By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Gaming - Will God of War and For Honor cause a resurgence in AAA hack and slash games?

 

?

No 53 55.79%
 
Yes 42 44.21%
 
Total:95
GOWTLOZ on 07 July 2016
bigtakilla said:
GOWTLOZ said:

God of War on PS4 sets a dangerous precedent for the action game genre... even more than last time.

Apparently GOW has always been the bane of the genre according to this youtuber. Even though all games in the series have been such incredibly high quality games. How am I supposed to take him seriously when he clearly has never liked the series and probably wouldn't ever like it no matter what?

That isn't the point though, the point to take away is if this game lends itself to the hack and slash genre where he clearly points out that with the camera glued to the characters right shoulder and the weaving in and out of scripted segments that this does in fact steer away from being a hack and slash (where he even provides video examples to provide examples of his statements), but let's throw all that out the window because he doesn't seem fond of the games...

Essentially I get where you are trying to go as far as what he says about his personal feelings of how good this game will/will not be. It seems as if he is disappointed in the fact that it is not hack and slash, and some people may prefer that it isn't, but he isn't wrong about how the game itself no longer lends itself to the hack and slash genre, and in turn uproots itself and reboots under some new "feels" interactive cinematic experience (at least as far as the footage shows).

Okay I hadn't seen the video and while he could have a valid point, the scripted segments and camera does not mean its not a hack and slash game, but that its a different and fresh take on the genre. That said no one can be sure of which genre it belongs to, as we have only seen ten minutes footage designed to show us the changes they are bringing to the series.

I don't think this is any more of an interactive cinematic experience than TLOU, and neither go too far for cinematics like games such as Heavy Rain do. That's what I would call a cinematic experience, not a game like this that clearly has gameplay.



Around the Network
bigtakilla on 07 July 2016
GOWTLOZ said:
bigtakilla said:

That isn't the point though, the point to take away is if this game lends itself to the hack and slash genre where he clearly points out that with the camera glued to the characters right shoulder and the weaving in and out of scripted segments that this does in fact steer away from being a hack and slash (where he even provides video examples to provide examples of his statements), but let's throw all that out the window because he doesn't seem fond of the games...

Essentially I get where you are trying to go as far as what he says about his personal feelings of how good this game will/will not be. It seems as if he is disappointed in the fact that it is not hack and slash, and some people may prefer that it isn't, but he isn't wrong about how the game itself no longer lends itself to the hack and slash genre, and in turn uproots itself and reboots under some new "feels" interactive cinematic experience (at least as far as the footage shows).

Okay I hadn't seen the video and while he could have a valid point, the scripted segments and camera does not mean its not a hack and slash game, but that its a different and fresh take on the genre. That said no one can be sure of which genre it belongs to, as we have only seen ten minutes footage designed to show us the changes they are bringing to the series.

I don't think this is any more of an interactive cinematic experience than TLOU, and neither go too far for cinematics like games such as Heavy Rain do. That's what I would call a cinematic experience, not a game like this that clearly has gameplay.

By the sheer way the mechanics of a hack and slash work, the camera position pretty much does mean it isn't going to be a hack and slash. If you can't see to the sides or behind the character, and if the character is taking a third of the screen the combat mechanics simply aren't going to work, it pretty much assures the game is changing genres to an action adventure. Yet again, whether it is a bad thing or not is up to personal tastes, but it really can't be argued.



MTZehvor on 07 July 2016
GOWTLOZ said:
MTZehvor said:
Here's perhaps a clearer example of what defines a hack and slash, between games technically in the same franchise.

Take the Legend of Zelda and its spin off, Hyrule Warriors. Mainline Legend of Zelda games do not focus around hack and slash combat. There's no emphasis on combos, minimal variety in melee attacks, switching weapons isn't seamless, and Link generally doesn't move very fast. None of these are inherently bad things; and Zelda's combat fits a game tending more towards exploration like it is.

With that said, take Hyrule Warriors. There's a heavy emphasis on combos, a number of different attack strings you can pull off (though it's a lot less than something like DMC or Bayonetta), and characters move extremely quickly. There's a sense of flashiness to the combat that mainline Zelda titles don't focus on.

That's what really makes a hack and slash game, a hack and slash game. So far, from what we've seen (and admittedly, this could very well change if the E3 demo is unrepresentative of the finished product), God of War 4 doesn't fall into the latter category. Kratos seems pretty slow with the exception of his dodge move, and combat is far less about variety and combos and more about simply running up and mashing the attack button.

In the E3 demo of GOW we already saw axe melee, hand to hand melee, ice breaker, axe throw and lightning arrow attacks in ten minutes of gameplay. And did you see the guy with he controller mashing a single action button? I think I saw him using multiple buttons for some of the attacks.

In GOW games the first ten minutes usually do not have this much variety, as its through acquiring new weapons and upgrading your weapons that they allow for a lot of variety in attacks.

And this is where the keyword of "seamless" comes into play. The weapon switching in God of War 4, at least as it's been shown thus far, is not seamless. Plenty of games give you tons of weapons; even tons of melee weapons. Hell, the new Legend of Zelda lets you use whatever you could reasonably hit someone with as a melee weapon. That doesn't make it a hack and slash.

The question is whether the weapons can be seamlessly transitioned into each other. In something like Bayonetta 2 or DMC 3/4, if you want to switch to a different weapon, you press a button, and you are instantly wielding that weapon. In Wonderful 101, you draw a (usually) easy to draw symbol, and you're instantly wielding that weapon. Both of these styles can be used to pull off longer combos as well; you can be hitting an enemy with one weapon, change to another weapon, and continue that same combo from before. From what I've seen of GoW4, that isn't the case. Your fists can only be used after you chuck the axe, effectively discarding it as a weapon, and every combo I've seen pulled off consists entirely of one weapon.

As for the guy with the controller, assuming we're talking about the demo showed off in the press conference, I don't think the camera was ever zoomed in close enough to let us see what buttons he was pressing. Attacks don't seem to differ from each other in any discernable consistent way; it looks more like the continuation of a series of punches that you would find in a general brawler or something similar.



GOWTLOZ on 08 July 2016
MTZehvor said:
GOWTLOZ said:

In the E3 demo of GOW we already saw axe melee, hand to hand melee, ice breaker, axe throw and lightning arrow attacks in ten minutes of gameplay. And did you see the guy with he controller mashing a single action button? I think I saw him using multiple buttons for some of the attacks.

In GOW games the first ten minutes usually do not have this much variety, as its through acquiring new weapons and upgrading your weapons that they allow for a lot of variety in attacks.

And this is where the keyword of "seamless" comes into play. The weapon switching in God of War 4, at least as it's been shown thus far, is not seamless. Plenty of games give you tons of weapons; even tons of melee weapons. Hell, the new Legend of Zelda lets you use whatever you could reasonably hit someone with as a melee weapon. That doesn't make it a hack and slash.

The question is whether the weapons can be seamlessly transitioned into each other. In something like Bayonetta 2 or DMC 3/4, if you want to switch to a different weapon, you press a button, and you are instantly wielding that weapon. In Wonderful 101, you draw a (usually) easy to draw symbol, and you're instantly wielding that weapon. Both of these styles can be used to pull off longer combos as well; you can be hitting an enemy with one weapon, change to another weapon, and continue that same combo from before. From what I've seen of GoW4, that isn't the case. Your fists can only be used after you chuck the axe, effectively discarding it as a weapon, and every combo I've seen pulled off consists entirely of one weapon.

As for the guy with the controller, assuming we're talking about the demo showed off in the press conference, I don't think the camera was ever zoomed in close enough to let us see what buttons he was pressing. Attacks don't seem to differ from each other in any discernable consistent way; it looks more like the continuation of a series of punches that you would find in a general brawler or something similar.

There was more than just punching and swiping his axe. There was that ice breaker move we saw, the axe throw, and the arrow and it was in ten minutes of the game, there will be more attacks than shown here.



MTZehvor on 08 July 2016
GOWTLOZ said:
MTZehvor said:

And this is where the keyword of "seamless" comes into play. The weapon switching in God of War 4, at least as it's been shown thus far, is not seamless. Plenty of games give you tons of weapons; even tons of melee weapons. Hell, the new Legend of Zelda lets you use whatever you could reasonably hit someone with as a melee weapon. That doesn't make it a hack and slash.

The question is whether the weapons can be seamlessly transitioned into each other. In something like Bayonetta 2 or DMC 3/4, if you want to switch to a different weapon, you press a button, and you are instantly wielding that weapon. In Wonderful 101, you draw a (usually) easy to draw symbol, and you're instantly wielding that weapon. Both of these styles can be used to pull off longer combos as well; you can be hitting an enemy with one weapon, change to another weapon, and continue that same combo from before. From what I've seen of GoW4, that isn't the case. Your fists can only be used after you chuck the axe, effectively discarding it as a weapon, and every combo I've seen pulled off consists entirely of one weapon.

As for the guy with the controller, assuming we're talking about the demo showed off in the press conference, I don't think the camera was ever zoomed in close enough to let us see what buttons he was pressing. Attacks don't seem to differ from each other in any discernable consistent way; it looks more like the continuation of a series of punches that you would find in a general brawler or something similar.

There was more than just punching and swiping his axe. There was that ice breaker move we saw, the axe throw, and the arrow and it was in ten minutes of the game, there will be more attacks than shown here.

Again, I never said that there wouldn't be more attacks. That's not the point. A game can have 20 billion different attack moves, and as long as they can't be seamlessly stuck into combos, it isn't any more of a hack and slash than Cooking Mama. The point is whether or not these various moves can be put into combos, and as far as combos are concerned, we have only see various unabadated axe slices and punching after the axe has been thrown. The axe throw, the arrows, and the ground pound "ice breaker" move don't seem to be implementable into combos at all.

To put it another way; Skyrim probably has far more ways to simply attack an enemy than something like Devil May Cry 1. Inbetween magic, axes, swords, arrows, maces, knives, war hammers, and whatever else, there's far more "moves" than the limited arsenal of attacks avaliable at Dante's command in the original DMC. Yet DMC is classified as a hack and slash while Skyrim is not; because DMC's smaller variety of attacks can chain into each other and allow for combos, while the closest you can come to anything vaguely resembling a combo in Skyrim is running up to a person and mashing the primary attack button.

As a disclaimer, this isn't to say that Skyrim's style of gameplay is inherently worse. Not all games benefit from having combos. But in terms of hack and slash gameplay, if you don't have room for complex combos, especially today when on the fly weapon switching is basically the bare minimum in the genre, then chances are you're just not part of the genre. Nothing I've seen from God of War 4 makes it look like it's in that genre.