what about making the comabt more 'magical' before throwing in many more spells?

[Bluddy]

I honestly dont get what you mean by this.    What's this aspect of those two games?

I'm familiar with both.... the 2D platforming versions, mind you, not the recent 3D screwy ones, dont care for those.... and I really cant say the combat is very...... well, tactical OR all that interesting.   Castlevania, at least, the later games, you at least have a great variety of weapons and such, but you rarely NEED them.... and in Metroid, it doesnt matter which weapon you have at the time.... just shoot everything and dont get hit (only the Metroids themselves were ever an exception, and even then, "exception" consisted of a single Ice Beam shot before firing missiles).  I dont think I've ever encountered a combat situation in either series that really required much thought;  shoot and dodge (or whip and dodge) seems to pretty much always be the formula.

Good point. I don't remember the side-scrolling shooting games being particularly interesting except for boss fights. I do think we need some more interesting patterns for bosses,  but I can't play a level of any of the old Castlevanias without getting extremely bored, and AVWW keeps my interest for far longer than any of those games ever did. Metroid was more interesting, but most of it was about getting upgrades and being able to access new areas.

The most interesting side-scrollers I know are games like Iji, where you make a lot of decisions, and enemies can sometimes fight each other, or Spelunky, where you battle the random environment and find creative ways to kill off enemies.

[Misery]

I honestly dont get what you mean by this.    What's this aspect of those two games?

I'm familiar with both.... the 2D platforming versions, mind you, not the recent 3D screwy ones, dont care for those.... and I really cant say the combat is very...... well, tactical OR all that interesting.   Castlevania, at least, the later games, you at least have a great variety of weapons and such, but you rarely NEED them.... and in Metroid, it doesnt matter which weapon you have at the time.... just shoot everything and dont get hit (only the Metroids themselves were ever an exception, and even then, "exception" consisted of a single Ice Beam shot before firing missiles).  I dont think I've ever encountered a combat situation in either series that really required much thought;  shoot and dodge (or whip and dodge) seems to pretty much always be the formula.

Good point. I don't remember the side-scrolling shooting games being particularly interesting except for boss fights. I do think we need some more interesting patterns for bosses,  but I can't play a level of any of the old Castlevanias without getting extremely bored, and AVWW keeps my interest for far longer than any of those games ever did. Metroid was more interesting, but most of it was about getting upgrades and being able to access new areas.

The most interesting side-scrollers I know are games like Iji, where you make a lot of decisions, and enemies can sometimes fight each other, or Spelunky, where you battle the random environment and find creative ways to kill off enemies.

I think it's just something that can be a little difficult to pull off in a platformer.

Iji was ok, but it was also very slow-paced and the controls always seemed a little restrictive.  I found that one got pretty repetetive as well.

Spelunky, now, that's a pretty darn good game, but actually defeating enemies usually just involves stomping or using whatever weapon you happen to have at the time.   And even then, in that game it was ALWAYS better to avoid them if you could;  the only things that might drop something were the minibosses, and they werent all that tough compared to the rest of the game.   The game is decently challenging, but alot of that comes from the area design, as the enemies all had braindead AI.  Though that type of simple patterns work well for that game.   Final boss was WAY too easy though.

[Bluddy]

That's it. I don't think it's easy to pull off good AI in a sidescroller, perhaps because it's such an artificial environment. Real world locations are horizontal rather than vertical. Good AI, for example, would suggest flanking, but flanking is almost impossible in a 2d world. Tactics that would work in a real world setting don't work in the made up environment of sidescrollers.. I think what we want instead is to just focus on interesting patterns for enemies. The other thing is, I don't want the enemies to automatically know where I am when I'm not on their plane, or there's a wall between us. They should think I am in the last location they saw me at. I hate that a skelebot stands above me on another plane and he knows exactly where I am so he stands right above me.

Iji was ok, but it was also very slow-paced and the controls always seemed a little restrictive.  I found that one got pretty repetetive as well.

Loved the decisions in that game though. Very much System-Shock-like.

Spelunky, now, that's a pretty darn good game, but actually defeating enemies usually just involves stomping or using whatever weapon you happen to have at the time.   And even then, in that game it was ALWAYS better to avoid them if you could;  the only things that might drop something were the minibosses, and they werent all that tough compared to the rest of the game.   The game is decently challenging, but alot of that comes from the area design, as the enemies all had braindead AI.  Though that type of simple patterns work well for that game.   Final boss was WAY too easy though.

Yeah the enemies were not the main challenge there, and they were high risk. But once I got comfortable with the game, enemies were fun to fight despite the fact that they were dangerous. You're right that they were mostly braindead (like most side-scrollers), but feeding cavemen to man-eating plants or throwing them on spikes never gets old  

Also, again, the patterns were cool. Each enemy had a different pattern, and by learning the pattern you knew how to deal with them. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that you couldn't just shoot in any direction. Being able to shoot at any angle and at almost any distance nullifies enemy patterns. What does it matter if you have bouncing enemy or an enemy that heads straight for you or one that comes up from underground? You point and click regardless.