*Grabs a chair and some popcorn*
*Grabs a chair and some popcorn*
That doesn´t mean squat.
Btw, you also don´t have any evidence that if the game emulated Dungeon Master to a t the completion rate would be higher.
There´s nothing wrong with emphasizing the puzzle aspect, different flavours and all.
I, for example, completed Grimrock precisely because it was puzzle-heavy. If it followed the format of Dungeon Master or the first Eye of the Beholder (worse game than Grimrock, regardless of audiovisual side, btw) I very likely wouldn´t because sparse story, simplistic combat and a puzzle here and there would not cut it for me nowadays.
Yeah, it´s just dumb.
IIRC, their stated influences were Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder and Ultima Underworld.
If they didn´t manage to "emulate" one of these, it´s Ultima Underworld, with which the game shares only very general, superficial similarities.
Yeah, story in Dungeon Master was indeed stellar.
As for exploration, Grimrock is certainly not worse than DM - it comes with a good amount of optional content (more than DM) and a lot of the best rewards come from there. The level design is not significantly, if at all, less inspired than in DM.
I´m pretty sure the design of Grimrock came largely from understanding that providing a focused, not overtly ambitious, but well working game was a reasonable way to debut in the field.
I´m also pretty sure they understand that providing a richer and more varied experience is where it´s at when it comes to a sequel, just as the authors of, say, Chaos Strikes Back or Eye of the Beholder 2 did.
I see the 8% completion rate quoted a lot here, does that count people that use the offline function in Steam? Because I'd truly be confused if only 8% of purchasers are finishing a game, lol what's the point of buying the thing if you aren't going to finish it??? I'd say I know quite a few people that play Steam in offline mode, so I'm just wondering if that could explain the anomaly.
-Carn
Your obsession with my opinions on Mass Effect is mildly amusing, keep it up .Aren't you the guy who called Mass Effect 2 superior in pretty much all ways to Mass Effect?
Your obsession with my opinions on Mass Effect is mildly amusing, keep it up .
As for the rest of your attempt at response, zzzzzzzz.
Better luck next time!
Agree with this. Only managed about 3 levels of the game before getting burned out on it.But the experience ended up being way too repetitive and I've heard the puzzle-complaint a LOT on various forums.
but murmurings from the devs on the site don't encourage me to believe that they understand what the appeal of party RPGs really is.
What you really mean is actually "what little I've read from the devs on the site doesn't encourage me to believe that they see what I see to be the appeal of party based RPGs. Notice the difference? It's probably helpful if you don't generalise your own interest in the genre to be the same as everyone elses (including the developers.) This may also help to lower expectations as well.
In response to DArt's navel gazing post of clarification after the "To my mind, they didn't really understand the games they were trying to emulate" comment, let me just say that this rubbed me the wrong way because of the implication that somehow you simply know better about these games than the developers, regardless of what their design process and choices were.
In short, you can't judge or gauge the depth of understanding of a genre based upon the creation of one game with smatterings of that genre. This kind of insight exists independent of what you create. Regardless of what their design decisions were, understanding and insight is subjective and is not contained in the totality of that one game. (Legend of Grimrock)
But after reading your clarifying post, I can see that you are genuinely passionate about the genre and so I suppose your point of view does make sense to a certain extent. I think I can at least understand why you'd come to that conclusion, so thanks for the extra clarity.