Not all prototype are easy to make, mocking these game with different controller mean you should be able to make those controller in the first place. They are not always trivial, I’m not sure the wii U can be emulated with my under 100$ smartphone (bad motion detection) especially at their latency, where do you start with the hd haptic of the switch, at least wiimote are still sold on teh wild but will the latency match an actual console (200fps I think for wiimote)? Not only that but mastering motion control detection is a skill in itself that need to be investigate, the sampling rate is key and the speed of treatment of these sample. I’m trying when I have time …
I’m not sure what all the focus on controllers is about what I was getting at is stuff like this…
Why are Nintendo games always so much more polished than other game developers?
This is what makes Nintendo games great
And the fact that in nearly all Top Games / Best Games of all time lists you will find several Nintendo games.
It’s more about their design & development philosophy.
In that case the person creating the argument is creating an argument they cannot prove, and therefore their points are moot without evidence clearly presented from reliable sources.
Also not sure what controllers have to do with the level design of half life and why it was so good. I think a unity staff member hit the nail on the head on the first page really.
It looks like the discussion took a weird turn since I last checked it.
What was this thread about again? Particle decay?
Game design → Semantic Argument → Meaning of Life → Bashing and defending Nintendo.
Not sure how it happened, though.
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Yeah, must be Unity forums.
Game design → Semantic Argument → Cutting Edge Is Key → No Gameplay Is → Nintendo games as example of focusing on Gameplay first & foremost not cutting edge → Controllers → Random ramblings perhaps from this point on.
Controller is key to game design though which impact level design, there is a strong correlation. Try rts on a pad 
And nintendo has a legacy of focusing on control or core concept to bring quality games. Don’t act it’s not correlated.
Though it’s one step remove from HL level design , though I contast they were that good to begin with, using my own memory and experience with the genre. I do recognize what it has attempted, but its legacy was the heavily scripted set pieces corridor shooter.
I cannot prove it with unity, but I tried some on nintendo sdk, that’s the nuances. I also tried without when I was no more working on it, but I had to evaluate with the deficiency I mentioned, Why so upset? It doesn’t make them moot, it’s just you wouldn’t be able to sell the game and the hardware at the same while being a bedroom coder 
Well, every controller has it’s quirks, but ultimately what makes or breaks a game is in the decisions the player must make.
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While this is true, their games are still highly formulaic.
When somebody talks about games that break new ground, “Nintendo” never comes to mind. Except Donkey Kong, obviously, being the first successful platformer. But like id and Doom, they haven’t really pulled it off a second time.
Nintendo has focused like a laser on controller tech over the past two console cycles, and although my opinion on the wii is different from others, wiiU is more of the same - just weird / innovative control and design that not a lot of people like.
Although Nintendo has some cool games - beyond Mario and the every 5-6 years Zelda title, not many other games have this attention to design and gameplay. I’d say (sadly) Nintendo puts out more gimmicky games than they do solid gameplay experiences.
Because the twin stick design is 98% perfection.
Are they? Beyond Mario and Zelda I’m hard pressed to think of other polished Nintendo games. Smash Brothers, Metroid Kart all have had less polished recent releases, and Star Fox has already been mentioned.
Nintendo games aren’t any more polished than Inside, Doom, The Witcher, Uncharted. However to support this claim - they DO have an army of developers to perform the iterative design needed to polish a game to that Mario and Zelda level.
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Indeed.
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My point was that it took iterations and people thinking outside of what was the box in those days to create it, even failures when testing the boundaries of the box are good if it leads to iterative progress and improvement.
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That was a link to a Reddit discussion about it. I was never a big Nintendo game fan but there are a massive amount of people who are. And they are doing something right that their games appear time and again on best / top games lists along with summaries of the innovation that put them there.
Sure they’ve focused on controllers. That doesn’t replace the focus on innovating in their games. And it is not I don’t appreciate their games it’s just they so often had a kiddie vibe to me that didn’t catch my interest other than certain titles such as Metroid.
It’s like the Super Mario Maker and the mobile Mario games released recently. Maybe they didn’t sell well I am not sure. But I do remember at the time of release they were pretty well covered as to what made them stand out… what the differences were between how most mobile platformers are made for example compared to the way Nintendo did it.
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Wait do polish mean game I don’t like now 
I keep expecting design discussion oh well…
Nintendo have always focus on controller anyway, the perfected the d pad, they popularized the flips, they normalize start and select button, they introduce analog for 3d movements, they bring rumble, saying they have a focus “now” is just saying the latest addition don’t cater to your taste, since now every small innovation they brought defined gaming (even though they weren’t necessarily the inventor).
What’s happening to nintendo is that everyone else have caught up tho them and they are feeling teh stress of reinventing themselves while catering to their base. What nintendo has now other don’t have except strong brand?
Nintendo are artist who pretend to not make art (as miyamoto say, we make product) but product maker listen to the audience to make the best product to them, not have a vision and respect for the artist (see lucas vs disney’s star wars), sakurai crying because people don’t get his game and play competitively is one key tell. Meanwhile the rest of the industry are product maker who cry to they are artist even though most don’t have a vision and what little they have they compromise it to fit the audience (except for girls, they don’t like girls /s)…
Nintendo is under big duress, they were the king once:
- they had the better tech, but now that’s the west (game) and sony (hardware)
- they had the best gameplay, but everyone is catching up, from indie to AAA
- they had the better story, but now cinematic game have mature to not be corridor anymore and start blending with gameplay
- they drove innovation, but indie is stealing that thunder big time, so even their innovation is just one in many that do equivalent or better, or more interesting (looks at that interview where miyamoto lament they could have done minecraft, duh!), and needing innovation start to feel desperate (star fox zero) or under used (skyward sword do nothing beyond the first bokoblin and boss with sword 1:1).
- they had the quirky artstyle, the indie strike again here
- they still have strong brand, but fan work is starting to concurrence that, and they start to fade, only to remain nostalgic reference (where is your god now metroid, what about fzero?), even their big brand start to show sign of fatigue and desperation …
Nintendo use to overpromise and overdeliver, but now they are like an old warrior you can’t put past him the glory of his former day and still thinks he can fight like the vigorous youngster, sure they lack experiences and are are sometimes clumsy, but they compensate with a lot of vitality and enthusiasm where the old warrior have only pride remaining, and sometimes that pride is misplaced.
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What are some “better stories” of Nintendo?
I mean, I loved Metroid Fusion, but they aren’t really known for strong story content. Or am I wrong?
@neoshaman we need to rewind this way back before controllers… Nintendo game design… before cutting edge… back to level design.
So Half-Life… never played it. lol I’ll have to check it out to find specifics. I’d guess if the level design is so darn good it is because they focused a lot on it, iterated through play testing & refinement until it was the best they could get or at least achieved the goal they had in mind.
Sorry Eternal I will just refer you to the metroid video of “the geek critique” and backstory behind donkey kong arcade creation … And point at all those timeline theory that plague zelda fandom didn’t spawned from fine air (although there is a huge part of improvisation over the ages), nintendo never practice in your face storytelling ever, when they did they failed (other m).
Back on topic, I learned that discussing design on game and game dev forums is a difficult proposition, because if a game have blow your mind what it did is good right? But being able to articulate and deconstruct why it blew their mind and deconstructing the structure makes people angry for some reason. Liking things and preferences is okay, but the focus shouldn’t be agreeing or dismissing without demonstrating if design is the subject.
For example: I was non plus by half life, why? well because I played golden eye before and it’s another legendary game, they were develop roughly at the same time though golden eye was one year early. Both where effectively design through close iteration, Valve invented a specific process for it call the “cabale”. It’s unlikely that one influence the other in any way. So the thing of golden eye vs half life is which one was your point of entry to this new phase of the genre, as both where innovative but also had overlapping ideas. Most notably the need to reload and realistic weapon drop and setting where in both title, and “a cinematic” approach to fps was also a focus, though implemented differently.
The difference is in gameplay aesthetics, half life was basically starting with the prototypical walking simulation, in which slow and mundane things were done before the action kicked, in it was done for the so called “immersion”, and it was done in way we hadn’t seen before.
Though the heavily script design was done before by duke nukem (ground shaking and floor splitting as you progress, scene triggering, etc … which were in doom in some degree less), the type of atmosphere duke nukem had were just an evolution of doom with more personality, so the shift of tone of half life to something more serious and grounded make it more impactful. Half life did it in it level design by having an almost seamless stream of arena and linear corridor, I don’t remember it having much backtracking like the key in doom. The pacing where also way slower to let atmosphere kick in.
Golden eye meanwhile approach the level in a more game like progression of discrete level, but intro and exit scenes of level were direct transition to each others most of the time, and all in level scene were gameplay a bit similar to what half life did but with a broader cast of character from the movie. Also levels where little objective based sandbox to experiment in, which tied in nicely in the difficulty system. Basically the lower difficulty were the same level with less objective to complete, but the objective were still there, just not activated for completion, and higher difficulty only activate after completing lower one.
This added to the sense of place to first play, it felt like real place with “unnecessary” non gameplay part, it let’s you explore at your own pace and familiarize with it. Then they added more objective (or constraints) that reveal more of the story, make the unnecessary place mandatory but more importantly you already know the place, now you have to and can strategize, culminating with the highest difficulty setting with no new objective but a time limit that completely makes you rethink how to evaluate the level. Every level play differently and appeal to different gameplay structure.
This sandbox nature combined with the AI of golden eye made every level its own puzzle, the degree of noise you make attract AI to their source, so you have to think when and where to shoot, it has stealth elements, so you have to carefully think of where you are and scrutinize the environment, and they played a lot with line of sight in their level. You have to think to how many enemy there is and how they are equipped (they lob grenade at you before half life did it), you have to think which weapon to use at which time and you pick enemy’s. There were a lot of way to do each level, and the difficulty system not only encourage you to do so, but actually trained you to do it. This game was closer in philosophy to a simplified deus ex with actual good control a no rpg elements.
At core, golden eye was more of an adventure game with discrete chapiter than half life, it ask to stop and think, to assess the entire situation and each level is basically its own puzzle. Half life is more of an adventure movie, you press on from set piece to set pieces with careful management of tone and pacing in a seamless experience, depending on which one you prefer is best level design to you. For myself I prefer golden eye because it has much more design variation to play with level.
They are still product of their time and playing them now can be difficult to a novice without enough information, especially golden eyes as it happen before standardization of control (though play in solitaire (control mode 1.3) no auto aim, game was one of the first to have localized damage and one of the first to have headshot, auto aim go for chest, so it was balanced to not give better advantage, the game DO support two analog! with two gamepad! so on emulation you might get something closer to modern shooter by mapping it accordingly!).
Now I would like someone to pick half life apart.
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Yeah, sorry for taking it further off, and thanks for the reference.