better than asteroids, change the physics, and throw the kitchen sink at them." So far, it's seemed to work. I've seen the same people playing it hundreds of times.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nuclearfish
I would STRONGLY suggest anyone who can emulate a classic arcade game.... make it faster, more exciting.... update the graphics and the special effects. And if a mechanic can't be duplicated exactly in LBP2, replace it with something that WILL work in LBP2 so it doesn't seem LESS than the original game. If people see some of these games kicking tushy on the original games, it would really inspire them to spend the bit of extra time.
Where the Contra levels were concerned, what I liked about them is they took the basic MAP of the classic games, but each level took on the personality of the separate creators. Each level had a COMPLETELY different feeling than the original game it was copying. I've played through the entire Contra series 3-4 times. The first one has a classic look, but then you get to Ninja's, Jaeyden's, Gevurah22's.... all of those have a basic look of the original, but are really their own creations.
I'm going to stand up for PacMan as an MM pick, however.... I think just seeing this being done will inspire people. I agree that there are some fantastic levels out there that have not been MM picked, but it seems MM is trying to inspire people to push the tools to create non-platforming games and showcase what LBP2 is capable of... showing this kind of creation is definately the way to do it.
Maybe criticize wasn't the right word to use. But I think it would be interesting if you were to publish two levels at the same time - Vectroids and an exact Asteroids remake. Even though I'm sure Vectroids would be better, I'd expect Asteroids to get a LOT more plays. Even if you named them both Asteroids.Quote:
Originally Posted by CCubbage
I dunno... I hate the old Contra levels now, because they're so dated and I'd love to remake them (for the 3rd time). It'd take me a week or so to make a perfect bot & power ups, but probably only a day or two to make one of the levels, because remapping the layout is easy, and bosses, vehicles, objects and enemies are in my skillset.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bender
It's actually pretty annoying trying to get any controllable, smooth grid movement and follower logic to work with anything that's got more than 4 walls, even if he doesn't have the scatter & enemy following, or difficulty settings down. I think this guy deserves props for making it work with a pretty impeccable presentation. I could probably make this now that I talked it over with other creators and saw he was using a skinny follower radius to point a Pac-Man that never stops moving to select tag-walls he can't breach only at key junctions... but I probably wouldn't have thought of it on my own without going nuts for a week or two. I'm sure this guy pulled his hair out a few times to build this, since just grid movers by themselves were all breakable or convoluted til shiwayari posted his copyable grid mover, and that's an object demo that's really only known on LBPC.
Though it probably would have been more impressive for him to make a grid moving dungeon crawler with all kinds of original scenery and enemies, any original content he might have made wouldn't be impressive at all without the control and navigation logic he perfected here for the recreation: gameplay progression. I'm more impressed by the work that went into this than I am by many of the all-original, ambiguous ideas I've seen with questionable gameplay and very unpolished interfaces & execution.
They don't see anything unless it gets to the front of cool levels, or if someone they know tells them to play it.Quote:
i'm wondering who picks these really? Haven't they seen all of the awesome levels that have been made in lbp2?
I'm sure a Sack-Man would seem more original, and tons of little things could have been altered, but have you ever played any of the hundreds of games Namco's made where they try to revitalize, update or change what Pac-Man is? They were all terrible, while the original Pac-Man is still unblemished in it's simplicity and authenticity when re-released or used as a bonus game for a Namco release. If a professional developer like Namco can't make an original version of Pac-Man or Pac-Man with a twist, or improve on the original without ruining it, how can some random guy on LBP be expected to do it? If he's going to do something that's not Pac-Man, why do Pac-Man at all?Quote:
Originally Posted by Nuclearfish
I do think Vectroids is better, though. Better execution, an improvement, and more original... but not being as good as the best doesn't mean it's the worst.
You are absolutely right. I'm not referring as much to popularity as replayability. I named it "Vectroids" specifically in order to get less plays... but more quality plays. It's working - my level has less plays than just about any on the MM picks, but has also retained a happy audience.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nuclearfish
If I had tried to build Asteroids, I wouldn't have liked it as much.... I'm not a big fan of asteroids. I changed the things I DIDN'T like about asteroids and made it something I enjoy. Which means more to me than popularity.
In the end, I suppose it all comes down to what your goals are. Are you trying to please 100,000 people who treat levels as 1-time-play-then-move-on experience or are you trying to give less people a greater experience if they invest the time? It seems for the most part in LBP, it's a choice that needs to be made.
We hope so anyways. Copying classics in LBP has always been the "easy" path to plays and hearts. I still loathe the mario recreations from LBP1, since they in no way matched the quality or fun of the originals. If you're going to remake something, you need to do it in a flashier way - and this is not as easy as it sounds.Quote:
Originally Posted by CCubbage
Bingo. However I've noticed that you can also drop a solid level in their lap and they won't even blink at it. For all of the retro recreations that are making MM Picks, it's still luck based. I did manage to get Tom to play my version of Missile Command, but couldn't even get a Yay rating out of him over 3 plays. Go figure.Quote:
Originally Posted by NinjaMicWZ