You haven't seen my mother.

Definitely worth the time to learn, though. It's fun to strike fear into the opponent's heart as they spend the entire game trying to run away only to have you swoop down on them from above.

I don't see how this could be seen as Wonderland.

I guess if you enjoy masocore games, then this is right up your alley. I'll just go back to Demon's Souls where I can last more than 30 seconds a go. Played for 7 minutes and now it's relegated to the backlog until after my enjoyment of Reigns (for a 3rd of the price) dwindles to nothing.

No, apparently you have. I never said it makes them worse. You're the one who keeps trying to see things in those terms.

You're missing the point. Again. If I'm playing chess for fun, and another person plays proffesionally, then at least we are playing the same game. There is some room for comparison. But "computer games" is somewhat more broad a cathegory than that. How does it make any sense to consider yourself a better player than someone who does not even play the same kind of games? I'm likely way better at adventure games or puzzle games than people who don't play them. Woohoo, truly, I have triumphed. Do proffesional swimmers compare their skills to those of other proffesional swimmers, or do they boast having better swimming skills than doctors and violinists do?

It's absurd to compete against people who do not compete against you. That's like if there are two kids kids walking home, one is picking up chestnuts along the way and the other one runs home as fast as he can and proclaims "first".

For me, the game page isn't showing up (look at screenshot). Maybe the CSS is not loading?

It was a Brady Bunch reference.

this. I cant even tell what blobs are the enemies and what is the hero, antihero whatever

seems like a good one, thanks!

It doesn't. Therefore, more granularity is needed. Who is better: a Starcraft 2 pro, or a Heartstone pro?
It's a meaningless comparison. Furthermore, I sincerely doubt many people would make it, since it's evidently comparing apples to oranges. For there to exist valid comparisons, you need to have criteria for comparison. Perhaps you could have trans-genre measurements, like APM, but without constraints, that would just boil down to the speed of potentially meaningless clicks. It makes a lot more sense to compare people who play the same game, especially if you can make them play against one another.
There's also threshold crossing. Reaching Platinum rank can be satisfying for those who have such expectations of themselves. If one has the ambition to beat a game, however simple or difficult, that can also be a source of enjoyment or satisfaction. Self-imposed challenges can make things more interesting, as can speed runs. Sometimes the comparison is simply "I have beaten the game as opposed to not having beaten it". Roughly assessing the difficulty it would pose for an average player can tell a person how impressive of a feat that was. People who want to push themselves further and further on, say, treadmills are also in a competition of sorts; they are pushing their own stamina as far as they can. Once again - they may seek comparisons, and there's nothing wrong with that. Sure - if they insult those who do not seek competition, that's rude, but attitude and aptitude are not one and the same.

"It's all about picking your fights, son. I may not be the best gynecologist among gynecologists or the best judo fighter among judo fighters, but I'm damn likely the best judo fighter among gynecologists and the best gynecologist among judo fighters" - I have literally been told this ;P. Other than that - yes, it does make more sense to have context-aware comparisons, and I have never suggested otherwise.

Technically one could claim that the rascal won in a game of his invention, according to his own rules, against an opponent who wasn't aware he was playing. It's not illogical, it's simply silly.
Comparing someone who doesn't play FPSes to someone who does so competitively is also questionable. We could, I guess, wonder how the unskilled non-competitive person would fare, but I can only see this brought up in conversation as "I could take a guy from the street who has never played an FPS in his life, and he'd probably do better than (pro player name here)!". The neutral guy serves as a point of reference, not the target of skill assessment.

Here's the tricky part: counterfactuals. If a large percentage of player population beats a given game, does that make the game easy? Not necessarily - perhaps self-selection takes plays, and only people with a penchant for this sort of thing stand up to the plate. Can I be proud of getting places in, say, TIS-100, even if I do worse than other TIS-100 players? It's tough to gauge how far people would get in such a game, if they were to play it rather than not. It's also a matter of them not being "into" the game, and thus lacking the motivation to get through it. In spite of this, my intuition is that I can feel accomplished for having the persistence and wits to get through the game, and doing the Dunning-Kruger effect justice by assuming that the average gamer/person would likely struggle. Should I compare myself to other programmers? Perhaps. Is there, however, any merit to being proud of having some coding skills as compared to those who do not, even if they are not trying at any point and thus have no such ambition? I'd argue that while this cannot be held against them, it can give me comfort. If I'm good at something or know something, I think that's good and better than not knowing it. I know, of course, that other people know and are good at other things, and that's good too. If I learn a foreign language, I'm better at that language than people who have never bothered learning it. I don't blame them, because being better at something doesn't mean one should degrade those who are worse, especially since there are so many things to be good at; there is such a huge web of potential competence and knowledge. Others exist here merely as a reference point. In the academia, I fancy the prestige of getting a doctorate, and believe it to be a milestone, yet one that would elevate me without lowering others. If their objective position is the same, should I treat them with different respect just because I have "moved"? I don't think so. Neither are they obligated to hold me in any higher regard unless they value academic advances.
I guess there is simply a huge disconnect between relative skill levels and what you perceive as appropriate behavior. I can see how the issue can be seen as complicated, however @_@.

Nah, can't do that. That would make us a lousy angry mob. But we may exchange the pitchforks for other farmer tools or torches if you don't like the pitchforks.

It looks like it was a fun game indeed. A decade ago I would probably have played it too. Not today, but only because my backlog is large enough with prettier games that are (probably) just as fun.

Okay, I've never played Soldat but a quick google image search shows me graphics that appeals more to me than Butcher does. I probably wouldn't play either because I don't like the genre that much, but in my opinion butcher was a step back in beauty, even if it supposedly has more effort put into the background than soldat.

If they want to go pixel-art that's fine with me, but not that way. Look at La Mulana's screenshots for example, if we are to keep a comparison with another 2-D platformer. You can easily identify everything on screen, even background objects. Even a single stone. That's leagues better IMHO, and it doesn't need much extra work from a reasonable artist. That level of art would definitely make them a lot more sales (supposing in both versions the other elements like audio and gameplay are good).

Well yeah, you've gotta combine the player's imagination and your graphics to reach the visual impression you want the player to experience, but there's a limit to how much you can demand of the player's imagination. Otherwise why don't we make all our games looking like Atari's Adventure?

And we just can't let all the pixels to be scraped off of Poland's streets.


I have. The cornbread can't possibly have insulted her nearly enough :-p

Hard, huh? So far it feels like a "Normal" mode of difficulty than "Hard" considering it's kind of generous with ammo, health and shield drops. Guess I might do another playthrough on "HARDER" once I'm done on "HARD".

I've pissed patterns in the snow that look better than this game.

I've played that over a decade and a half ago... Not much of a "game", really. Mostly a sandbox with stickmen ;P.

Huh... You are absolutely right. This is pixelated, but in a remarkably different way. The details are largely missing.
I guess other pixel-games are like anime chibis - very deformed but still detailed. The graphics here are, seemingly "to scale", proportional, but thus devoid of detail.
I can still appreciate it, but it is indeed different.

While designers in big studios light their cigars with spare textures and let their children play with skyboxes, indie devs pawn their heirlooms just to afford enough color red for all the blood and gore. They scrounge and refurbish pixels as much as they can manage, hardly able to afford new ones. If they can find some among the filth littering their rough cobblestone streets, they bring them home, wipe them off and make what use of them they can. If anything, I am in awe of their blocky craftsmanship ;P.

A bit too pixely to be readable, for me...