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Dinocide dino6/24/2023 ![]() ![]() Make just a few simple mistakes and you’re kicked back to the map, losing whichever gear you may have brought into your last attempt. Yes, there was a small hunger mechanic in Wonder Boy, but it wasn’t as punishing. Your health and hunger are also basically the same, so when you take a hit you become hungrier. When missing a jump kills you only because you no longer have enough time to reach the next piece of food, it’s frustrating. Blame it on preference if you’d like, but I really prefer movement that has just a hint of momentum to it.Īnother issue that really hampers the experience is the whole hunger mechanic. Games like Super Meat Boy and Super Mario Bros are two examples of what a great jump feels like, and I really wish the dev team had gone more towards this style. ![]() Dinocide’s jump isn’t terrible, but when the main part of your game is jumping, it should feel great. Now, it can be difficult to program a jump from scratch that feels good one that has a proper arc and doesn’t feel too floaty. There are a few things holding this retro 8-bit platformer back, and number one on my list of problems is easily the jump. Maybe two years from now Dinocide will be the defining platformer of this generation, but I’ll never be able to forget about the time it was sold for $10 and I played a blatantly unfinished game.“While there are some similarities between Dinocide and Wonder Boy, I’m disappointed to say the amount of fun to be had wasn’t one of them.” No amount of updates can fix a bad first impression. Many people argue that early access isn’t a bad thing since the game will come out in full eventually and nobody is forcing you to buy it in a beta, but the fact of the matter is if something is available for sale, it should be up to standards. It’s understandable that a developer would want to get their product out on the market as soon as possible given the excitement that goes into making a game, but rushing a game to launch never helped anybody. The indie scene is constantly pumping out great concepts that the AAA studios wouldn’t even dare risk touch, but the trend of selling unfinished games is far too prevalent. There is no reason that an early access release should take precedent over a beta release. Demos have done plenty of good for the gaming community and have been a staple for decades. If the developer wants to give players a taste of the game, they should release a demo. A game NEEDS to be finished before it’s released. And when I think about games like Darkest Dungeon, I so desperately want to say, “yes, this completely justifies unfinished games being released to the public,” but I simply can’t abide to that. It was a blissful experience that only got me excited for the full game. Last month, I reveled in Darkest Dungeon¸ going on expeditions for hours and enjoying myself, fully knowing the game was still early access. Thankfully, Dinocide isn’t the gold standard of beta games. In a way, I was the playtester the playtester who paid $10 to find bugs and be miserable for 3 hours. It was shoddy, filled with bugs, and serious need of playtesting. I have no doubt that Dinocide would become a good game eventually, but the state it was being sold in was FAR from acceptable. The more time I spent in this universe that looked like it was made in MS Paint, the more upset I became with the thought that the developer was making money off of this. I recently played Dinocide, a dinosaur-themed NES inspired platformer on Steam that’s still in beta and it really got me thinking is it really acceptable to charge somebody for an incomplete game even if they know it? I knew going into it that the game wasn’t done, but it must have been close, right? Why else would a developer put their game up on Steam?Īs I played through Dinocide, I was greeted to constant screen tearing, bizarre and completely out of place lag, and clunky controls that made me question a mass extinction couldn’t happen sooner. Ten years ago, if someone were to tell me I could buy an incomplete game and continually get updates for it I’d call them crazy.
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