Quick Look: Unfinished: Nuclear Throne 10/16/2013

Nah man but at least I pay for a membership if I wanna go on an ill-conceived tirade about a genre I care deeply about. Which I've done when people for some reason compare games to God of War instead of Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden.

They even said "or at least a time when things are LABELED as roguelikes".

Also Cyanide and Happiness is a terrible comic, hth.

e: oh the cereal guy isn't from C&H, it's just a meme. Which is even worse.

Sad day when barbaric internet toughs make fun of self-proclaimed video game authority figures.

is it really being a "barbaric internet tough" when I tried to explain reasoning of a casual roguelike fan to him, and was met with maybe the most pretentious thing I've read on this site?

GUYS, AS A MEMBER OF THE COOK SERVE DELICIOUS COMMUNITY,

I feel like we're running into the same debate with "roguelikes" as we did with "RPGs" back when games like Call of Duty were first putting experience bars and level-ups in their military-shoot-faces games.

I think the compromise we reached was to call those new features "RPG elements," because it's clear that Call of Duty is not a full-on RPG, no matter how crazy you want to be about arguing semantics, but managing a character build and leveling up is nonetheless derived from the RPG genre.

So I think we should just call procedurally generated levels and starting over when you die "roguelike elements" and leave it at that. That way, if a game like Dungeons of Dredmor comes out, we can call it a full-on roguelike and have that still be a useful description.

Also, that World 1 music in Nuclear Throne is so good but I don't know why it ever slows down because you certainly never stop shooting dudes so it should just be fully balls out forever

this game seems badass

I think you misunderstood the tone of my post.

@larrydavis said:

I'm pretty sure invoking your gold medal to win an internet fight is exactly not the thing the staff had in mind when they conceived of it. I don't care; all I care about is getting my point across, and if you feel like resorting to silly nonsense to get one up, all the better.

And by the way, 'pretentious', in 2013, is about the most meaningless word you can throw at someone. You're basically saying 'man, you think too much about this thing, it doesn't matter to me'.

The camera in this game gives me motion sickness.

@kwang2000: Maybe, I'm not sure how you meant it. Other dude's being mega combative and simultaneously dismissive, though. It's kinda fascinating.

@angrighandi: Yeah this is what I meant, I also don't think many people are actually calling games like these "roguelikes".

No, I'm pretty sure what they had in mind was encouraging people to pay for things they enjoy instead of starting dumb shitfights in the comments about a genre's definition. And it does provide a pretty quick indication of whose comments can be easily ignored.

If ranting about how some genre is being DEFILED by people ascribing it to other games it maybe doesn't apply to, 30 years after its inception, isn't pretentious, I'm not entirely sure what is. What you did is pretty much its exact definition.

Subscriber elitism. What a friendly and inclusive community you have here. I'm not the one cursing, getting frustrated, or throwing around personal insults because someone disagrees with me. I'm just making my point. Honestly I think you're being quite reasonable, when you aren't dismissing me out of hand for not paying the website or whatever other silliness you can think up.

You're not being reasonable, even when you aren't dismissing me out of hand for saying "shit" on a website founded by Big Jeffrey "Fuck" Gerstmann.

e: the "easily ignored" bit actually wasn't about you, it was for the people just yelling FUCK BRAD AT GAMES PATRICK EAT SHIT or whatever.

That's a pretty standard arrangement for Early Access games, as far as I can tell. Not saying it's good, but it's not uncommon.

Wow, this is really, really roguelike. Haven't seen a roguelike so rogue-like like this in a while. Looks great!

I've been thinkin about this game every so often since Patrick played it. The style and that music really stuck with me. Needless to say I was glad when the decided to make it a game proper. It's the only early access game to tempt me, but I think I'll wait for a release (or at least until the game gets closer to being full).

"I want to know what 'pop pop' is" -Brad

The mere fact that you call making love "pop pop" tells me you're not ready.

The folks that make Wasteland contacted them and asked em to because people might think it's a spinoff or something, so they changed it. Sounds like it was an amicable thing.

somebody seems a little butthurt.

This game is a direct sequel to Rogue, right?

The music (in world 1, at least) just made we want to watch Kings of Power 4Billion% yet again.

this looks freakin cool

@mdnthrvst: congratz bro, someone from staffed laughed so much from your stupidity they posted it on the official facebook! Your a role model for your 'roguelike community'

Edit: To be clear there are more than just one person being stupid here.

"Aww i didn't even see that guy! FUDGE" - Brad

That moment was almost jarring to me. Brad normally has the dirtiest mouth of anyone on staff here (though that might not be fair, given that there's an entire video series dedicated to breaking him).

What do you expect, God of War vastly outsold DMC, and beside games that purely focus on combat like Bayonetta and Ninja Gaiden, the industry hasn't been influenced by DMC since God of War ripped the original. Meanwhile the industry has moved toward a more "cinematic expericence" because of God of War 2. Can I ask you; now that the industry is inspired by Naughty Dog and has moved forward, do we still have to reference God of War 2? Is it really necessary to applaud the PlayStation 2 era's Devil May Cry games whenever someone will one-up Bayonetta?

I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that so many games on Steam are "Early Access" at this point in time, but luckily this looks fully-formed and fun enough to throw down some money for. Thanks Brad and Vinny!

The more you know! Thanks for that factoid. I had wondered why they changed the name as well. Luckily "Nuclear Throne" is a rad name for a video game too.

@chose: I meant back when God of War (and that Third Person Combo Action genre or whatever you'd call it) was a fairly new thing, man. Obviously by now DMC has fallen so far out of the public consciousness it isn't reasonable to expect everyone to draw direct parallels to it.

Now, yeah, I would say something is more like Bayonetta but it doesn't really matter because the genre has permeated so many other things. Which, gosh, is like what roguelikes are doing!

FUN!

Vinny has been trying to clean up his act (for obvious reasons), so maybe it's been rubbing off on the others.

Isn't a roguelike supposed to be turn-based?

I agree completely. Which is why I've personally started saying these games have "rogue elements".
I think it's a proper term, and alludes to the aforementioned "RPG elements" in many ways.
Just like the fact that games having RPG elements were not RPGs... If somebody is not making a game like Dwarf Fortress, Castle of the Winds, Nethack, etc... but are including level randomization and permadeath, I would simply say the game has "rogue elements".
I definitely suggest more people use this term as "roguelites" sounds way too similar and is easy for the uninformed person to get confused.

The thing about games like this and even Rogue Legacy is that I just don't have that drive to play through guaranteed defeats. I can handle losing and having to start over, I just can't handle losing constantly. I lose interest in replaying the same world, randomly generated or not.

Oh no, the ro-gu-e-like-community will come to avenge our wrong-doing!

Man this game looks fun! The music was pretty great too.

Is that the music from Borderlands?

I'd play Hot Justice: Miami Heat.

This game looks alright. They certainly have some crazy characters there.

@strathy said:

Funnily enough, I was just about to point people in the direction of the rad little soundtrack that popped up when this game was still bumping around as a jam title.

I am instantly in love with this soundtrack.

I'm the same way. I tried the Binding of Issac, and also couldn't play it for that long.

Nothing wrong with it, just not my style of game.

Maybe that makes us babies? Naaaaaaah.

For fuck's sake, comment section people.

Anyhoo, this game looks great. I love a good *genre name deleted so as not to offend The Roguelike Community™ or any affiliates*.

Wow, this is a damned good game, although not without it's issues. I downloaded this on Steam earlier today, and there were two big problems I found with it: the necessity for an 'options' menu as I generally work night-shift and live in an apartment building, so headphones are a must, and with no in-game ability to adjust the sound levels (on an admittedly fantastic soundtrack), I found myself having to alt-tab out to turn it down from the deafening levels being pushed through my ear-holes. The only other issue I had was the lack of a display of the controls. It took me several (again, admittedly very fun) lives before I even knew how to change weapons. All in all, it's a fantastic little game that's well worth the price, and since it's still 'early access,' the mentioned problems will probably be sorted out by its full release.

Everyone arguing about rogue likes is quite douche like.

Has anyone even pointed out that the developer calls this a roguelike-like and not a roguelike? (Translator's note: roguelike-like is synonymous with roguelite, which is what Rogue Legacy was referred to as)

Definitely picking this up for Vita when it comes out if only for the sound track alone.

Got a serious case of Throne Butt over here.

Semantics.

Bahaha

I don't get this guy, is he the creator or Rogue or Dwarf Fortress? The official community manager of the "roguelike community"? It's right there in the name: rogueLIKE. If you think that's a bad term, shouldn't have coined it.

Y.V. is Young Venus from their FPS Gun Godz

@drewbert@vinny The video cuts to black for about 10 seconds at 6:58 into the video if you play it at low quality, at least in HTML 5 mode.

The "look at mah goldmedal.gif!" class warfare was a nice touch for this incredibly unproductive thread. Good work, men!

So.....

Game looks fun!