Video Game General 6.5: Now with more surprise mechanics

I think the disconnect here is that you seem to think any game that has shooting involved, is a shooter. I know those aren’t your words, I’m just inferring that based on what’s been posted.

I don’t agree with that characterization.

Would you consider 2D Metroid a shooter? What about the Prime series? I’d be more inclined to call the Prime games shooters because the focus is more narrowly centered on FPS mechanics. But once you take Samus out of the third dimension, it becomes more of an action platformer and less a shooter. Or does it?

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I haven’t made a Melee build, melee in the game is so shallow I think I would get bored relying on it.

Traps are nice but I don’t find myself relying on them very much. Nice supplement but hardly a main form of damage dealing imo. Explosion traps too likely to hurt you to in the midst of heated combat to be a main source of damage imo.

Yea sure thays fine. I don’t think anything with shooting is a shooter but when it’s the primary source of gameplay I have hard time not calling it a shooter. You can do lots of stuff in RDR but you still primarily shoot people to accomplish “meaningful” goals within the game. I can’t solve mission problems in RDR by inviting Dutch to a game of cards and beer. I have to shoot him. It’s the only solution to the problem the developer has presented. That’s how 95% of the main game works. You shoot the problem. If you aren’t shooting the problem you are probably punching it with the very real threat of shooting it looming, and shortly after will probably be shooting a decent number of other people. RDR isn’t Deus Ex or something where you can take an alternate route or talk someone into a different solution. Naw man, Arthur and John dont do that. They can’t do that. They fucking shoot you. Can’t remember how many times I talked to myself in rdr2 following Dutch somewhere going “let’s not do this, this won’t end well” and guess what it didn’t and I had to shoot a bunch of people because there’s nothing else you can do. You can’t walk away. You can’t talk Dutch into a better idea. You get a game over for leaving the mission zone. You have to shoot.

As an example of what I mean I would consider Mass Effect a Shooter RPG because 95% of Shepards problems are solved with a gun and you rarely have any alternative to that option. There are other oprions but rhey are rare enough to not a meaningful enough impact to not consider the game primarily a shooter, a cover shooter specifically.

I would consider Metroid an adventure platformer. You do shoot a lot of stuff but it’s not the primary thing you will be doing the majority of the game which will be jumping around and exploring. I don’t find combat to be the primary focus of Metroid. It has it but it’s not the games gameplay focus or loop. Even the bosses are a joke in that series. The focus is on navigation, not combat.

Ive only played Prime 1 and I would call it an Adventure game. Has more in common with Zelda then an FPS focused game. It’s in first person but the focus is exploration, like Zelda, or heh…Metroid. More System Shock then DOOM.

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I don’t know, I guess it’s semantics to me. I’m OK with you calling Red Dead a shooter if that’s the kind of game you see it as, even if I don’t. Doubt we convince each other otherwise, and at this point we’re just repeating ourselves.

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The conversation is fun regardless.

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Lol, see I consider Prime a shooter at it’s core, with Metroid elements that make it awesome.

Why? The shooting is so…flacid. It has the most aggressive auto aim I’ve ever seen and you dont really do much of it compared to most everything else you do…at least in Prime 1 anyway.

Would you consider System Shock a shooter?

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I don’t know, most of the encounters are solved by shooting shit.

I’ve never played System Shock.

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Combat encounters sure…but would you say most problems? I remember lots of problems solved through puzzle solving and using tools like the Morph Ball bomb to activate switches and get up half pipes and shit.

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Sure, but in RDR there is a lot of tracking, fishing, crafting, heisting (yes, you can rob a train without pulling a trigger), horse breaking, riding, conversing… It’s not all about shooting. And neither is Prime I guess.

I guess. Those are like…GTA distractions imo. You can do them but they don’t really contribute to the core loop of the game. You just get money. Doeant have a meaningful impact outside of the money tho. Robbing a train doesn’t make trains more guarded, or run less or something along those lines. You might get a warrant but those are kind of a fucking joke and can be mostly ignored.

Does that make any sense?

It depends on how immersed you want to get with the game, I reckon. And I know in RDR doing side quests alter events later in the game, and how the world reacts to you, and how easy it is to rob people (black hat) vs getting amassing deals at the general store (white hat). That stuff contributes pretty heavily of you ask me.

And dude, warrants are no joke. The first time I walked into Valentine I shot up the whole fucking town and it took me a couple hours to clear my name before I could safely go back :rofl:

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I’ve ignored almost all my warrants every time I play lol. Half the time the games narrative wipes out your bounty for you lol. But hey thats been my exp.

I’m 100% with you on immurson tho. The immersion benefits those activities give you is absolutly worth the time of including them. I wasn’t trying to downplay the benefits they bring to the game, just that they aren’t a part of the core gameplay loop. Removing them would be a massive detriment to the game for sure.

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Is Contra a shooter? I say yes.

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It’s an arcade platformer shooter highscorer!

:crazy_face:

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What about Fork Knife?

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Dinner.

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Metroid Prime is first person adventure. But almost all games are walking simulations. Just like how smash can be a fighting game but isn’t officially one.

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No, I’ll have to try that. That said, the higher difficulty didn’t help 3, so I’m hoping that tweak in 2 doesn’t just make the ai super annoying.

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