Thread 717963545

Does a "good" story make up for shit gameplay?

>>717963545 (OP)
Sometimes. Depends on how good the story is and how shit gameplay is.
You have an entire genre that had basically no gameplay and its all about the story and vibe (walking sims) so yes it can work but its hard to pull off

nothing can make up for a bad story. I'm not talking about something forgettable that barely exists, I'm talking about a fucking dogshit story that takes center stage. even if forespoken had incredible gameplay it'd still be more dreadful than a game with bad gameplay and mediocre story

Yes. SH2 was a great game. I felt lonely more than anything else and I felt that the game meant for me to feel that way.

I was just thinking about how the story isn't all cracked up as people think it is. You're telling me that James was overcome with the urge to kill his wife who already had a foot in the grave? Seems a little unusual. Unless taking care of a sick relative is really that frustrating sometimes. I guess watching your wife lose her vigor will make you sexually frustrated and at odds with your impulses. But no one would really succumb to killing their wife over that.

>>717963545 (OP)
SH2's biggest strengths are its atmosphere, visuals, camera angles, and soundtrack

>>717964052
>to kill his wife who already had a foot in the grave
It was because he loved her and wanted to euthanize her to spare her from more pain, as well as his anger toward her

>>717963918
Death Stranding. I liked the walking simulator gameplay, very zen, but hated the story and all the endless talking and over-explaining.

>>717964325
>bad story
>with bad gameplay

>>717963545 (OP)
No, but I also firmly believe that horror as a genre is antithetical to having good gameplay.

>>717964520
resident evil proves this wrong. boardgame like enemy as obstacle design where you're faced with optional hazards on the way to objectives is a good core concept that horror incentivized. horror has a reason to emphasize dynamic fight or flight approaches to enemies rather than robotic combat arenas.

Silent hill fans are like lain fans
no one actually enjoys the source material, and they're just fans because they liked aesthetic gifs on tubmlr and using it as an interest to add to their social curriculum

>>717963545 (OP)
You must have used the wrong image OP because SH2 has both a good story AND gameplay. I certainly hope you weren't filtered by tank controls, that'd be quite embarrassing for you.

>>717965593
that is true for some but not all. people are so enamored with the structure and tropes of silent hill that they can ignore sloppy gameplay design.

>>717963545 (OP)
aesthetics, music, and narrative can definitely get people interested in a game and keep them playing and even put it on their "best of" lists. a game in its totality can still be worth experiencing even if the "game" aspect of it is fundamentally flawed. SH2 and biosshock are both games like this in my eyes. terrible as games but still a worthwhile experiences overall.

>>717963545 (OP)
Planescape Torment, Silent Hill 2, and New Vegas have the best stories in games and also have pretty dogshit gameplay. So yes

Yes, but only if I am a fan of the genre in general. I'm not playing a bad game in a genre I wouldn't enjoy even if it was a good example of it.

>>717965593
I like Lain because it's got a brain scratch atmosphere like no other, it's like dialing into a weird as fuck radio station at 3 in the morning and zoning out to that shit.

>>717963545 (OP)
Sometimes. gameplay in 2 isn't shit though

>>717964087
SH1 moggs it In all those categories.

>>717965195
Resident Evil isn't scary and never has been though so it's not much of a horror. It's more like Castlevania, a horror themed action game but not actually scary

>>717967193
>survival horror
>90% of enemies are slow shambling humanoids you can walk past or demolish with an arsenal of weapons
Pick one.

>>717967193
Calling it nonfunctional is harsh, but calling it mediocre is generous. The game clearly leans on its aesthetics and the practicality of its level designs, enemy AI, and general difficulty balance was a very distant priority. Everything "works" in that it's so simple that it almost can't break, not that hard mode's "adjust a few damage, health and animation values in 10 minutes and call it a day" approach doesn't try.

>>717964208
And that's a big crux of his torment - did he kill his wife for her sake, or for his own? Did he love her and not want her to suffer, or did he hate her for what she became and did what he did to free himself? The fact that James can't reconcile the possibility that it could very well have been both, as well as the sheer guilt of the latter clashing with the former, is why Silent Hill was able to draw him like a moth to a flame.

The gameplay wasn't even bad. My biggest complaint with 2 was just how repetitive it got. Pyramid Head became the poster child for the series and he's far from the most memorable design in the franchise. 3 is much more nightmarish and goes a little more crazy with the designs. By the time you get to the hospital and start getting the notes from Heather's admirer, it drives home that you're in a very private, intimate Hell. It's like a small terrarium of evil, like a child growing up in a festering hoarder crack head's house, or one of those lunatics that locks their family members in secret compartments to keep as sex slaves for decades. The only way to even reach Leonard is to go to an abandoned hospital, shift into Hell, and then crawl through the ductwork until you reach the festering pit he wades around in. 2 has a little bit of that with the Abstract daddy, the room you fight him in with the leaking orifices, but most of it is pretty generic. 3 is sadistic.

>>717967250
No should ever play the sequels because of this desu.

>>717967363
You got to admit the fight with pyramid head was pretty intense though

>>717967363
What's the issue? It's scary and interesting to walk around, explore and solve puzzles. These are the most important parts. The combat is just one factor, and it needs to be clunky for the rest of it to work and maintain the atmosphere and tone. Otherwise it turns into an action game like Resident Evil or the SH2 remake and Silent Hill f

What's shit about it? James Sunderland isn't a ninja bestowed with magical powers. He drives into Silent Hill with a mental illness and a piece of paper saying his wife is still alive. He thinks he is in a dream. Finds out he is in a nightmare. But a nightmare that provides some much needed solace for his unforgivable actions. There is no better game with a protagonist who doesn't really give a shit if he dies fighting demons with pieces of wood, crowbars and guns with limited ammo found on streets of small town.

The SH2 remake has better gameplay than the original.

>>717963545 (OP)
No. But SH 2 gameplay was alright. Not very enjoyable, but worked for what it was. Sometimes even walking sims are pretty enjoyable to go through once and SH 2 gameplay was a step above it.

>>717968045
Because he's still way more of a threat than the monsters he fights, unless you're doing a full encounter/pure melee run or some shit. Virtually every enemy in SH2 is wallpaper. The only time they even function as obstacles is when the hallway level designs make it almost unable to run past them, but even with that you still have guns. At least in 1 and 3 those games have enemy types with some actual mobility or throw you into scenarios that can overwhelm through sheer numbers. There are moments where the player is expected to genuinely try. 2's entirely concerned with aesthetic and has no sense of function.

>>717968231
it forces you to fight the monsters though hundreds of times. kneecap, bonk, kneecap, bonk, roughly 300 times. this is not fun

>>717963545 (OP)
You don't get it anon! It is intentional!

>>717963545 (OP)
SH2 is a miss for me. The gameplay design is subpar and the story isn’t THAT good. I like 1 and 3 much more. I don’t like 4 either.

>>717963545 (OP)
RE2 and SH2 are both extremely overrated. Both the original and third games in the series are way better. That’s my hot take for the day.

>>717968412
The aesthetic is the function in a game like SH2 and the combat isn't particularly good in 1 or 3 either so focusing more on the atmosphere and vibes at the expense of already poor action elements was the better move. One could argue that having most of your enemies be sickly, deformed, strangely sexual women creatures who are less threatening to you than you are to them is an appropriate fit with the story and adds an interesting dimension to the narrative, which is the main appeal of the game anyway.

>>717968628
Thematically, sure. But at least make the enemies fucking do something. You don't even have to be good at fighting, make something interesting to run away from. That's one of the great things about survival horror - combat scenarios where you don't necessarily have to fight. 1 and 3 are actually pretty good at making these kinds of moments, in part because the combat is a bit shit. In 2, it's like the video game parts are there just because it's expected to be a video game and not because the intent was to make them engaging at any level, even fight-or-flight assessment. Very little in 2 is that interesting to actually play through.

>>717968412
Sometimes context of games near the same era helps to understand why some people praise a game. In Nintendo's Mario games and Capcom's Mega Man or Sega's Sonic games at the time, the protagonist passed a checkpoint after beating a boss to get to the next level.

In Silent Hill 2 there are psychologically stressful moments never seen before. Imagine Mario or Link being asked to jump into a grave in a cemetery with a tombstone engraved with the name of Mario or Sonic on it.

There are many moments in the game where an executive with an accounting degree is expected to put resources into something brighter but for some reason SH2 was approved. Even now there is nothing like it.

>>717968842
I think the video game parts are a lot more than just fighting enemies though, puzzles and exploration and just walking around in the environment is the best part of any Silent Hill including 1 and 3, it's like the only thing fun in 4. I think all those things are great in SH2 and are very interesting to play, the less directly threatening enemies fits with the tone and story more, aside from something actually threatening like Pyramid Head or the Abstract Daddies.

>>717965593
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oy39fXon_PQ?feature=share

>>717965593
The problem is people who judge games based on a YouTube walkthrough videos and pirates who downloaded a game and couldn't figure it out before letting a YouTube walkthrough decide their opinion for them.

>>717968231
I don't think people are going disagree with you on that.

>>717970596
I will

Even with AI assistance in 2025, the horror of what James was put through can't be adequately captured except by players who chose to play with minimal information.

I asked for an image of Link being asked to jump into a grave with a tombstone engraved with his name. Very simplistic compared to what Konami released on PS2 decades ago.

>>717968231
besides that everything else is a objective shitty downgrade and the original mogs out of pure aesthetics
>worse atmosphere/ isn't dreamlike
>worse character redesigns they're all fuck ugly in the remake aka Eddie and Angela look awful
>turns the OG kino soundtrack into sappy generic garbage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q95kw_pBXu0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yRWqE5jrkM
>worse box cover
this game didn't deserve a remake

Silent Hill 2's story is just a watered down Lynch knockoff

I mean it's good but come on, a lot of vidya people really need to watch more movies and read some books

>>717963545 (OP)
Just play the remake if the gameplay icks you, faggot.

>>717973210
Nerd

>>717973210
Lynch was a hack

>>717973310
you shut the hell up

>>717973210
If you actually watched Lost Highway you'd know it's very different both in narrative content as well as style, aesthetic, tone, etc.

>>717963545 (OP)
The gameplay is in service of the story. if you want more engaging combat, then you're supposed to turn up the difficulty.

>>717971234
bots are so fucking annoying and out of control on this site man

>>717974291
4chan pass shit needs a captcha

>>717974015
It takes the premise of lost highway and then adds its own flavor to it. It's a spiritual redo of the movie in a sense.

>>717965593
Funny you should mention that because just the other day I thought about rewatching Lain but then thought I'm almost certainly not going to like it nearly as much as I did when I was teenager. That is what happened with SH. I thought it was great as a teenager. As an adult I think it's very mid and basically a one trick pony in that relies heavily on horror aesthetics stolen from western cinema.

>>717963545 (OP)
No. A video game is a game first, movie second.

Game only goes to shit when you reach the historical society but it picks up again at the hotel.

>>717963545 (OP)
sometimes

>>717963545 (OP)
Experiencing the game at the time it was released is very different than experiencing it now. Back then controls were just about ironed out and stopped being tank controls for the most part, but it was still there. You don't see this now.

You must also remember this was quite good for the time. But if you compare this to games today you will nit pick it to death because you are spoiled. It's like a game with rickety training wheels and boards sticking up with rusty nails everywhere. The whole thing is held together with duct tape and a prayer. So looking back to it now seems stupid, but that's all we had.