Yooka-Laylee - Returm of 3D Platformers?

[Misery]

FF 13 I just use because it's the most blatantly obvious example that everyone will actually recognize.  But really I mean pretty much all of them;  I end up seeing a huge number of them since everyone I know IRL tends to be obsessive fans of the damn things.  That whole genre has ALOT of trends at this point that it really didn't used to, and FF 13 is basically just those trends at their worst, so it fits the need for an example.  But really so many others could go there.

[TheVampire100]

I haven't backed many Kickstarter games, reason is because Kickstarter does not allow Paypal.
The only games I could back were games that added Paypal after they reached their funding goal.

I backed Sheltered which is an okay game for the price. It does not have dozens of cool features but it works as small post-apocalypse Sim game.

A Hat in Time is in development since... I don't even remember. The game shall come out this year but the development time so far felt like eternity and honestly, what they showed so far didn't look promising.

AI War 2 is currently in development and it's still too early to say anything. Saying it will be a ssuccess just because it's from Arcen is pretty much being a hypocrite. Plus, I don't have access to the Alpha, so I cannot judge if it's gonna be a success or not. I wait for ealy Access until I make a statement.

I also backed Defenders Quest 2, which is to date still in development with spare details on how the work on the game is going. As far as I know the game could be almost ready or not even close tot he end. It could be halfway or still at the start. They really don't show much what's going on but since they are still releasing patches for Defenders Quest 1 I hope they are still working on it.

I don't know if I backed anythign besides thats all I remember for now.

As it stands, most games I backed LONG time ago are still in development. AI War 2 is of course a recent thing and it's realease time frame is rather short set. Might be pushed back since they had some internal crisis but honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if this still comes out before AHiT and DQ2 because those two games take forever to be released.

Edit: Just had to check DQ2 to be sure. It wasn't a real Kickstarter actualyl but a pre-order thingy and they designed it similiar to kickstarter with different tiers, rewards and so on. Development began in 2014, over THREE years ago. That's a very long time for a 2D Tower Defense Indie game. They even stated that the Beta will still come out in 2014 and liek i said before, I didn't hear anything from them at all since a  very long time. You can bet that they pretty much screwed up. They even removed the progress tracker that showed for each segment of the game in detail what they already have done how much (art, sound, story, gameplay etc.).
Wouldn't surprise me, if they ran out of money.

[Aklyon]

Defenders Quest were not only making the second game, they were rebuilding the first one onto a better engine (the same one as for 2, iirc) than whatever it was using previously. Not too surprised they're taking awhile.

[Draco18s]

Let's see...backed projects...

23 (computer) games backed.
Of those...

• 1 has completely vanished and a second seemed like maybe it had, but posted an update a month ago.
• 3 I thought were shit (though given the price I probably got my worth out of 2 of them)
• 9 haven't released yet (only two aren't overdue) not counting the one that's vanished
• 1 I feel could have been morebetter, but is definitely the thing they said it was (Takedown). I guess it just ended up "not being for me" though I still wholly approve of an ultra-realistic shooter (I just feel that it only takes a single shot for me to go down, but most of a clip into the bad guy for him to go down--probably has something to do with a mechanic I'm just not cognizant of).

That leaves about eight that I was pretty happy with.  I didn't finish Halcyon 6, but that's because the game loop got incredibly repetitive and boring. But the everything else was quite solid.
Installed and (briefly) ran Yooka-Laylee last night. Performance was awful on my machine. I probably had some stuff open I could have closed down, etc. but the input lag was upwards of 1 second. Also I love how the "controls" section of the options menu had nothing to do with keybinds (who the hug makes the spacebar [START]?).

[Cyborg]

I could link quite a few examples, like Pillars of Eternity and Torment 2 ;p I actually replay Torment 1 EE these days so I know what I am talking when I say that the new Torment is inferior in EVERY way

I finished PoE and Torment: Tides of Numenara. I thought both of them were good with quality writing. In the case of Torment, it's not going to be like the original because of the license problems. But what it does get right is providing a game that doesn't revolve around violence in order to engage the player. I found so much to like about it that reminded me of the original without *being* the original.

Of course, PoE required violence. So in that case, the combat had to be well done, and for the most part it was.

I also recently completed Trails in the Sky 2. Been on a bit of a RPG kick. Looking forward to the next one.

[TheVampire100]

Defenders Quest were not only making the second game, they were rebuilding the first one onto a better engine (the same one as for 2, iirc) than whatever it was using previously. Not too surprised they're taking awhile.

That is only partially true. While it is true that they released a DX Edition, they also said that they hired an eternal team for that job and didn't draw any developers of DQ2 away.
So yes, they did make the DX edition but this shouldn't have affected DQ2 in any way.

Also I remembered I backes War for the Overworld. The game did pretty much the same as Yooka-Laylee, they baited players with Nostalgia, just in this game it was for Dungeon Keeper. War for the Overworld is actually a really good game and we even have the ame voice of the advisor as in DK2 but as far as the game comes it wasn't that close to DK as people have imagined.
Plus, when it first came out (and I mean the full version, not the EA version) it had terrible AI and UI problems that didn't belong into a full game.
Since then they constantly released updates to fix this. The biggest issue for me really was the UI. That looked something like the AI War 2 Ui looks right now and that is just a placeholder. You get thrown with a lot of technical stuff if you hover on your units, something a player does not want to look at. They fixed most, if not all problems since then and are still balancing the units because of Multiplayer.
They also released a mini expansion (for backers like me for free) and recently brought out a "sandbox mode" were you can freely design your dungeon to your liking or somethign like that. Haven't played it yet.
Overall, the game itself is good, not exactly what you would have excepted froma  remake of Dungeon Keeper but for itself quite good. But the initial launch was a disaster and that happens way too often with Kickstarter games, hell, even with normal Early Access games (with those actually even more).
Mighty No.9 will still haunt many people I believe.

[Misery]

Let's see...backed projects...

23 (computer) games backed.
Of those...

• 1 has completely vanished and a second seemed like maybe it had, but posted an update a month ago.
• 3 I thought were shit (though given the price I probably got my worth out of 2 of them)
• 9 haven't released yet (only two aren't overdue) not counting the one that's vanished
• 1 I feel could have been morebetter, but is definitely the thing they said it was (Takedown). I guess it just ended up "not being for me" though I still wholly approve of an ultra-realistic shooter (I just feel that it only takes a single shot for me to go down, but most of a clip into the bad guy for him to go down--probably has something to do with a mechanic I'm just not cognizant of).

That leaves about eight that I was pretty happy with.  I didn't finish Halcyon 6, but that's because the game loop got incredibly repetitive and boring. But the everything else was quite solid.
Installed and (briefly) ran Yooka-Laylee last night. Performance was awful on my machine. I probably had some stuff open I could have closed down, etc. but the input lag was upwards of 1 second. Also I love how the "controls" section of the options menu had nothing to do with keybinds (who the hug makes the spacebar [START]?).

Ah yes, Halcyon 6.  That one looked kinda interesting but I'd heard the same thing, that the game gets super repetitive.

As for this game though, I'd heard about the control issues too, it sounds like the problem with them is quite common?

[Aklyon]

At this point I'd say WftO is certainly the closest to DK we've gotten so far. Its gotten over its terribad EA state and is pretty alright now I'd say.

[TheVampire100]

At this point I'd say WftO is certainly the closest to DK we've gotten so far. Its gotten over its terribad EA state and is pretty alright now I'd say.

That's exactly what I think. However, the point stands that it wasn't this at the release. And this can kill your image, especially if it's your first game.
However, they still continue support for it and show their dedicated love, that alone motivates me to buy their dlc.

[Draco18s]

As for this game though, I'd heard about the control issues too, it sounds like the problem with them is quite common?

The camera controls are the worst part, probably.

All of your input (left, right, etc) is based on the camera's direction. It took me...oh probably twenty minutes to complete the first platforming puzzle (post tutorial) because I kept falling off the side of a moving platform, despite having set my camera up so that I could see the distance from where I was to it, and that it was dead camera-right.

Wasn't until I noticed the camera twitch as it came unstuck from a piece of geometry that I realized what had been happening: as I moved to the right, the camera twisted around to the left a little, misaligned my movement input, and I went tumbling into the void.

But yeah, having A = [Space] (not start, my bad) and B = [Esc] and Pause = [P,Esc] is pretty darned awful.

That's right. Escape is both B and Pause!

[Misery]

That... sounds absolutely awful.  Who comes up with controls like that?  Why in the world would escape be both B and pause at the same time?  I just... what?

I thought these guys were supposed to be professional developers of some sort?  This sure doesn't sound like the work of someone like that.

[Draco18s]

That... sounds absolutely awful.  Who comes up with controls like that?  Why in the world would escape be both B and pause at the same time?  I just... what?

I thought these guys were supposed to be professional developers of some sort?  This sure doesn't sound like the work of someone like that.

It's because they developed with controllers in mind and didn't bother with the keyboard controls beyond "cursory does everything have a key" binding.  And of course, couldn't be arsed to bother listing them in the UI anywhere.  Some menus use the (A) / (B) depictions, but voice narration uses the KBM values (which leads to things like "In the water we can use the rightarrow, leftarrow, A, D, uparrow, downarrow, W, S to move around in the water."

[TheVampire100]

That... sounds absolutely awful.  Who comes up with controls like that?  Why in the world would escape be both B and pause at the same time?  I just... what?

I thought these guys were supposed to be professional developers of some sort?  This sure doesn't sound like the work of someone like that.

They developed the game intended to be palyed with a controller as it should be.
Doesn't justify that they kind of screwed up keyboard/mouse controls. From reviews I've seen that's a big problem. I even saw a thread where someone said to the negative reviews they shouldn't play this game with keyboard anyway and it's their fault. What? You cannot make a game for pc and think it is NOT played with keyboard. Every PC comes with a standard keyboard and a mouse but not with a controler. that's an extra. You have first to make sure it works perfectly fine on ther standard control tools before you do the extras, even if you itnent that it is best played with a controler.
I play it with a controler anyway because I knew somethign like this was gonna happen. And not habving rebindable keys in modern pc era is simply terrible. I believe they made the exact same game for both pc and consoles and were to lazy to add crontol rebind just for pc and slapped some simple keyboard controls for the sake fo having them. This is not okay for a game at that price.

I reached world 3 btw. World 1 was an Aztec/jungle themed world (surpirse surprise) with a lot of old ruins, temples and other stuff. Nothign exciting because they dd the same thing as first world in Banjo-Kazooie. But it works to show basic gameplay mechanics and take the player by the hand to get his first challenges.

World 2 is an ice world with typical slippery mechanics. i think I said this already before but in soem cases this is really terrible designed because you slip across the platforms, unable to stop. The world introduces new machanics like that you can now eat/lick stuff to transform yourself in new forms like a fire form or a sticky form (that removes the slippery aspect of the ice). I think the ice world is the one I hate the most because you slide too many times from platforms, even if you move little by little. The momentum during movement is way too big.

World 3 is a swamp like in BK (again). If you touch the muddy water, you get hurt but unlike in BK (where Piranhas bite you) it is never really explained why. Probably because the water is toxic or somethign like that. You can later clean up a section of the water if you repair a water filter. The swamp orld is where I noticed something: Most "walls" in the game are to easy to overjump. I don't know if this is intended or not but with your abilites you can take shortcuts easily instead of staying on the intended road and travel quickly through the world. This was in some cases in world 1 und 2 as well but in world 3 it is the most prominent. That does not mean you can reach everything easily or cheese your way through the game but for an example you can skip some of the enemies or toxic water sections that way. The characters jump way too high in this game and can easily glide over segments if they need to. In some cases this is intended (part of the platforming experience) but I think they didn't notice that players can and will of course use their abilites on anythign else as well. Especially at a game that centers all around exploring and sectrets, of course players will test how far they can go, even if they can go further than intendeed.
or maybe it is intended and I'm just imaging things. Still 2 worlds to go and I'm curious of what awaits me next.

[Draco18s]

I even saw a thread where someone said to the negative reviews they shouldn't play this game with keyboard anyway and it's their fault. What? You cannot make a game for pc and think it is NOT played with keyboard. Every PC comes with a standard keyboard and a mouse but not with a controler. that's an extra. You have first to make sure it works perfectly fine on ther standard control tools before you do the extras, even if you itnent that it is best played with a controler.

I saw that. And the post/retort that was "this game shouldn't say 'heavily recommended with controller' it should 'keyboard controls non-existent.'" Or similar.

[Misery]

And not habving rebindable keys in modern pc era is simply terrible.

Agreed on this.  There's just no excuse for that nowadays.  Yet I keep running into games that have this exact problem.  Been seeing it a lot lately, and it's just as bloody stupid every single time.

In this specific case though, it kinda sounds like the old "lazy port" sort of reason, if they developed for consoles first.