Rhythm games are the purest form of video game

Rhythm games are the purest form of video game.

Prove me wrong.

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I think one main reason why there are people who so deeply hate Final Fantasy 12 game mechanics is because it really goes to show how shallow the JRPG genre is in terms of choices. The game shows how little there is for the player to do when the basic act of attacking is assumed.

Likewise, I think the details of this post and responses show what the ultimate hatred is beyond the game mechanics of rhythm games -

Ultimately, the act of playing a video game is the act of trying to find the exact sequence of input and timing behind it to achieve the optimal result.

If the optimal result is X, then a typical game will allow choices A, B, C,... to allow the player to determine how they want to solve for X.

Rhythm games tell you that there is one equation and what the variables are, but the act of acquiring those variables is what is difficult.

I play IIDX and basically only IIDX, and one main reason for that beyond anything else is because I can still accept the IIDX keys and turntable as being some kind of "valid" form of playing music, where most anything else doesn't do anything for me at all. I tried playing Museca and SDVX and one credit was all I needed. I know I couldn't play a Miku game for more than 10 seconds without thinking "why in the hell am I even doing this?".

TLDR - I don't disagree with you, but I don't fail to understand where the disagreement could come from.

Puzzle games are more pure. The game asks you to accomplish exactly what is happening in the game itself: determining the solution to a puzzle. You are given a puzzle and asked to determine the solution, and the only interface is in communicating that solution to the game. There is no place where you are just entering commands for the game to solve the puzzle, or entering some commands and having the solution be created as a result.

Rhythm games, outside possibly the Taiko Drum games, don't involve you creating music. You are just tapping along to the beat or to a rhythm while the music plays along. They can be quite good at teaching rhythm or stressing certain parts of a song, but you are never going to be playing a guitar while playing Guitar Hero. You are never going to be singing when playing Project Diva.

I do enjoy rhythm games quite a bit for what they do, but if we are talking about "game purity", as in where what you are doing is in sync with what is happening in the game, then a good puzzle game is going to be a more direct parallel than even a great rhythm game.

>Rhythm games, outside possibly the Taiko Drum games, don't involve you creating music.

Rhythm games which are keysounded involve you creating music, because you create sounds by pressing the keys.

There are many rhythm games which are not keysounded and are indeed inferior experiences as a result.

>Rhythm games

They're just overly long QTEs.

They have the purest furries at least.

I see where you are trying to go but I'm not sure I agree about puzzle games being more pure. Puzzle games have one solution but (usually) multiple means of getting to that solution. Rhythm games have one "solution" and there's only one way to solve it (by successfully pressing the correct sequence of buttons at the right time).

But it also depends on what you mean by "pure" and if you think of it as having an uninterrupted as possible interface you are mostly right, but again it depends on the type of puzzle game.

I think OP means the rhythm games do all three of the following

>offer a challenge
>progress through player skill (rather than avatar strength like RPGs)
>reward higher skill, offering incentive to keep playing

These three facets are at the core of a lot of arcade-type games, including some puzzle games like Tetris.

I would say arcade games are the purest form of gaming, and rhythm games are often very arcadey.

They're simple. They're clean. They're 100% player-driven.
That's as pure as a game gets.

You just made me realize that there isn't a porn rhythm game where you fuck synchronized to the rhythm.

They restrict your freedom. You can press what you're told to and be successful, or you can not do that and lose. A fun and simple game with freedom is Tetris.

Rhythm games are the best way to test if someone actually has mechanical skill in regards to video games.

Porn games fail as porn the moment the gameplay becomes involved.

A rhythm eroge can never succeed as an eroge because players will be too focused on the rhythm game.

dlsite.com/maniax/work/=/product_id/RJ084312

It came out in 2011.

youtube.com/watch?v=ljVQiptctWY

Yeah, how could I fap while I play something?

All porn games need to have a one hand mode.

What are some good rhythm games I can play on PC besides Osu?

It is a lack of illusion of choice which is what is reinforcing the larger post I wrote earlier.

Every game has an optimal solution for X, but players need to not be reminded that the optimal solution exists for it to feel like they have "freedom".

Not every rhythm game restricts you

See Parappa the Rapper and Um Jammer Lammy, free-styling is encouraged and if you get the highest ranking in-song (cool) then you can jam out freely without constraint.

Lunatic Rave 2.

Visit the /jp/ rhythm thread and ask questions if you have any, that is after you do your own research of course.

ps: dl.free.fr/AF40Mw/BMShare?F=658636

I have yet to see a rhythm game which is purely a soundboard where hitting all the correct keys/buttons will produce the song properly. Every rhythm game I've seen involves some song playing in the background and you punching in keys to some sort of rhythm.

Perhaps that is a game type missing which deserves to be made, or perhaps I'm just not familiar with one, but the majority of rhythm games like Project Diva (the OP) involve just hitting buttons to a certain beat and rhythm with the song playing independently.

Perhaps I had a misunderstanding of what you meant by "pure".

What I meant was that a puzzle game has nearly a full sync between what the game is asking the player to accomplish and what the player is actually doing. The game asks the player to solve a puzzle, and the player then needs to solve the puzzle. The player isn't doing something else separately which helps to accomplish the goal of solving the puzzle.

Compare this to a game like Ace Attorney, which asks the player to solve a particular crime, but what the player is actually doing involves figuring out which piece of information the story requires to progress to its conclusion.

Fair enough. I guess I misunderstood, or misinterpreted, the intent of the thread.

I happen to like puzzle, rhythm, and shmup games all because they do much like you present. In different levels, of course. I might argue how well rhythm games fit that criteria, though. Very few rhythm games "progress through player skill" outside difficulty levels. The last song in a playlist is usually more complex than the first song, but there isn't exactly a smooth progression between the first and the last. It's the nature of different songs and the way the game is handled, and honestly, the very way that rhythm games work means that offering "stages" for a player to progress through doesn't work as well.

I understand that Project Diva X attempted this, and it didn't work.

Rhythm games still don't give you a level of freedom many other games do. Extremely repetitive and very restrictive to the point where mechanical ability is all that really matters. The main legitimate complaints against Mario 3D Land/World, and even the Galaxy games, are the very things that all rhythm games suffer from. There is less choice.

thank you very much

>a rhythm game which is purely a soundboard where hitting all the correct keys/buttons will produce the song properly
this exists and it is called "an instrument"

PPDxxx
LR2
K-shootmania
Stepmania
Console games up to wii (maybe ps3 and wii u soon)
Arcade dumps
DJ Max trilogy

There are sections of IIDX songs where the only audio response comes from your input. There are YTs of IIDX songs with no key input and you will find several songs have stretches of pure silence, or just a single bass sound.


Mechanical ability is all that really matters in any game that is worth playing.

What you call "freedom of choice" I tend to consider as being "freedom to waste time".

When I play a game, it's because I want to do a thing in the game. I want to engage in the battle. I want to shoot the gun. I want to do the thing which requires me to press a button at a certain time to have that action be considered successful.

Anything else is a waste of time.

>all video games ultimately a waste of time you autist
Yes, thank you.

I would be fine with a video game which tricks people into learning and playing an actual musical instrument. It would be far better than people playing Guitar Hero and then thinking they know how to actually play a guitar.

But you can exert mechanical skill in a way that incorporates freedom as well, though. Calling any sort of choice a waste of time is a very reductive way to look at things.

>Very few rhythm games "progress through player skill" outside difficulty levels
That's still progress. Every hard song you finally clear is progress. Every ranking is progress. It's a different sense of progression from most games, because it's player-driven. It isn't a roadmap that you follow to the end. It's you choosing your path and challenging yourself.

Project Diva X is... not the best example of rhythm gaming.

Future Tone is much more indicative of what I'm talking about (probably because it's literally an arcade game). You finally make it to Extreme, you finally clear all the 8-star songs, you finally get that Perfect you wanted, you finally got the 103% clear, etc.

It's not dissimilar from doing Mushihime-sama over and over until you finally 1CC on Maniac.

And at the end of it all you have a score, pin it up on the leaderboards, brag about it.

No more reductive than this:

People don't play Guitar Hero because they think of it as a substitute for playing on an actual guitar, they play it because they think it's fun, involving and mechanically challenging. If a game about playing a guitar that doesn't actually teach you how to play a guitar is "pointless", then what are games about shooting guns that don't teach you how to shoot guns or games about jumping on turtles that don't teach you how to jump on turtles?

Anyway, for learning instruments you have "games" like Synthesia for piano and Rocksmith for guitar.

But if you have a task involving, say, defeating a boss, and you have several ways to perform this task that all involve mechanical skill, do you still think it's a waste of time?

faphero

Perhaps I've played too many Nintendo games, but when I see "progress through player skill" I assume that means an increasing challenge throughout the game which gives an constant test of new player skills or new situations for player skills, for them to gradually overcome as they progress through the game. A rhythm game typically doesn't have that; it's more a series of bars which you need to raise up to beat, especially if you are looking for a song perfect rather than just completing a particular song. There isn't much progress on Normal which will prepare you for what you encounter on Hard, so you just need to take the leap and get better at it.

Rhythm games do certainly offer a challenge and ask players to get better to overcome it, certainly. And they likely do that better than a puzzle game would - puzzle games generally just have one solution, and there isn't much point in repeating the puzzle again to figure out the solution any "better".

>People don't play Guitar Hero because they think of it as a substitute for playing on an actual guitar, they play it because they think it's fun
True, but there are endless people who played Guitar Hero to have fun, and then turned around thinking that they learned (or were learning) how to play a guitar from the game.

I didn't say that a game which didn't teach you to play a guitar is pointless, just that it was annoying to see people form that opinion about themselves or attempt to laud it as a quality of the game. Heck, most rhythm games don't really teach you anything past rhythm and pacing, but they are perfectly fine just being an entertaining challenge.

Or even when they aren't much of a challenge, but just a fun game to play to some nice music.

Traditionally difficulty progression is essentially never going to work in rhythm games, instead most of them present a wide selection of tracks of varying difficulty level to pick and it's up to the player to figure out how to navigate themselves through it and get better until they master them all.

To me, it's that sort of "do it yourself" thing that makes rhythm games so immensely much more rewarding than other styles of gameplay. It feels really good to pick up a game, get walled hard by a few difficult songs thinking they are retardedly impossible and that you are never going to even clear them, only to play the game for a month or two, attain skill and then suddenly be able to full combo them. Being tutored by the game to follow a certain training path until you get there would make it feel much less rewarding.

For any game -
There are several ways to do this task.
There is one optimal way to do this task.
Performing the task in any way other than the optimal way is a waste of time.
I'm not saying that it's impossible to enjoy performing the task in an unoptimal way, by the way.

What rhythm games do is eliminate all the unoptimal ways to do the task. You either do the task or you don't.

I actually started playing rhythm games as a way to develop mechanical skill in regards to other games, and I have to say I think it worked.
But now I can't stop playing rhythm games.

i prefer rhythm+literally any other genre games

too bad necrodancer wastes it on having a single fucking 4/4 beat as the only type of rhythm you will need to master

>But now I can't stop playing rhythm games.
I know this feel. Recently got into Taiko, and I'm getting DJMAX Respect later this year.

It never ends.

Rhythm fusion games are weird. I'm not sure how I feel about them.