Rogueism

with that said, Sierra games always lagged Lucasarts.

xpost

no, i do not like HORRID titular puns! we all have our own pun threashold, past which men fear to tread against an insanity not achievable without truly comprehending in full the awesome pervese nature of a Cthulhu-like being.

okay, maybe i've had too many beers tonight...

100% linear, strategy guide publisher's wet dream, and highly dependent on graphics quality for the experience.

FREQUENT DEATH does not a roguelike make

Portable systems are perfect for rogueist gaming, anyway. Why not more randomly generated maps with hundreds of weird creatures for the GBA/DS?

I think rogueism also does not accept level grind, instead, you just go hunting for more and better equipment and figure out better ways to use it.

http://bastardpenguins.com/shtml/pics/dragonwarrior/slime.gif

He wants a hug!

you control the game with his dangly bits

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v418/PavingMAntis/01.jpg

we got some HATS now, muthafuckas!

"Rogueism" as described above doesn't necessarily equal complexity so much as difficulty. Things can be really, really difficult (and frustrating) without being very in depth (Ever played Ghosts N Goblins?). Also, lots of later RPGs were very complex and sophisticated (Materia? Conditional turn-based battle systems?). I'm not saying they were always good in every instance, but they weren't EASY--it's not like you sat around mashing buttons between cutscenes as some people who have never played them imply. Strategy is indispensible in any truly "fun" RPG.

Also, I think level grind is inevitable in RPGs, at least to some extent. 2D RPGs were not immune to this either, though perhaps it is a matter of degree. Wandering around "hunting for more and better equipment" sounds a lot like grind to me, at least when you spend long enough doing it.

yup. soooo many memories of doing this even back in the Ultima days.

i wonder when Lord British is actually going to back a decent american game again, anyway...

i mean moria was pretty straightforward.

I would say the depth with which rogue-like games (again, specifically Nethack) leverage the inventory aspect is much more a part of the identity of the category than anti save game trendencies or permadeath (which are both really the same thing, aren't they?). Sure this is true to some extent of all RPGs of any sort, but while many console RPGs for example assign each character a specific weapon and armor type which have very clear-cut levels of quality (rainbow blade is better than steel is better than copper), and arrive at relatively pre-defined points during the course of the game (you start with the wood sword and never get the steel sword before getting the copper one), the player of a rogue-like game has to develop a deeper understanding of their inventory relative to a lot of other game factors. Part of playing the game is learning not only which armors grant you a better AC, but balancing that against the weight of the armor, special resistances, tendency to rust, stuff like that; and this is true for every single type of item in the game!
(really though, I don't know why we have to talk about "rogue-like". It seems to me that no other rogue-like game comes within leagues of Nethack in any aspect. It's just better than all the rest.)

I think Zangband is good and some of the nethack clones are also.

The most roguist thing I have ever seen isn't Nethack at all, but rather this faq for a now-abandoned MMORPG - check out the answers to the pvp, spawning and gods questions!

Kinda like Metroid, then, HUH.

Diablo and games like Fire Emblem or FF:Tactics are 100% linear or very nearly so - is extensive exploration really required to be rogueist? I can't figure it out because the linearity of Sierra adventure games really ticks me off, but the games above don't. The Baldur's Gate game I played through on PS2 was totally linear and pretty difficult at times, especially some of the "puzzles."

I'm not sure if I appreciate sheer difficulty as being Rogueist, though. I think perhaps the difference should lie in the puzzle solving. Dragon Warrior games are completely Non-Rogueist because seriously people it's nothing but level grind and a-button mashing. Earthbound/Mother is probably the exception. Diablo vs. Dragon Warrior, though - wtf is the difference besides realtime combat?

I'm way too fuckin' ontological for my own good.

I think Dan's point about inventory weighage-up vs copper->steel->rainbow stuff is useful here but like Diablo is hardly the paragon of roguishness anyway! Linearity seems like kinda a red herring to me, I mean both extreme linearity and extreme non-linearity strike me as potentially positive values, in rogueism...

do the "perfect run" movies circulating on the net represent rougeism?

pls tell me if you do!!

Completely, if they were in fact made in one single take. I'm sure a lot of people take their best times from seperate levels and paste them together into one video as if it were playing through as normal, though I have no proof of this.

and I've read the whole thread... sorry guys

encrypted looks quite gorgeous imo. lol ilx wont let me put the tag in