What's good stage design?

[Brazillian Cara]

They don't seem to make platformers anymore, though. Which is a tragedy, because I would say that the genre can benefit from new technology quite possibly more than any other type of game.

Megaman X8.

[Baba O'Reily]

Good level design? Exploring and getting rewarded for it. A level based on where you are, like Quicksand in a desert zone and enemies with drills or spikes in an underground level. Puzzles and obstacles unique to where you are, and not just in the casino level to make it look different, without taking out the core mechanics of the gameplay.

That's why Shadow will suck anyways: SEGA only listens to Teenage fangirls who looooove one of their characters personally.

Question is, do you want the game to suck? I'm hoping it will at least be better than Heroes.

People want it to suck so that they can feel vindicated.

[Cuckooguy]

Megaman X8.

I'm a little sick of Megaman X. I mean, I beat Rockman 1-8, Rockman & Forte, and Rockman X 1-6, and after that, I've never had a reason to go back to the X series. I mean, do you think X8 is good enough to renew my faith in the Megaman X series?

[Double-S-]

It took you up to X6 to get tired of it?

[Cuckooguy]

Actually, it took up to X4 to get tired of it, but I played 5 and 6 anyway.

[Ngangbius]

They don't seem to make platformers anymore, though. Which is a tragedy, because I would say that the genre can benefit from new technology quite possibly more than any other type of game.

What about Psychonauts? It's a platformer that I heard very good things about.

[G.Silver]

I really enjoyed Psychonauts but it's a Tim Schaffer adventure game trapped in a platformer shell. The gameplay is not particularly outstanding and the "platform" difficulty is very easy. The real draw to the game is the weird settings and puzzles, the fact that you platform your way through them is secondary. It's excellent, but it has the soul of a point-and-click adventure.

[Neo Yi]

I'm planning to give Psychonauts a try once I have the time to go to the local mall.
~Neo

[Locit]

My definition of good 3D design is not including large sections that have you careening down thin strips of land or grind rails flanked by giant pits of doom on either side. In fact, bottomless pits in 3D games tend to get on my nerves in general.

[Cuckooguy]

You know the worst bottomless pit stage I have ever encountered in the history of games? That level in Super Mario World 2 where, like, the whole stage was a bottomless pit (one of the later levels), and the fact those white puffy things that drugged Yoshi were in the stage didn't help much either. I believe it was World 6-3: Beware the Spinning Logs. After spending about a week on that, I couldn't play it for months, but later I finally beat it.

[Green Gibbon!]

Are the Xbox and PC versions of Psychonauts comparable? I've glanced at the game a couple of times, but it seems to me that it has the "soul" of a PC game, if that makes sense to anyone. Like it's something that was created for PC, then someone at Majesco said, "Hey we better do a console version, too."

I wonder if my Xbox even still plays games. I haven't used it for that purpose since Ninja Gaiden.

On the topic of platformers, I ordered Saru Getchu 3 despite my better judgment. As much as I love the Ape games, though, they're not really platformers in the strictest sense, the second one even less so than the first. We shall see what we shall see.

[Brazillian Cara]

Megaman X8.

I'm a little sick of Megaman X. I mean, I beat Rockman 1-8, Rockman & Forte, and Rockman X 1-6, and after that, I've never had a reason to go back to the X series. I mean, do you think X8 is good enough to renew my faith in the Megaman X series?

It isn't an easy game; with the exception of two annoying vehicle levels, it's completely 2-D; all three characters are well balanced; and the maverick battle theme is so beautiful that will make you cry.

[G.Silver]

Are the Xbox and PC versions of Psychonauts comparable? I've glanced at the game a couple of times, but it seems to me that it has the "soul" of a PC game, if that makes sense to anyone. Like it's something that was created for PC, then someone at Majesco said, "Hey we better do a console version, too."

I'm fairly sure it was always meant for Xbox, supposedly Microsoft was going to publish it before the developers got fed up with all their focus group-oriented requirements and looked for a publisher who wouldn't make any content-changing demands. The PC-game look is probably more to do with the fact that the development team has always done PC games in the past.

I can't imagine that the PC version is much better than the Xbox, because the game just looks so good. It even makes use of some of that fancy "Normal Mapping" stuff that makes light effect the surface of texture maps, which is, as I understand it, all the rage on PC lately. I went with the Xbox version because if the PC version does look better, I wouldn't be able to run it.

[Esrever]

The PC version is actually worse. Not MASSIVELY worse, but there are some minor graphical and control issues that aren't present in the Xbox version.

Not that I've PLAYED the PC version.... but I've seen that mentioned in like nine or ten seperate reviews.