Suda 51 Comments by Oli Welsh
"One day, I want to be able to throw pants."
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Comments: 1-40 of 40 in total
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NumberNone
17/10/08 @ 06:57
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Killer 7 was my favourite game last gen along with Shadow of The Colossus. So many great moments, but of them all the one that makes me smile most has to be the prehensile Afro haircut boss fight. Oh and the board room brain boss fight. Oh and the mental cut scenes. I could go on all day.......think I'll go play my Cube copy on my Wii instead :)
NMH2 is on my must buy list :) |
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How can the sales of NMH have been any good though? No one bought it. Even lots of his fans didn't buy it because the European version was so ruined by excessive self-censorship.
Really, unless he includes a "restored" version of the original NMH in the pack with NMH2 I see no reason to bother with a sequel. |
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kinky_mong
17/10/08 @ 10:49
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I borrowed NMH from a friend last week.
It is not fun (IMO) The two parts of the game (GTA style sections and hack 'n slash sections) don't gel together. The GTA section is bland and there's no real interaction with anything. It's just a convoluted way to get between the jobs and missions with a few hidden T-shirts to make it seem worthwhile. The main mission sections boil down to bashing A and performing a Quick-time waggle to finish off the enemies, with dodging and more quick-time wrestling moves as a completely unnecessary extra for the minions. Then come the bosses which involve a bit more of the same but with repetitive grinding of their health with dodging actually being necessary. I got to the Rank 8 boss and after repeated efforts of slowly beating her down to a quarter of her health, each time she pulled out a one hit kill move which has a tiny dodge window. I gave up because nothing else the game had shown seemed worth the effort. I didn't think much of Killer 7 either. I trawled through the game and when it finally got to a point where I was enjoying it it killed off all the different identities and makes the last level a matter of holding A to go from one cutscene to the next detailing a storyline that I'd long ago gave up trying to fathom. I'd also like to draw attention to the fact he feels NMH2 wouldn't work on the 360. The only motion controls in the game are pretty much quick time events that could easily be replaced with button prompts. |
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Where's the fun in mashing a button to do a wrestling move? It is just as stupid as waggling the remote to jump.
I like how the quicktime moves adds a rythm to the game rather than just a "match the icon with a button" Mash A Mash A Mash A Whack controller Right wait Repeat whack for triangle kill. Each to her own I guess. |
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Actually, No More Heroes' combat is probably a great example of the difference between eastern and western pihlosphies in designing combat systems. Teh Force Unleashed, for example has an expansive combat system, tons of combos that you can learn that involve learning the time between two button presses and combinations of a bunch of buttons on a controller. It also has momentum-breaking quick time events that detract from the experience. Also, combat doesn't look particularly cool or flashy unless you're using force powers. Opposed to it you have NMH which has slick, fantastically stylish combat, only two button to care about and yet manages not to devolve itself to the level of a simple button masher. The numerous thngs you can take care of during combat (stance, blocking, evasion, grappling, finishes) are all naturally absorbed in your muscle memory after a few minutes (with perhaps the exception of evasion thattakes more time due to controls for it being placed on the d-pad) and the clever combination of two well positioned buttons and motion sensing ensures you have a very comfortable time fighting tons of dumb enemies but also bosses who are smarter. Also, its quick time events are, for one, non-irritating, really quick due to the very smart use of motion sensing and they actually add to the immersion rather than detract from it as in 99% other games.
So, NMH is a gem. Not perfect, far from it, actually, but on a very good direction to being considered a future classic. For me this is an example with a game having such a strong sense of style (or perhaps even its uniques aesthetic) that this style becomes the substance. Perhaps this will sound blasphemous, but Shadow of the Colossus itself is hardly the deepest game arund and yet it is one of the most memorable because its gameplay was wrapped in such well defined, convincing aesthetics that your activities become one with the audiovisual spectacle and you never stopped and said to yourself "wait, the graphics are great but the gameplay is simplistic and at times weak" because you weren't really separating the two. NMH is similar to SotC in this respect. |
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kangarootoo
17/10/08 @ 12:55
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@Meho
A good post, but allow me to play devil's advocate a little. You chose SW TFU as a comparison, but that is a game with a few issues of its own and not really an ideal candidate to represent the entire western game set. Perhaps God of War might have been a better example? Very western in approach, but with less of the flaws you seem to suggest and inherrent in western design approaches. :) |
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spitfire1945
17/10/08 @ 12:58
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Just completed NMH for the second time with the true finale. I kept it for the last bit as I knew it would me make finish the game a second time (which also takes a lot less time since you have already acquired every power up, so you just go from one rank fight to the other!).
I seriously think this guy is a genius! I also played Killer 7 and part of Contact for DS (will finish it sooner or later)...! His games are always different from one to the other and they also break from the normal conception of a genre! Even if they are not perfect they introduce the player to see things differently. It happend to me a lot of time to look at his games and say "wow, never thought you can do things in this way!". That's why I love this guy so much... you never know what is going to be next! |
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I'm with Kinky_mong - I thought NMH was dumb as a stump. Don't get me wrong, it's all kinds of cool and I think the artists involved could have made an excellent animated film from this source material. But the gameplay is just lame and repetetive, and interspersed with mini games that are even worse.
A sequel that improved on a few things (he mentions scaling back on the open world concepts which the original failed at so terribly, so that's hopeful) and made use of the improved Wii motion sensing controls that have been announced... this could really be something. Comparisons with Shadow of the Collossus aren't really germane IMO - SotC was not merely a matter of aesthetics - the gameplay itself was also, for all it's simplicity, very unique. They're not even in the same class as far as I'm concerned, but I guess I'm a bit of a SotC fanboy. |
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"We're told that Suda 51 - real name Goichi Suda.."
His real name is Suda 51. In a way :) You read 5 as "go" and 1 as "ichi" in japanese, so for everyone who still dont know why hes got numbers in his name, this is the reason. (Well, not the -reason-, but an explanation of WHY they are there. In a name.) |
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How can the sales of NMH have been any good though? No one bought it. Even lots of his fans didn't buy it because the European version was so ruined by excessive self-censorship.
"We are weeping with delight. Especially as sales should improve further with the TV campaign moving up a gear from tonight,” said Rising Star managing director Martin Defries. “It is a verification of all the posturing and ambitious claims made these past months. I'm not chuffed with the self-censorship either, but NMH did do quite well in terms of sales. |
Comments: 1-40 of 40 in total
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