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laurenhufflepuff2 · 3 years

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A list of fandoms I'm in (in no particular order, will probably be updated regularly. Some fandoms are more intense and some are more casual. Depending on the fandom, I could go on and on about fandom topics for HOURS. Let's get into it!)

Harry Potter, Disney, Marvel, DC comics, Miraculous Ladybug, Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra, Star Wars, Literature, Winx Club, Nintendo, Minecraft, Little Witch Academia, Voltron, Coraline

Details:

Harry Potter- I got into Harry Potter in 7th grade and now I am the resident expert in my family and in my friend group. I read all the books, watched all the movies (notably the British version), and I've seen the Fantastic Beasts films as well. I've also read Tales of Beedle the Bard (the Warlock's Hairy Heart was traumatizing) along with the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them textbook (plus an updated edition). I also read The Cursed Child script and while I mean no hate to anyone that liked it, I hated what it did to the canon. I am in Hufflepuff with some Ravenclaw tendencies (I took the Pottermore quiz 3 times, 2 out of 3 I got Hufflepuff, the other time was Ravenclaw). I had a pottermore account and I was so upset when it got converted to the Wizarding World page. I cosplayed Hermione in 7th grade complete with British accent and even monologued as her for a talent show (classmates and teachers would recognize me as the Hermione girl all the way through high school). I was obsessed and I still love it even if J.K. Rowling has gone off the deep end on Twitter... yeah... my favorite character is Hermione but I also relate to Luna

Disney- there's so much that goes into the Disney part of my fandom list. I'm excluding Marvel and Star Wars from this part as they were originally separate entities before Disney got the rights to them. I have seen almost every animated Disney film ever and often use random movie quotes in conversation. My favorite villain is Maleficent, my favorite princess is Ariel (followed by Belle, Rapunzel, and Anna). I relate to so many of the characters. I'm not sure who my favorite Pixar character is though (I love Violet, Sadness, Dory, and Piper (from the short)). My favorite Disney fairy is Fawn. My favorite characters overall are Ariel and Stitch. Disney is definitely on the list as one of my biggest obsessions. My favorite movies are Lilo and Stitch, the Little Mermaid, Inside Out, Alice in Wonderland (original), and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

Marvel- I mostly get my Marvel exposure through the MCU, other movies, and animated TV shows. I have difficulty reading graphic novels so most of my comic book knowledge comes from friends, posts, or wikis. My favorite characters are Spider-Man, Captain America, Peggy Carter, and Scarlet Witch. I also like Gwenpool, Deadpool, Spider-Gwen/ Ghost-Spider, Venom, Squirrel Girl, Daredevil, Mantis, Gamora, Black Widow, Iron Man, Thor, Loki, Bucky, Black Panther, and most MCU characters. Out of the X-men I really like Professor X, Wolverine, Mystique, Magneto, Nightcrawler, and Quicksilver (either version- MCU or Fox).

DC- this was the franchise I was more familiar with growing up but again, graphic novels aren't easy for me to read so most of my knowledge comes from information pages about the comics or from tv/movies. My earliest experience with DC came from the 60s Batman series, with Catwoman and Robin being my favorites. I also watched the Wonder Woman series from the 70s and a handful of CW shows, my favorite of which being the Flash and Arrow. I also managed to watch all 5 seasons of the Teen Titans Cartoon Network series from 2003. With that being said, my favorite characters are Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Flash, Batman, Nightwing/Robin (Dick Grayson), Green Arrow, Starfire, Raven, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Alfred. I also like most of the bat family, and when it comes to CW I LOVE Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost and Cisco.

Miraculous- this is one of my guilty fandoms but since this is Tumblr I'm not too worried about it. I love Marinette and I relate to her on an astoundingly deep level (minus the stalking and obsession with potential lovers, that's creepy). If I had a miraculous, I'd probably want the Ladybug one, but the Cat miraculous, fox miraculous, and snake miraculous are good too. My favorite character is Marinette/Ladybug.

Atla/Tlok- I jumped on the avatar bandwagon just when it was starting to get popular, so I managed to get through the series before the memes took over everything. Same with Tlok, although i couldn't completely avoid the spoilers for that when i started it. I've been wanting to get into the comics because of the short story comics I've read, they seem easier to read than superhero comics. My favorite characters are Aang, Katara, Ty Lee, Iroh, Korra, Jinora, Asami, Suki, Appa, Momo, Naga, and Pabu. I also like Sokka, Mai, Zuko, Lin, Kuvira, Varrick, Zhu Lee, and Azula. I feel really sorry for her and while I understand that a redemption arc would undermine the importance of her corruption arc, I still wish she could have one. I would love to be a waterbender or an airbender... maybe a waterbender raised in the air nation? Obviously, being the avatar itself would be awesome. The show has taught me a lot of great lessons and put a lot of stuff into perspective for me.

Star Wars- oh boy, talking about this one is dangerous. I've seen firsthand the horrors of the Star Wars fandom but then again no one will probably see this anyway so... I've seen all the movies and I remember watching the clone wars series with my brother when I was younger but we fell wayyy behind and it's taking us forever to get back into it. I've also seen the Mandalorian and quite enjoyed it. I like the prequels unironically, in fact, the prequels are some of my favorite movies. I especially like how they switched from lightsabers being heavy weapons to light weapons that can be used for all kinds of tricks that make for epic battles like the ones we see in Revenge of the Sith. The sequels were fun to watch but when I would analyze them along side their predecessors, I came to the conclusion that, for me, they were good to watch but did not do anything good for the rest of the franchise. My favorite characters are prequels/clone wars Obi Wan and Anakin, Padme, Ashoka, Leia, R2D2, BB-8, R4-P17, the Mandalorian (Din Djarin), and Grogu. If I had a lightsaber I'd want it to be blue, but when I was little I got a purple one like Mace Windu because it was closer to pink and I was into pink at the time. I still have that lightsaber and none of my friends have a purple one so it's one of my flexes. I feel like I wouldn't make a good jedi because of attachments being forbidden, so I'd probably become a grey jedi.

Literature- this is a broad term I use to cover all the random books and stories I liked reading and have studied. So we have Shakespeare (Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet), The Great Gatsby (bored while reading, loved to analyze), Grendel (HATED reading, loved to analyze, Grendel really needed a hug and a friend), The Crucible, Fahrenheit 451, Dark Life (+ the sequel Riptide, both are by Kat Falls good reads, sci-fi and kind of dystopian), The Once and Future King

Winx Club- I think the show is trashy but I still love watching it. I haven't been able to get through season 6 though and I hated what they did with season 8 and Fate: the Winx Saga. My favorite character is Bloom along with Stella and Flora. I prefer rai to nick. My favorite transformations are magic winx, enchantix, and harmonix. My favorite member of the Trix is Icy followed by Darcy. My favorite Pixies are Chatta and Lockette.

Nintendo- mainly Pokémon above all else, followed by Animal Crossing. I have also played (mostly as player 2 or just never beat or watched my brother play) mario games, legend of zelda, pikmin, and kirby. Games I haven't played but I just liked the characters/the lore and probably learned about through Super Smash Bros. are Fire Emblem (Lucina mostly), Metroid (Samus and baby metroid), and Kid Icarus. Pokémon is where I'm most knowledgeable but you'll most likely beat me in battle. I am however great at MarioKart and I always destroy my friends at it. Terrible at fighting games though.

Minecraft- I like playing this casually. Sure, I'll play for hours and hours on end for months, but I prefer to stay exclusively in peaceful when playing Survival mode and I don't make anything too ambitious in Creative mode. I like to write, so sometimes I'll make a rough layout of the settings of my stories in different worlds. I prefer interior design and decorating when building, and when in survival mode I focus more on mining and gathering while my brother works on ambitious building projects. I just bring him the raw materials and furnish the interior when he finishes the outside.

Little Witch Academia- this takes up a smaller portion of my fandom list because there were only 2 seasons and a couple movies and I watched the whole series years ago, but I still enjoy it. At one point I wanted to cosplay Akko, and I loved the nod at Twilight through the Nightfall series. And I especially liked the twist that Shiny Chariot was Ursula, which I suspected for some time. The blend between magic and technology was fun to see, but I was so sad that the series ended RIGHT when Akko finally showed signs of magic proficiency. Also, Shiny Chariot being the reason Akko couldn't do magic was heartbreaking.

Voltron- this takes up a much smaller portion of my fandom list mainly because I haven't even finished it. I know hardly anything about Transformers aside from the Bumblebee movie so to me I just watch it for fun. It reminds me of power rangers, star wars, and star trek, and then there's just a transformer insert. But I don't know anything about Transformers so maybe the show is more rooted in canon than I think.

Coraline- I am in a love-hate relationship with Coraline. I have watched the movie several times, I've read the book, I've watched hours of theories and analyses on youtube, I've watched behind the scenes videos by Laika, and I even wrote a script for a fan film parody. I am amazed at how original the story is and how impressive the stop motion animation is but I also have recurring nightmares from it and it scares me/creeps me out to the max. If anyone asks what my scariness limit is, it's definitely Coraline.

#fandoms #about me #harry potter #disney #dc #marvel #avatar the last airbender #the legend of korra #star wars #miraculous ladybug #literature #winx club #nintendo #minecraft #pokémon #little witch academia #voltron #coraline

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beevean · 3 years

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How about a top 5 (or 10 if you prefer) best and worst bosses in video games? :D

I’m not very well versed in videogames, but anyway...

WORST

10) Chaos 4 (Sonic Adventure): Not a big fan of bosses who waste so much time - ooh, look at that, trying to hit me with very slow, very telegraphed attacks, and taking more and more time to becomes vulnerable the more the fight progresses. Also not a big fan of Tactical Suicide Bosses (excuse me Chaos, why is your strategy “stay in the water for increasingly amounts of time and then decide to raise my head to breathe”? In this form you’re a fish!). Even less of a fan of bosses that you have to fight three times to complete the game.

9) Sonic and Diablon (Shadow the Hedgehog): They couldn’t have come up with a more boring boss if they tried. Shoot the shield, shoot the cannon, avoid the hand, run away when you hear the word “anti-matter”, kick Sonic in the head, slowly chip at the large energy bar, rinse and repeat. The G.U.N. Fortress version is particularly painful, too, as the arena only offers those piss poor pistols with 10 bullets and minimal damage. And much like Chaos 4, you have to fight this lovely boss three times to get to the Last Story, except you don’t even get a different character with different abilities. Also, poor Sonic, from protagonist of the series reduced to nothing more than a footstep.

8) Collision Chaos boss (Sonic CD): Try to play a boss that relies on wonky pinball physics, that shoots projectiles with the only purpose of changing your already precarious trajectory, in the Bad Future that adds slightly more bumpers to destroy, with the American music (I linked the extended version to properly depict the experience). Pain is real.

7) Egg Pinball (Sonic Advance 3): Surprise! I find this boss worse than the more famous Egg Chaser. Yes, the Egg Chaser is very anxiety-inducing with its bottomless pit and the ball chain sending you into it, but once you learn the pattern of the platforms and that Amy as a partner makes it a joke it’s not that bad. This one, though? Even with Amy/Sonic, which is the only team where your partner is useless but you aren’t, this boss relies too much on luck, expecially by the end when way too many balls are flying across the screen. It’s almost funny, in a “screw you” way, that this is one of the two bosses in the game that can’t be hit by Cheese, in the stage where you finally unlock Cream. Pinball and Sonic don’t mix as well as Sonic Team thinks, apparently.

6) Boost Guardian (Metroid Prime 2, Gamecube): This boss’ strategy isn’t even that bad, it’s just that it hits you like a truck in an environment that is already sipping you of health. If being hit was less punishing, guessing the correct timing to jump over it would be fun. Too overkill for its placement in the game.

5) Mother Brain (Metroid Zero Mission): MB in the original Metroid 1 was... there, with the difficulty of the final boss coming from those stupid Rinkas pushing you into the lava below. In the remake, which otherwise is much easier than the original game, you have to think about the Rinkas, the lava, and MB who shots you fireballs! And if you fall into the lava (and you will spend half of the time in the lava)? She closes her eye and protects her only weak spot, forcing you to wait at the mercy of the Rinkas hitting you all over again. Asshole.

4) Dark Gaia (Sonic Unleashed): Dark Gaia, as a whole, is a stain on an otherwise beautiful game. Setting aside his “character” for a while: this boss is way, WAY too long (the first time I clocked at 11 minutes, like hell I’m trying again), the Gaia Colossus phase is frustrating for how slow it is and for having a nigh-unavoidable attack, the running phase requires pitch-perfect timing otherwise say bye bye to your life, and the Super Sonic phase is essentially “slipping down the shield to run over a bunch of snakes, then QTE up your ass”. Riveting. At least it has some banging music...

3) Egg Saucer (Sonic Advance 2): The bosses in SAd2 are already questionable with their “wind pushing you backwards” physics, but this one flings you enough bullshit to make you ragequit. Whoisthisgit made an excellent video explaining everything that makes this boss such a miserable experience. I am so sorry, Knuckles, that you had to be associated with this tragedy.

2) Antlion Mecha (Sonic 2, Game Gear): So let me get this straight devs, you take a boss that is already a little too had as the first boss in the game, you put it in a console with a much smaller screen, you screw up the slope physics making it just a little too easy to slide into the antlion’s jaws (and of course you don’t have any Rings), and on top of that you make the trajectory of the projectiles random when in the Master System they were consistent? Great game design there, guys :V

1) Spider Guardian (Metroid Prime 2, Gamecube): I was never as close as bestemmiare ogni santo e pure il padre eterno as I was when I was trying to beat this abomination. I love the Ing theme, but FUCK if I wasn’t hating every single sound of it while playing, OH MY GOD I envy the people who played it on the Wii so damn much

BEST

10) Robot Carnival/Storm (Sonic Heroes): Yes! Yes, I do like this boss! I’m probably the only one, I don’t care, I find these fights cathartic, especially with Team Chaotix <3

9) Jet Drill (Sonic 3 & Knuckles): The strategy may be simple, but I love the setup of Eggman destroying an ancient garden just to kill Sonic and I love how it emphasizes how much of a reliable bro Tails is. (let’s just ignore the fact that with Tails alone this boss is a pain...)

8) Doomsday Zone (Sonic 3 & Knuckles): The series had its fair share of Super Sonic bosses, but so far no one has beaten the original. It has excellent music, you can feel the tension as you smartly redirect Eggman’s missiles to him and as you chase him down through space, and Eggman in this game is really ready to do anything to win, I love it

7) Beta mk. II (Sonic Adventure): This is probably the best part of Gamma’s campaign. 90% of it is kindergarten-easy, and then Hot Shelter and the final boss are a sudden, but welcome spike in difficulty. Beta mk. II is a far cry from any other E-series robot you’ve faced, being almost completely invulnerable, hitting you with straight up nukes, and the time is still ticking in the corner. Then you add the context of having to kill your brother, and the deceptively upbeat theme, and it becomes a memorable experience.

6) Cykka (Metroid Prime 2): The first phase is fairly boring, but Adult Cykka is really fun to fight for some reason. Not only it has a cool design, but it’s a fast-paced battle (due to having to use the Grapple Beam to swing from platform to platform) where you have to go ham on the boss at certain points (when it becomes Dark Cykka), my two favorite styles for a boss.

5) Nightmare (Metroid Fusion): A name, a certainty. This boss looks, sounds and attacks in a way that makes you feel confused and powerless. Even at it becomes a game of “climb the stairs, shoot at its ungodly face, jump around to avoid it”, it’s still tense.

4) Ridley (Super Metroid): SM isn’t famous for having great bosses, but they put all of their effort into Ridley and it shows. There’s no strategy here, it’s simply “kill him before he kills you”. At this point you’re pretty much at the peak of your strength, you went through literal Hell to get The Baby back, you’re not going to be stopped by the asshole who killed your parents.

3) Shibusawa Keiji (Yakuza 0): What a beast of a final boss. The first Dragon of Dojima is the perfect foil to Kiryu, having all of his strength and style but none of his compassion, and beating him up to a bloody pulp, especially as you see him become sloppier and sloppier, is so, so cathartic. Also, Two Dragons, what more can I say?

2) Egg Dragoon (Sonic Unleashed): Best boss in the series? I don’t know but it’s surely in the top 10, and it’s ironic that you play as the hated Werehog. Not only it has some delicious music (that generations ruined), but it’s such a fun climax after the hell and a half that is Eggmanland! On one hand, Eggman sounds seriously angry and he is ready to kill Sonic (and if you take too much time, which admittedly is hard if you’re not doing it on purpose, he is positively gleeful while he sends you into a fiery death); on the other, Sonic just rips this giant robot apart like tissue paper, and even if it’s done through QTEs, it looks awesome.

1) Kuze Daisaku (Yakuza 0): I’ll let this say it all. If I had to pick a favorite version, the fifth one was my favorite to fight (by that point you have likely upgraded Kiryu’s abilities to the point of making him a juggernaut), but the second one is iconic for a reason... multiple, in fact. “DIE, YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

Special mention to Majima in Y1, YK and YK2 because he looks really fun, but I have never faced him myself so yeah.

#sonic the hedgehog #metroid #yakuza #sorry for the random italian #not my fault you guys don't have a word for insulting god himself #spinningbuster98

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askroahmmythril · 3 years

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Reference List for amiibo Fighter Names (Set 4)

37) Pichu : Zap Nezumi - Those who have been with my channel for awhile might remember a cute and charming Mega Man style game called Nezumiman. I love that game so much and would love to see a sequel. Squeakuel?... Anyway. Most of the bosses were dubbed (Element) Nezumi, depending on their power. So Pichu gets to fill in as Zap Nezumi! Up top we have all the various stage bosses, and Pichu is dressed in all the fashion items Nezumiman gets for beating them. He’s got Perfect Fashion! Which according to Nezumiman, also involves having Dr. Gyoniku’s butt in the background.

38) Pikachu : Agent 25 - Actually a self reference, this one. Agent 25 is a “character” that has appeared in some of my silly bits I’ve done for past videos. Theoretically his real name is Conduit, my Lv. 100 Pikachu, but he serves as an agent for me, going by the codename Agent 25 (his Pokédex number), protecting me from annoying talent agents trying to zap me with a dragon prod for taking time off. We went with a full-on James Bond style for this one. A minor detail, the display of PokéBalls in the nameplate having five empty circles before it is supposed to reference the display showing how many Pokémon a trainer has in a battle, thus, he’s the only one here.

39) Pit : Icarusicus - What can I say, I grew up with Captain N as a kid. Back then, as a gamer, you took whatever media you could get. Captain N was cheesy as heck, and got a lot of source details WAY wrong, but it was still fun in its own weird way. In that cartoon, Pit was instead simply named Kid Icarus, and had a habit of inserting “-icus” at the end of everything he said. So here the more modern Pit is faced with a blast from the past, his cartoony old weapons and contact from Kevin and Princess Lana. Neo added more details, like some Mega Man sprites recolored and restyled to look like characters in Captain N. Including a Simon Belmont sprite given his look from the cartoon, blue bomber jacket and blond hair and all. The building shown is the Palace of Power, Princess Lana’s base of operations.

40) Pokémon Trainer : RedVersion - Again a self contained reference to Pokémon. The trainer he’s based on is Red as he appears in Fire Red and Leaf Green. Thus, RedVersion, in reference to the original Red Version of Pokémon. Neo and I both had the idea to try to pose the Pokemon and Red himself like how they’re posed in the original game sprites. Neo also went an extra step, using minimalist colors to mimic how the sprites looked on a Game Boy Color or Super Game Boy. While I do like the idea, I might ask to stick with full color just to mimic the amiibo itself if we do indeed redo these. The overall look of the card was designed to look somewhat like the original Pokédex.

41) Robin : ShipREKT - Again, Fire Emblem is not exactly my area of expertise. But this silly idea came to mind, knowing Robin’s game has a lot of “pairing people up to increase bonds” mechanics. Sooooo Shipping : The Game. So I just had the silly idea of drawing him in super charming anime style. Of all things, I think I was largely influenced by a scene from the Unova episodes of Pokémon where a male Minccino was using Charm. I suppose this is a good time to mention that, in cases where only one figure was released for a character, I go with that style for them, so for instance, there’s only a male Robin card, only a female Wii Fit Trainer card, no wireframe Little Mac, no Koopalings, etc.

42) ROB : Spin Cycle - I mean, ROB’s all about spinning his gyros, that’s really all there is to this one. The colored swirl in the background was supposed to mimic the red and blue colors of the gates from Gyromite that he’d help you move. However, it also kinda looks like the colors of those infamous Tide pods. Which... I mean, spin cycle IS a laundry term, so yay accidental references?...

43) Rosalina : Cosmic Mama - I love Katamari! Seriously given that was a Namco game, I would have loved it if some Katamari music got in on the Pac-Man stage. Ah well. This was one of those where I just couldn’t resist the reference and sneaking the Half Inch Prince into the picture. Neo further personalized some of the Lumas, as well as adding the famous “I feel it! I feel the cosmos!” quote.

44) Samus : Chozen One - A self contained Metroid reference, and a silly pun. Samus is the “Chosen One” in the sense that a lot of Chozo prophecies as seen in the Prime series seem to center around her actions. So just a combination of Chosen and Chozo. I had worried that Samus would be hard to draw in Visio Home, but it turned out to be really good for drawing the defined lines of her suit.

45) Sheik : HARP HERO - While I’ve never actually played any of the Guitar Hero games, the fact that Sheik generally just follows you around to teach you new songs via her harp made this idea stick with me. A shame she doesn’t use her harp for anything in Smash... Seriously feels weird that she doesn’t. Anyway, I had the track display the notation for Bolero of Fire. For some reason, the scene of her teaching you this one just stuck with me as a kid as one of the most iconic scenes with her. This was also drawn before we started putting character icons in the nameplates. In his version, Neo added the Sheikah eye symbol to the nameplate.

46) Shulk : RA1NFALL - This is a reference to Project Rainfall, a community effort to coax publishers into localizing a few select games in the US. If memory serves, Xenoblade Chronicles was the first and perhaps most prominent game to have been part of this effort, hence my putting a 1 in the name. I didn’t really have a good solid way of drawing rain in Visio Home, so Neo added that on his end. Really this one probably saw the most changes between versions, as I really had very limited info on Xenoblade. My frame as such is.... really clunky looking. Neo was able to make something far better looking on his version. The symbol on Shulk’s Monado here means “rain,” so, uh.... umbrella utility!

47) Sonic : SpeedRacer - A reference to the anime of the same name. Sonic here is posed like Speed after he jumps out of the Mach Five during the Speed Racer title sequence. Meanwhile Sonic’s car here is the one he drives in Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed, as well as being on the game’s Starlight Carnival track. Neo gave me the idea to have a Coconuts peeking out of the trunk of the car to mimic Chim-Chim, the monkey mascot of the Speed Racer team that had a habit of stowing away in Speed’s trunk while he was racing.

48) King Dedede : ThreeDeDe - A joke on 3D imagery, such as that found on the Nintendo 3DS. The first Kirby game for the 3DS, Triple Deluxe, even had a mode where you played as King Dedede on his own adventure, so hey, him celebrating this moment of glory does not seem out of character for him.

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mhall070 · 4 years

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MY SUPER SMASH BROS STORY

I first played super smash bros in 08, when brawl was new. It belonged to my mom's ex's nephew's friend, me my brother my mom's ex's nephew and his brother all played for countless hrs (funny with the 4 of us it really was super smash BROTHERS). Now I first played smash before I new what smash was so it was really just a fighting game with a bunch of familiar faces to it. My mane was Mr game & watch I only played him because he was visually the most impressive character (being flat and all), my brother played snake because he was a solder the nephew would play sonic and his brother would play rob cuz he looked like wall e.

Unfortenently this fun would not last for I had forgotten all about it in the 3 yrs it was absent from my life. 3 yrs later in the last month of of middle school I did not rediscover smash but it was first introduced to me. It was super smash bros 64 I fell in love instantly with its bizzar game play and mechanics, but most importantly with the characters and settings. The first character I played was jigglypuff because no one else played her and she was the only unlocked character. The connection with jigglypuff and I was strong and would be indefinite because she was so quirky and fun, I enjoyed being a nuance to my friends while having my ass handed to me. Note ssb64 is when I first met my partner so you could say smash is a love story. After a while I new I had to own this game so I asked my mom for super smash bros, yep those were my words, I never specified I wanted ssb64. On my next birth bay I received a videogame as my gift it was super smash bros brawl (in my opinion the most ambitious game in the series). As I played through with my brother we shuffled through an onslaut of options like music choices and modes like saving photos and replays it was amazing, and don't get me started with subspace emissary. The story mode was almost to much fun being so dramatic and hilarious, it really was something to behold. In super smash bros brawl there were a few more characters I found I had a great fondness for. They were Zelda & sheik, falco, marth, and the ice climbers whom I would not learn were from the previous instalment for some time and the newcomers were zero suit samus, Lucas, pit, toon link, and rob. It was also brawl that introduced me to my favorite video game franchises, like metroid, star fox, zelda, and f zero. When we first returned to the fighter select screen a memory from the past suddenly changed the way I looked at this game series. My life was suddenly just like the entangled crossover mess that was the game, it was like meeting an old friernd who had always been there, and it was then I decided super smash bros was the greatest video gaming experience of my life. Not long after completing brawl I discovered super smash bros melee instantly I new I had to own it, so I bought a copy and a GameCube cuz I didnt own one. It took me a stupid long time to unlock every character and stage (melee stages explained). I was surprised to learn that some characters in melee didn't make it to brawl, only one of wich I really fall in love with. Roy was one of many characters that were sadly cut from the next instalment. And I mean clones they were everywhere in melee and all but absent from from brawl. As for other characters I grew especially fond of the ice climbers and their gimmicky play style. Unfortunately super smash bros melee modes were a bit lackluster compared to brawl. Say for adventure mode wich was surprisingly deep, it really made you feel as if you were traversing through the games the characters belong to, unlike subspace emissary. But where I believe super smash bros melee really shines is in its game play and mechanics. It feels like a movie hopping around with explosions and lightning fast movements and it's technical input options that make the competitive scene so alluring (I'm a casual player BTW), unlike brawl wich is slow and sloppy and ssb64 wich in my opinion is worse. All things considered it is perhaps the most well put together game in the series.

Some time later super smash bros for Wii u and 3ds was announced, I was shocked, I believed ssbb was to be the last game in the series. I couldn't believe it, smash for handheld and home it was unreal. The first installment in the series I could truly enjoy the hype for, it was fun aside from being a skeptic of all the leaks that would later turn out to be true. First I shall say I accurately predicted paluteana would be a playable character, second the biggest surprise was definently pac-man (didn't think he'd be possible), and third I was crushed to learn ice climbers would not make the cut because of the 3ds and I'd resent it for that reason. Not only that but I new the 3ds version would be inferior so I waited for the Wii u version. I stood out side the game store late at midnight to get my copy early. And I played for hrs, my favorite addition to the game had to be 8 player smash I allways wanted more action. I must say the roster of this game is one of if not the strangest with the cutting of semi clones like wolf and Lucas and the return of clones, specifically Dr Mario, of all the melee characters you'd choose to bring back why him over mewtwo, and the inclusion of dlc later. Nonetheless I did receive a few new characters to enjoy in paluteana, villager, the mii fighters, and corrin. Speaking of dlc I was not surprised by the announcement of mewtwo as dlc and I am glad both Roy and Lucas returned and Ryu I new you couldn't represent capcom with just megaman. The other game modes in Wii u and 3ds were interesting to say the least, target blast was fun but I still prefer target smash, master and crazy orders were amazing but hard, smash run was certainly the best thing about the 3ds version oh yah I did get a copy and a 3ds because I didn't have one. Oh and people, smash board isn't comparable to subspace emissary or world of light so, stop comparing them. The inclusion of amiibos really can make the game interesting but ultimately (pun intended) aren't very fun, however that won't stop me from buying all the amiibos I want. Now taking all this into account super smash bros for Wii u and 3ds allthough is flawed is also endlessly entertaining.

Then one day my partner came up to me and said, MERDY (thats my name) there's a new super smash bros game coming out. We watch the teaser and the thoughts just start rolling in, what characters will there be, what stages, what items, what modes, I was ready for all the answers but I would have to wait. I can say before the big "everyone is here" reveal I knew the ice climbers would return I also new there was no way they'd pass up another chance to add a story mode. World of light and spirits for that matter are probably the best thing to happen to smash, it's so complex and in depth it's creative and bewildering, it may not be as enveloped in worlds as adventure mode and we may not be able to enjoy the creative level design Masahiro Sakurai brought to subspace, however world of light has one thing the other two don't, customisation and the choice to play how you want, it's not as linear as adventure mode or subspace, and your fights aren't chosen for you. As for other game modes, I should first say 2 great new additions are video editing and vr mode, anyway you might as well go back and play some of the earlier installments in the franchise because ultimate leaves a little to be desired. Say for smash mode wich has lots of fun and well we can't talk about smash mode or super smash bros ultimate as a hole without mentioning it's shining star. The characters in super smash bros ultimate really make the game, I always dreamt that all the character from past installments would be in one game together. Of course I still had my predictions and surprises, first I accurately foresaw chrom, Simon, king k rool, technically hero (I really predicted erdrick only), and banjo & kazooie. Second I did not suspect, daisy, dark samus, and incineroar, although it was not a surprise ridley's presents in the game is highly appreciated for I am a huge metroid fan, BTW inkling was a no brainer. And I should mention the only new character I really enjoy playing is king k rool. Before the last section I wanna reminisce the things I'll miss about super smash bros. I'll really miss board the platforms, race to the finnish, 3d models of the characters and stages on select screens, event matches, coin launcher, boss battles, master and crazy orders, trophy rush, trophies, smash run, and good online gameplay... oh wait that was never a thing. I must state I'm sorry this story kind of turned into a critique, but super smash is first and foremost an experience and looking back now my life has be influenced by it, learning to grow strong and live big, and I can tell you super smash bros still is both a brotherly and love story for I still play with my brother and partner frequently. As for the future I can't say, ssbu is still growing and I personally believe it'll be Sakurai's last game in the franchise and video games are starting dwidle out of my life. Nonetheless it will be an unforgettable experience and I plan to continue to share it with all the world as it should be, being the largest crossover event in the history of entertainment, how can you even avoid it.

Waluigi for smash!!

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#super smash bros #super smash bros brawl #super smash bros melee #super smash bros ultimate #super smash bros for wii u #super smash bros for 3ds #ssbb #ssb #ssbm #ssbu #super smash bros special #ssb4 #jigglypuff #2008 #2014

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luigiblood · 4 years

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Nintendo Switch Online, 1 year in review...

Well, well, well... Nintendo Switch Online...

You’re cheap, but you’re too cheap in return sometimes. I want to talk about it and some of my frustrations about it (and not necessarily with Nintendo). To do this, I will talk about each feature seperately.

Online Play

The most obvious feature is Online Play. It went from being free to being paid, which is pretty much a problem but then the competitors do the same. Many Nintendo games do not have the most stable netplay, even though I do not have most of the problems that other people get.

I’m not going to do a P2P vs Dedicated, or rather I would like to say that people genuinely don’t understand basic netplay and are all going against P2P without knowing that some of the games that works fine are probably all running on P2P to begin with.

I’m not gonna go into the details, nor do I want to say I’m an expert, each have their own pros and cons, but I think the main issue is ultimately the netcode. Here’s hoping with GGPO being open source and free to use for professionals now, the future could be a lot brighter.

I would want Nintendo to take netcode a little more seriously and test it in homes with slower Internet. Testing it with Wi-Fi and Ethernet and everything.

Save Data Cloud

This feature technically works. You’d think it’s hard to fail, right?

Of course they did when some games just don’t provide the support for it because of fear that people may abuse it for cheating... Meh.

Nintendo uses the exemple of having a broken Switch to where this feature might come in handy. Too bad this also means completely lost saves for some of the most important games like Splatoon 2 or Animal Crossing, the latter being really annoying if you lose hundreds or even thousands of hours...

Smartphone App

This one is tough because potential was there. Truly a waste of time.

All of the main services could have just been a website that works on PC and Mobile. But I think the main issue is that people don’t really want to check stuff about their game all the time because there is simply not enough feedback.

There was actually better execution when SplatNet was a regular website accessible on every device, Super Mario Maker Bookmark website too, instead everything is stuck to an app, limiting uses.

Content should be seen from everywhere when it’s possible. Making it work behind a subscription fee was a terrible idea.

And then let’s not even talk about the voice chat. That is a truly depressing thing. Why making it stuck to mobile? I get that you don’t want the Switch to process that stuff for performance reasons but truly that stuff is supported on it too...

Special Offers

Let me list what extra stuff we got from Nintendo Switch Online:

Exclusive Splatoon 2 Gears

Tetris 99

Game Vouchers

The right to buy NES/SNES Controllers

Game Trials (for only one game)

I did not list another thing that will be its own seperate bullet point.

Tetris 99 was truly the best part of this. It’s actually a pretty darn good game. Game Vouchers could have been nice if you couldn’t get the brand new games for cheaper in physical form.

Game Trials was a thing they tested at one point, but then they just didn’t bother...

We, subscribers, don’t really get a lot of extras, do we?

My Nintendo (Bonus Rant)

Nothing has been more of a waste than My Nintendo. Gold Points finally started to be kind of useful since it became an equivalent to a cent for the Switch eShop, but that’s the only good point I could give to it.

Its execution is terrible, and unlike many people, I do not have a lot of good memories about Club Nintendo (the European one, that said), because most of the cool items we only could get the stars we needed much later and then then the item was gone. That’s literally most of my experience with Club Nintendo.

When I learned that with the North American Club Nintendo you could get virtual console games and other cool shit I was genuinely disappointed how the European one was. And I’m not mentioning how the Japanese Club Nintendo had some of the cooler things than the west ever got.

And then My Nintendo has none of the cool things from any regional Club Nintendo... what’s the plan, Nintendo? Why does this exist?

The day 3DS and Wii U will stop being supported, what will happen to the vouchers that you guys always put up? Will it become even more useless?

NES / SNES Nintendo Switch Online

Now the real meat because that’s the stuff I really would like to talk about.

You guys know how involved I am with retro Nintendo content and I can be very invested about this kind of stuff because I just love Nintendo’s games.

Unlike many people, I don’t mind the subscription aspect and the fact you don’t really own these games anymore compared to Virtual Console games. I think this has ultimately been the better thing to do. However I find many problems with the execution of it, especially in the long run.

Due to its subscription nature, I did expect it to have less games than Virtual Console. Rights have to be renegotiated, and the most I expected were Nintendo games. Turns out we got some third parties, some even high profile, pretty cool.

But there are pretty infuriating stuff, like the slow drip feed we get. I get that you want to keep interest going for these games over time but there’s a lot of problems with that entails, and that’s how most of us are frustrated that Nintendo is not using the Switch to its highest potential, and especially about having all of the Nintendo games possible in a small amount of time.

Its portable nature wants us that Nintendo puts all of the retro games as quickly as possible, we want to dedicate our time to the Switch instead of plugging the Wii and Wii U for VC games that aren’t there. We want N64, GB/C/A, GameCube, and more. We want to have Mario Party 2 netplay in an official capacity, and so on...

I noticed the potential of retro Switch Online offer when I found myself addicted to Balloon Fight. Actually a game I’ve never downloaded off ROM sites before, as I usually dismissed it as being too simple. However the game was just there and I gave it a shot. This is one of the reasons why its subscription nature didn’t mind me, it got me to spend time with some games I usually wouldn’t spend time with, especially for NES.

I want to put a list of things that I want Nintendo to do with their retro offering to bring interest, but also sustain it:

- Bigger Drips of games

This seems trivial, but keep in mind that games have to be tested before going live, we pretty much want at least 3 games per month for each console. But stuff takes time and we at least want more communication about this aspect. We just want more games.

- Localized games

This is a personal pet peeve and only works for people whose native language is not English. I do not expect of Nintendo to localize retro games, but at least to release localized ROMs of games when they exist.

I expected of them to release these:

Kirby’s Adventure, French and German versions (yes, they exist)

Super Metroid, European version (that’s a bit more controversial however...)

Zelda: A Link To The Past, French and German versions (French even has an official 60hz version)

Yoshi’s Island, European version.

I know what you could say, 50hz games suck, music is slower- Stop. My only answer is fuck you.

Also, SNES 50hz games cannot have slower music, aside from a few rare ones. If you remember games having slower music on PAL SNES you have a bad memory and mixed up with NES or Mega Drive or something.

I don’t see how, as a developer myself, a selection menu could not be implemented for selecting the language for a game. That way you let people play whatever they want, it’s less painful, everyone is happy.

I still wish for Nintendo to localize retro games however, or maybe even bring unreleased localizations of games if they approved it back then...

- Random Game of the Day / Moment

This seems like a dumb idea, but when I played Balloon Fight I noticed how Nintendo could bring attention to games that don’t necessarily get it.

When the library gets bigger, some games will be left on the side over others, a system to bring motivation to play those games, even as simple as a random game name at the top, is better than what piracy can even bring you.

Maybe you could even implement a button that selects a random game.

- Game Tweaks / Special Versions

AKA USE LUA SCRIPTS IN GAMES

Now we’re starting to get a bit on the expensive side of things.

Special Versions of games aren’t really good on NES, they’re just save states. Some are useful (Golf Course unlocks), some are amusing (Zelda), but most of them are just a save state at the end of the game.

I want them to go on the next stage of this, actually hack the games, or even scripts on top of them. You see, some emulators have scripting features that can alter the game, in ways that improves them (map on Metroid NES), or outright gameplay altering (Kirby Canvas Curse gameplay on Super Mario Bros. 3).

I gave real exemples of use, these could be used to make games easier, harder, balanced, weirder, just like another concept that Nintendo did... NES REMIX. (What a waste of a concept... This really got people into NES games.)

I wish for Nintendo to use their LUA script system already in place for the menus, for their emulator.

This could also aid in development of localization of games without altering the ROM and without space issues.

And this could aid in making SNES Mouse games to work on a touch screen and more, it’s genuinely easy to figure out I could do it myself in a day... ;)

- Shared Library of games between Japan & International

...Well all I want is that I don’t have to need to download the japanese app or the japanese to download the international app to play other games that are not present in the local library. I thought this would have been solved with Super Puyo Puyo 2 but guess not.

This could have the added bonus of japanese games on top of the american (and european?) ones.

- Game Events

Sort of an extra to game tweaks, bringing events for people to play a specific retro game and give them gold points or something. Events could have objectives, achievements, scoreboards, many things could be done here.

You could even bring in the Nintendo World Championship ROMs, other competition stuff, or even games like soundlink games from the Satellaview like BS Zelda, BS Super Mario All-Stars and so on. These games are made for competition!

This is the ultimate thing to bring people to play retro games, bring the unusual games that most people have possibly never even heard about!

- Others

Some of those bullet points don’t need a big explanation:

More Unreleased Retro Games (Japan only or even anywhere)

Localize Retro Games that were never localized (not just in english!)

Borders

Small Control Scheme Help (to compensate for lack of manuals)

5-player Netplay support for SNES (Super Puyo Puyo 2 supports 4 player)

Netplay with Global Rooms with passwords and not just stuck to friends. (This should be a thing for EVERY GAME. This could even be a Switch OS feature.)

Automatic Matchmaking for certain games?

I have also always said this: I’m interested to work with you, Nintendo, on this kind of stuff...

#nintendo #rant #switch #retro

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lunapixu · 4 years

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Pixu Ponders: My Favourite Games of the Decade

As the 2010s come to a close, I wanted to take a look back on my gaming experiences of the past ten years. I wish to look back on the games that I believe shaped my teen and young adult years, games that defined this decade for me, and all my treasured memories with them.

As we go into this, please bear in mind that these are my opinions. If you don’t like what you see, cool.

Furthermore, just because of long this darn post is, I’ve had to keep my list pretty short. If there’s a specific game you think I’ve missed, it’s because I had to cut it out.

Among the games cut from the list are: * Portal 2 * Super Mario Odyssey * Undertale * A Hat in Time * Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild * Stardew Valley * Monster Hunter (3U and World) (If you wish for me to write up about these games like the list below, shoot me an ask.)

The Binding of Isaac (2011 and 2014) (Franchise)

To me, the Binding of Isaac is a trend-defining indie game that, along with a couple other entries on this list, I believe contributed to the indie game boom.

The Binding of Isaac, created by Super Meat Boy's Edmund McMillen, depicts a young boy trying to escape his mother (and his inner torment) by delving into his basement and slaying countless monsters with his tears. Amongst many things, The Binding of Isaac stands out due to its simplistic art, unusual fleshy monsters, frequent depictions of... excrement, and a variety of other unsavoury material.

In spite of the crass material and immature nature its contents carry, The Binding of Isaac is a surprisingly deep and heavily replayable game. Many Roguelites that have sprung this decade like to say “No run is the same” but nowhere is this more clear than in the game that kickstarted the modern Roguelite trend. Within the game, Isaac can collect a wide variety of items that can help better slay monsters or navigate the labyrinthine levels of his basement. Isaac can pick up an item that allows him to shoot a large laser of blood, he could obtain a knife to throw at enemies, he can pick up an item that suspends his tears in midair and then release in a volley of bullets Kylo Ren style. When this game says “No run is the same”, it means it.

On Steam, I have over 250 hours on the game’s 2014 remake (Binding of Isaac Rebirth). I have approx. 300 of the 413 achievements the game has to offer. To say that I love and play the heck out of this game is an understatement. And it’s not even my most played game on Steam.

Hollow Knight (2017)

Hollow Knight was a surprise favourite of mine. Being a big fan of metroidvania games, I knew I was going to like this funky little bug game. After all, the game seemed fun and was going to be something of a hybrid between Metroid-style exploration and progression but a Dark Souls health system and storytelling. What’s not to like?

I will be real here, the first two areas of the game weren’t all that amazing. Though there were pleasant sights, neat characters, and simple but kinda fun gameplay, I couldn’t help but feel like wanting... more. Something more captivating. Perhaps something more amazing might await me if I push on through. A hurdle that I needed to overcome. Would it actually happen or will this fun but unimpressive saunter through the world of insects be all there is? And boy were my instincts right.

I will not go into the specifics but the game’s appeal and charm finally clicked for me after a few hours in. It was a combination of taking on two very specific bosses and entering a specific area of the game that instantly made me fall in love. I was enamoured. What had simply been me crossing a game off my bucket list had turned into an adventure I was whole-heartedly engaged in. This game’s adventure was now my own. It was an adventure that I hadn’t been quite as engaged with as... Kingdom Hearts, honestly. And if my posts on here are any indication, that’s quite the feat.

Hollow Knight’s usage of atmosphere, clever writing and worldbuilding, and simple but challenging gameplay are something of a brilliant recipe. I was fascinated by every single snippet of dialogue, smiling as my little insect buddy clashed with perilous foes, wowed by some of the levels, and charmed by every character who I happened to stumble upon.

Though I only played it so recently (Spring 2019 for reference), I can very confidently put it as one of my favourite games of all-time. A list shared by greats such as The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, Cave Story, Kingdom Hearts 2, and Super Mario Galaxy.

Terraria (2011)

Ah, Terraria... The “2D Minecraft”, the “Minecraft but not as good”, the “Starbound but not in space”.

Terraria, as you may know, is a 2D action-platformer sandbox. It’s a game that drops you into a large (but not unlimited) world and says “You’re gonna need to gear up, bucko.” So, you tear down some trees and dig up the land a bit in a bid to gather some resources. After all, this is a sandbox! It’s mine, mine~ Mine for the taking~ It’s mine, boys. Mine me that gold! *ahem* Seems I got a little carried away. Anyways...

Within the first few minutes, the sun starts to set on Terraria’s world and you’re being mauled apart by zombies. That is unless you built a house and hunkered down for the night to avoid the ghouls that intend to ruin your night. Seem familiar? Well, it should. And it’s why people drum up the comparisons above, flag it as just another sandbox game, and leave.

This, I believe, is not really a fair look at Terraria. Yes, you mine blocks. Yes, you fight monsters at night to survive. But that’s it. Those are the only substantial comparisons to be made. Terraria, as I described earlier, is an action-platformer. To me, Terraria’s sandbox nature and simplistic Minecraft-esque survival come secondary to what I consider to be the meat of the game. The exploration, the combat system, and the shenanigans.

Within the game are several set pieces to explore and countless bosses to fight. Players are expected to plunge headfirst into the rotting landscape of the Corruption (or the more eldritch and bloodied Crimson), delve into the skeleton-filled Dungeon, brave the perilous Jungle, and even venture into Hell itself. In exploring and slaying the many powerful foes that await the player, one can go beyond just “I swing my Iron Sword at a Zombie. Yaaaaaay... =_=“ and into extreme levels of zaniness. Wanna beat up Martians with a lightsaber? I don’t recommend it but you can. Wanna kill a giant robot worm of doom with a minigun? You bet your butt you can.

Minecraft (2009, 1.0 release in 2011)

To say Minecraft didn’t define the 2010s would be a blatant lie. As the #1 best-selling game, a spot hotly contested with Tetris, it’s hard to deny the influence and critical success of this simple voxel-based sandbox game.

What is it that makes Minecraft such a perfect and fantastic game? To me, it’s all in the simplicity of it all. The lack of goal, the blank slate of a world you’re given, and the openness and accessibility of the game. Minecraft expects you to take whatever inspiration and ideas you may have and construct them in this blocky world.

Wanna build a plane? Wanna build a sweet mansion? A bit too normal for you? How about a working computer? What about recreating settings from your favourite games? In Minecraft, you can do just that. And let’s not even forget about the enormous modding community this game has. Automation, adventure, aesthetic, graphical enhancements, quality of life. Mods have everything and more!

Above all else, Minecraft helps to connect. With its huge player base and countless public servers, you’re bound to find a community that will welcome you and treat you right. Minecraft is best played in multiplayer, in my honest opinion. Explore caves with friends, collaborating on build projects, or just plain old chatting and hanging with folks.

For me personally, Minecraft is an invaluable game. Through it, I met countless people, made many friends (several of which I consider my best friends), I even found love through it. Minecraft came to me at a time I needed it most. As a late teen, I was at one of the lowest points in my life. The game allowed me to express myself and work past what issues I had developed over the years. In finding friends and a way to express, Minecraft helped shape me into a much better person. Were it not for this game and the folks I met through it, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

#minecraft #terraria #hollow knight #the binding of isaac #text post #pixu ponders

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doshmanziari · 5 years

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2019 Mega Drive Explorations [3]

A continuation of parts 1 and 2. Click the link below the first entry to read more.

Fist of the North Star: The New Legend of the Post-Apocalyptic Messiah (1989)

Absolute garbage. Since I couldn’t give less of a shit about Fist of the North Star’s plot, I played it in Japanese; the English localization of the game did not retain the Fist of the North Star license, and was renamed Last Battle. You guide Kenshiro, slowest man in the world, through a bunch of ruinous stages, fending off opponents including: men with jack-knives for arms who live underground, men with scythe-arms who form three-man-towers, men wielding shotguns who do not move at all, and harpoons. A bar runs along the bottom of the HUD, and each time one of its thresholds is passed Kenshiro will destroy his shirt and get strong. You have to face around ten bosses, and there is, barring the last point on the map, never any way to tell if the next stage is a boss or not. This is a problem when you can get destroyed in mere seconds (as far as I could tell, the best strategy for nearly every boss was to keep jump-kicking and hope the sketchy hit detection worked). If you go the wrong way on the map, you must backtrack, and it is never fun to return to any of these places. The worst are the warehouses, each acting like Sword of Sodan’s horrendous Craggamoor gauntlet, except that they are mazes with nothing to do but walk one way, see if it dead-ends, and proceed from there. The music may have, for all I know, been the work of Fatal Labyrinth’s composer, and that’s not a happy comparison. Through it all, New Legend has a kind of graphic appeal that’s tough to put to words besides shrugging and saying that maybe I just have a weak spot for coarse ugly-banal stuff that’s pumped full of shrieking colors (such colors aren’t so present here, but when they are you know it, as the second screenshot demonstrates). My final opinion is that I don’t think that Fist of the North Star deserves to have good videogames, so whatever.

Mega Turrican (1993)

This was my first Turrican game and I thought it was a lot of fun! Exciting stages, surprisingly reasonable bosses, responsive controls and neat subsidiary mechanics, and one of the system’s very best credits themes. Sometimes you can forget how many videogames had enemy placement that was “BOOM! Here’s this thing (or these things) just outta nowhere, get fucked, lmao,” and, well, every one of Mega Turrican’s stages has parts like that. This is mitigated by it being a minor trend, and the unexpected plentifulness of items that fully restore your lifebar. My main concern is one vertical room right near the end that’s structured like an extreme fan-hack for a Metroid game. Its assembly is interesting -- a sequence of platforms and recesses in either wall that come together for a series of precision-based grapple-hook challenges -- but having the likely consequence of one mistake be falling all the way back down is too much (this was also where I wished that you had a line of sight for your grapple-hook; the angle of your arm is not as reliable as it would appear). Anyway: another example of welcome mitigation was entering an enormous organic den with literal xenomorphs and facehuggers prowling about and having arrows indicating the way to the exit -- a blessing when I was expecting to contend with a maze made to make you time-out over and over again. As you can partly see, the game is visually astounding, a dense maximalist masterpiece evoking the look of an Amiga platformer, and the level design -- what’s interactive, what’s background, etc. -- remains remarkably legible, for the most part.

Golden Axe III (1993)

I was hoping to come away from Golden Axe 3 with a better impression than the one I had when cooperatively playing it years ago, but I think beat ‘em ups aren’t a genre I can get into past screenshots and soundtracks. For me, enemies have too much behavioral randomness (if they, e.g., suddenly decide to charge at you, it’s almost impossible to react in time), and the best strategies for someone who’s not mastered the mechanics often feel tedious -- cautious jump-attacks and protracted turf wars with opponents who’ve been knocked offscreen and are edging their way back. Golden Axe 3 offers the unusual opportunity to take alternative paths, which I’m guessing lead to other stages, and it does unquestionably have the series’ best avatar roster, but even the promise of new sights and sounds can’t compel me to be enthusiastic about seeing the game’s five or so endlessly palette swapped barbarians again. With these qualities and a final stage that belabored its point about being the final stage, Golden Axe 3 is another title I won’t be returning to.

X-Men 2: Clone Wars (1995)

Although it might be an unfair association, when I think of Mega Drive action-platformers I think of hellishly large layouts featuring repeating level designs and little to no grounding setpieces. Now, there are numerous western-developed games for the Super Nintendo which fit this description, but as I had little experience with those growing up, aside from the occasional Bubsy or Marvin Missions, and as that was almost exclusively what I found when playing on someone else’s Genesis, it became a stereotype. Clone Wars doesn’t escape that sort of level design -- there’s a lot of impossible-to-anticipate enemy placement, some stretches where the visual homogeneity of your surroundings gives rise to the boring sort of dislocation, a few places that could be trimmed -- but it’s also better than I was expecting. Prior to starting a stage, you can choose from, ultimately, a total of seven characters. Aside from the last few stages, where it seemed practically necessary to choose Beast for his sheer strength, I could keep switching to a different character and not feel like I was inconveniencing myself for variety's sake. Perhaps because it was a late Mega Drive release, but also certainly because of the combined talents of the background artists who included Steven A. Ross (an artist for Chakan: The Forever Man), Clone Wars is hardly ever dull to look at. It harnesses that almost over-detailed, modular aesthetic many superhero comics came to have during the 90s: characters with too many muscles, machines with too many tubes, all of those melodramatic grotesqueries that are an irresistible attractant when you’re an adolescent. And Kurt Harland’s forceful, metalized score is the best audio accompaniment that you could wish for, maybe occupying the pinnacle of EDM/IDM on the system, right next to Bare Knuckle 3. I’d love to see a ROM-hack of this that adjusted the level design, or lessened damage taken.

#hokuto no ken #fist of the north star #turrican #golden axe #x-men #sega genesis #mega drive #clone wars

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videobun-gameblog · 5 years

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Rambling about Sekiro (spoilers below read me):

- Evolution of "i'm scared to block, i like Souls rolling" to "okay i'll block and sort of deflect but only basic attacks i know" to "okay I don't even need to dash except for perilous attacks!" to "okay now i can actually flip between defense and offense on the fly and this is SUPER fun!!"

- Basically, I've never in my life played a game where offense and defense mesh so well together, where blocking is FUN and viable, and seeing your attacks get deflected is actually GOOD and not just infuriating, because you're making progress in the fight.

- People've said Dark Souls is a little like a hard, combat focused Zelda but really, THIS is what that's like, and I'm in love. From did it.

- The upgrade system is neat and I appreciate it for rewarding exploration but also allowing you to challenge yourself by refusing to use them. Also it just works out really well for speedrun balancing and I can’t wait to see the evolution of speedruns in this game because there’s a good balance between wanting more power, posture, and HP and wanting to go as fast as possible.

SPOILERS UNDER CUT, DON’T DO IT UNLESS YOU ARE ALREADY AT /END/ GAME OR DO NOT EVER INTEND TO BUY SEKIRO

---!!!SPOILER ZONE (I'm serious do not read if you intend to play or are still playing)!!!---

(long space for people who might see this on the blog first as opposed to via the dashboard)

- I absolutely adore the weird scientific/medicinal/supernatural macabre shit in this game. The red lump item gave me chills picking it up the first time. Same thing with seeing the first undying monk thing, I couldn't even burn it (but then I finally did it with THAT ITEM... more below)

- haha hand in a jar! haha that guy that flies at you... haha, monkey :) haha ninja dog...... hell even the headless... I love From's mix of disturbing humor (or just flat out being funny despite the bleak setting). Their version of mimics in Souls sum this up best but there's plenty of things here too that are just flat out hilarious and I love it.

- Oh Christ, speaking of, I did the Doctor questline and oh god it gave me some of that Bloodborne dread.

- "IS THAT A FUCKING DARK SOULS?" also lmao when he falls

- "IS THAT THE FUCKING CHAOS BLADE!??" oooh fuck oh fuck *pushes up glasses* remember the cut content with Shiva in Dark Souls???

- Sekiro/Wolf having the "defy your father, break the code" moment was SO good and I love that whole archetype. Simple but I just... <3 Oh god and When Owl is basically just like "that's my boy" when you kill him... I... u_u

- giving Lord Kuro rice was SO cute and just furthered my love for Wolf because this child is teaching him part of how to be himself and to also enjoy things (basically chill the fuck out you freaking murder machine, you are more than that) through compassion, friendship, and a reminder of his own childhood and I don't really get emotional over stuff like this often but awww..! ;_;

- The sake dialogue moments are so good. A very simple concept but I love the nature of sharing part of one's past through a friendly offering, it felt like a really good balance between clear concise mechanics (sake) fitting neatly with narrative elements. It's basically just a dialogue item but it didn't FEEL that way. I felt genuine excitement upon finding new drinks knowing I'd get a chance to share it.

- OH MY GOD ENFEEBLED IS SUCH A GOOD ASS STATUS EFFECT??? THE ANIMATIONS!!! He just hobbles around like a dude who just suddenly became an old man (’cuz that’s literally what it is) with his sword as a cane??? I LOVE FROMSOFT! That shit is so wonderfully expressive but also fits perfectly with that style of horror humor (and I lied before. Mimics are beaten by THIS status effect. New number one spot for my fave moment like this in a From game)

- Oh also speaking of animation, those fucking boss kills!!! *deep inhale* BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- While not my favorite boss mechanically, SPECIFICALLY that kill animation on the Giant Ape... DUDE HOLY FUUUCK! and then the fake out!?!?!? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! SO good!

- Lady Butterfly was a fun main boss and O'Rin of the Water was a fun mini boss. Plenty of others were fantastic but those stood out. Like, two of my friends so far have expressed the same feelings on Butterfly! Good Fight!

- I even liked the gimmick fights! They did it! Gimmick fights that are actually well designed! They're more about exploring mechanics outside of pure combat without punishing you super fucking hard at a random point just because they can. (Bed of Chaos, Micolash) Strangely a little bit of a breather, which is fitting because it’s a perfect counter balance to the stress of finding yourself in a unique situation. They actually give you time to analyze, think, and breathe it all in!

- I'm currently stuck on an end game "secret"/optional boss with some classic From Lore Implications *ok hand* and it's brutal af. I am excited to learn how to master this.

--- SLIGHT CRITICISM (basically the “i love it so much i can’t help but see small flaws but I’d still give it a 10/10 anyway” part) ---

- I like that even when they repeat mid bosses they usually put them in a new arena to change things up. I think a FEW were a little overdone though and could have benefited from maybe... I dunno, a couple new ones in their place or at LEAST alternate movesets to change things up a bit more than just location BUT the combat is engaging enough that I don't mind, I just found it a LITTLE weird how despite the rest of the polish there was a tad bit of copy-paste (but far FAR less egregious than DS1)

- Idk how replayable this game is gonna be but I can definitely see myself finishing NG+ and doing two more playthroughs for all endings. It's replayable more in the Metroid or Legend of Zelda sense and less in the Dark Souls character build sense. "I wanna try a new route first and beat bosses more effectively this time. I wanna be as stealthy as possible this run" etc. and not "I wanna make an int build" (less a critique and more an observation on how it differs from Souls replayability)

- Dragonrot is like, the only actual flaw in this game imo. It doesn't have enough depth. I was thinking it would have more end game narrative significance but it's just something tied to the sort of useless unseen aid mechanic which fails to really incentivize risky play. If anything it just encourages you to grind before bosses to cap the current exp bar and save/store/spend sen by spending 10 minutes fucking around elsewhere until you're ready so that you have nothing to lose. I feel like it should have done some world state changes and something more intense, like ACTUALLY having npcs die and having a healthier world state and an unhealthier world state where some enemies get weaker or stronger based on which extreme your world is on etc. etc. basically ANYTHING more than it is now. But this is super minor relative to how good everything else is. It just felt underwhelming considering all it was hyped up to be. It’s one of those things I just ignore as if it wasn’t there and it’s just as good because it has little effect on the parts that I DO like the game for.

---FINAL NOTE---

- To end on a positive note though, Sekiro managed to be a game that iterated on the Souls formula by defying part of what it became (dodge heavy, block averse play, slow, parrying primarily for one-shotting) yet still providing the same feelings of starting one of those games fresh. Part of what makes it FEEL Souls-y is precisely what separates it from those games, and it's all too good to really put into words at the moment. Like sure it's got Estus, bonfires, and a kick-your-ass "you're going to get stuck and frustrated and that's how it is" attitude and it's got a similar enough control scheme, but beyond that, there's just so much more combat and movement depth that it's a whole new beast, and I love it so much.

#Sekiro #spoilers

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ryanmeft · 5 years

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No, Nintendo Does Not Hate Metroid

Nintendo, a company that makes video games, recently announced that after almost two years, they were scrapping all current work on Metroid Prime 4, taking it from whatever mystery studio was working on it, and giving it to the hallowed minds at Retro Studios to start over with, hoping to get it right.

This was greeted with rapturous applause by Metroid fans, who almost universally recognized how good Nintendo was being to them, and were highly appreciative of the fact they’d be willing to write off all the resources they’d spent so far, just because the game wasn’t up to snuff.

I am of course kidding. That up there was a joke. Metroid fandom contains the whiniest, most entitled, hardest-to-satisfy fans of any Nintendo property, and while the majority of fans were cool, the loudest ones were typically the whiners. Most notably, a not-insignificant section of the fandom has gripped, with an unshakable hold, the idea that Nintendo doesn’t respect or even dislikes the franchise. I’ve listened to this particular whine for years and years, ever since there was an unimaginable eight-year gap between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. Never mind that other beloved series of yore, from Mega Man to Final Fantasy, have also gone similar periods without a new game. Never mind that non-Japanese fans of Nintendo’s own Earthbound are still denied the chance to play the final game in the series, and probably always will be. Never mind that Sonic fans suffered under a notorious drought of good games lasting two decades before Sonic Mania finally happened. None of that means shit: Metroid fans are the most persecuted, victimized, and unfairly treated fandom in video games.

Now, I’m the last guy to feel I need to defend a massive company like Nintendo, but in this case I’ll make an exception. Because just like Ghostbusters fans who can’t figure out their particular obsession just isn’t as relevant as they want it to be, Metroid fans need to grow up and start appreciating what they have gotten, rather than what they haven’t. Below are the three reasons why Metroid fanboys aren’t even the least bit as ill-used as they think are.

Almost Every Metroid Game has Been Excellent

The nature of video games is such that many more entries in a successful series are usually produced than in other mediums like film. Even a series like Metroid, which has been iterated less often than Nintendo’s other properties, has had eight fully fledged games since 1986, and 10 if you count the heavily re-worked upgrades of the original game and Return of Samus. Of those, only a single one, Other M, has been poorly received, and there’s no indication that’s what Nintendo expected. After all, fans were excited when the series got handed to Team Ninja; the idea that this was callous on Nintendo’s part, for not developing the game themselves, is something that only took hold retroactively, and you know what they say about hindsight. The original Metroid, Super Metroid, Fusion, and two of the three Prime entries are among the more critically lauded games in history, and excepting only Other M, all of the others have received highly positive reviews. The Metacritic average for the mainline Metroid games is an 89 of 100. Boy, look how much Nintendo hates this franchise, going out of their way to make good games for it and crap like that.

The Bad Spin Offs are Nothing Compared to Other Series

One of the big pieces of evidence Metroid fans like to roll out to prove Nintendo loathes Samus like unto the heat of a sun is that they’ve spent some of their time on it making poorly received spin offs, like Blast Ball and Federation Force, that don’t capture the spirit of the series. “Look!” they shout, from atop the Tower of Cluelessness high on the Oblivious Cliffs, “They aren’t doing what a bunch of us fans who have never programmed a game or made a decision about a franchise think they should be doing, so they clearly don’t care!”

You might already see the flaw in this thinking. By this standard, nearly every company with a long-running series hates that series. Capcom has inserted Mega Man into soccer and allowed him to be licensed out for extremely shitty PC games, and have pooped out almost as many crappy Resident Evil-themed spin-offs as there are main Resident Evil games. Square has pimped Final Fantasy out to every possible genre, from racing to fighting to freaking tower defense, all while taking ages to finish the next main entry in the series. Nintendo themselves have slapped Mario on every possible thing they can, and despite strong sales to dumb people, Mario Party is notorious for being a bunch of slapped together mini games for people who like their games to be completely random.

If bad spin-offs proved anything about what Nintendo thinks of Metroid, the fact they’ve spared it from as many as other series get would actually support the idea they are more protective of it.

Metroid Doesn’t Deserve as Much Love as You Think it Does

Economics 101 is now in session. All right, children: why does a company make things?

“To make their fans happy, Mr. Eft!”

Wrong, little Dingleberry! They make things to---say it with me---MAKE MONEY!

See, companies like money. And this is especially important for an industry with relatively low margins and high costs like video games, because folks like the evil satanic Metroid-hating demons at Nintendo need games to sell well not only to justify further games in that series, but to fund further games in that series. Unlike, say, Disney, they don’t typically have the option of busting out an Avengers and making 1000% profit. Unless it is something really massive and popular and guaranteed to sell, like Call of Duty or Pokemon, most franchises live entry to entry, relying on the previous one being profitable to decide if the next one will ever be made.

And here’s some economic reality for you: almost from the outset, Metroid has failed that test more often than it has passed it. Yes, the series has sold decently---for a minor franchise. The fact that it is legendary among gamers and highly influential among designers has not traditionally translated into the kind of money it needs to guarantee the entries keep rolling out. One of the most frequent desperate cries of the Lesser American Hardcore Metroid Fanboy plays out something like this: “If only Nintendo put as much effort in as they do for Mario and Zelda, it could be a real blockbuster!”

Except it couldn’t. And it has proven that time and again. It has sold, it is often said, respectably. That’s a business term for “We didn’t lose money…but it didn’t exactly pay our salaries, either.” Metroid’s critical and fan status is simply not reflected in sales, where Samus is holding at the 14th overall spot in Nintendo’s history. She’s managed to scrap together around 17 and a half million units moved in three decades, compared to just over a hundred million for Zelda and hundreds for Mario (that’s including every Mario game of any kind, but if you only include platformers, the series is still on top).

Simply put, Metroid doesn’t get the same attention as Mario and Zelda for the same reason Luke Cage or Cloak and Dagger don’t get as much love from Marvel as Spider-Man and X-Men: financially speaking, it doesn’t deserve it. No one argues that means Marvel hates Luke Cage; the sales just aren’t there to justify an equal amount of time, energy and resources.

Given all that, fans ought to be grateful the series is still around at all. Nintendo has tossed all of the Prime 4 resources spent so far down the crapper and re-started it just to get it right, when they would have been fully justified with just abandoning it. As a big fan of many minor characters and series, take it from me: when your preferred fan obsession is far from being top dog in the overall culture, sometimes you gotta stop whining and take what you get.

#Metroid #the legend of zelda #nintendo #Final Fantasy #video games #resident evil #Super Mario #Mega Man #call of duty #marvel #spider-man #X-men #luke cage #metroid prime 4 #ghostbusters

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c7thetumbler · 5 years

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Quick Game Reviews: What I played 2018

I’m gonna go ahead and do this for the whole year, which includes games that WEREN’T released this year, but I played this year. I also made this throughout the year, so most the opinions were right after I played it and if it’s been updated further might not include that in my blurb.

I needed to type and felt like I needed to make something. This might motivate me I suppose. Let’s get started

DOOM 2016 [PC]

I grew up on Pokemon, Mario, and Doom II. I couldn’t play it until I got my new computer this year so yeah way too late. This is a pretty solid game, though thanks to all of the bonuses and honestly nearly intrusive leveling up system kinda stepped in the way of the raw combat. It’s obviously my choice, but I felt encouraged to spend a lot of time exploring areas I’d already cleared rather than run and gun.

That being said, I still loved it. The secrets were, for the most part, really clever and fun anyway and the combat is delicious. I would strongly recommend this

A Hat in Time + Seal the Deal DLC [PC]

I love this game. A lot. It’s really cute and looks really good, it’s got a ton of charm, and it’s honestly a very good time overall. I 100% the base game last year when it first came out, and I would highly recommend to fans of 3D platformers, and still worth a try if you’re on the fence on them. The mod support is also great that it’s in there and I want to try that a lot. however the DLC...

So the new level is pretty short and while it’s fun, it’s not as good as the other levels. The characters (I think) are really cute and the charm is all there and that great, but it has all of 3 levels, and 2 of them are exploring the exact same places (the boat) and the 3rd is a nice twist on that, but other than that it’s pretty barren. The time rifts were fun as well, but alone... eh. The Death Wish portion, that is the super hard challenge mode...

... is not good. Obviously my opinion, and I might be missing the point, but after having been frustrated over and over and over again, the game itself is just not tight or clean enough to warrant it. My backing for this is that a large portion of the challenges rely on originally unintended level geometry or quirky mechanics in order to complete, and having challenges that require you to be in the know about these honestly inconsistent “quirks” is just not good. Specific examples: the ice hat giving you a small boost to avoid jumping in challenges is alright but fluctuates in how much height it gives you a lot, the challenges around the train chase still have the wonky hitboxes that do not line up with what’s still on screen, and the parade challenge has an invisible hitbox on the main platform that can kill runs. In short If you have found you love the main game and are a bit of a masochist, go for the DLC.

Pokémon Ultra Sun [3DS]

This is more or less just a revisit of the same generation with some very minor changes. The story changes take the focus away from Lillie and Lusamine (and as a result how interesting the former and evil the latter are) and places it on Necrozma and Ultra Beasts. I really like what they did with Necrozma, but overall it feels like a lot less. And while the Rainbow Rocket post game was nice and fun nostalgia, it’s still missing a solid post game like B2W2 or Gen II had.

Ultra Wormholes are cool though, and all the good mechanics from SM are still there, so honestly I would recommend this if you haven’t played gen 7 and like Pokémon.

Hey! Pikmin [3DS]

It’s awful. I can’t think of a reason to pick this up.

I can rant about this for years, but it basically got the Zip Lash/ Sticker Star treatment: it took a franchise known for something and made it something else that was bad. It’s an incredibly slow puzzle “platformer” where you have to collect a bunch of treasure using pikmin you find in the level, it’s laggy even on a n3DS, and even though the point of the game is to collect enough treasure to leave, if you do that they’re all like “by the way, you still have to beat the final boss” so the entire auto-collecting side game you put your pikmin into is entirely pointless. This is honestly the worst 3DS game I played this year.

Hollow Knight [PC]

So I’m normally not that great with the games-that-are-pretty-dang-hard, and this was no exception. That said however, I did get pretty far (probably) before I got to a boss fight I just couldn’t beat (It was an onslaught of rolling knights in the raining city or something, it’s been a while). And after that I tried finding more power-ups and stuff to help, but I had to set it down after getting bottlenecked there. That being said, I can very easily see why people like this hardcore metroid-vania platformer, and would still recommend it if you’re into the Dark Souls style of high difficulty and mechanical mastery in other genres.

Axiom Verge [PC]

This is another Metroid-style game. I really liked this one as well, especially how its power-ups weren’t the traditional “You jump higher now” traversal power-ups. It really has a nice atmosphere and theme that still feels alien and metroidy while also feeling like the glitchy world by giving you weapons and movement abilities that let you glitch and change the environment around you. I really liked it! My only real complaint is the bosses get really challenging through a result of eventually figuring out what weapon and strategy is was designed for, and there are some areas that I was completely lost trying to find where I was going next, but all in all it’s pretty solid.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch [PC]

I normally really hate games where the focus is “lol, you can barely control your character! hahaha.” I actually really liked this one; it isn’t hard to get the hang of it and it’s really funny and still enjoyable at the same time. I rarely actually felt annoyed at the controls. I had a ton of fun with it, even if it was a little short.

Kirby Star Allies [Switch]

My complaints are very much the same as everyone else’s here; it’s a pretty okay Kirby game, but it lacks real challenge and is pretty quick. the real “star” of the show is playing the game with different characters, but since you can’t do that until after you play through as Kirby, by that point it’s either grown on you or hasn’t. The best part is the unique levels they made for the DLC characters, Gooey, Marx, Dreamland buddies, etc. Those are a ton of fun. If you like Kirby games, this one’s no Super Star but you’ll likely love all the attention to the free DLC characters and it’s not bad by any stretch.

HOB [PC]

It’s a 3D, top-down Zelda style game with an emphasis on some platforming elements. The world is wonderful, definitely the Aesthetic with clockwork worlds that Spiral Knights wishes it could’ve had. I actually had a ton of fun with it. The secrets and exploration were great, combat is ehhhhhh but that’s not really the focus. It’s a good time, If you like Zelda but with some puzzle platforming and great atmosphere, check this one out!

Poi [PC]

This is a Unity 3D platformer that attempted to brush off the Unity, and does an alright job with being mechanically tighter than most, but still has the Unity feel. Controls are a bit loose, could’ve used a lot of polish, but honestly this scratched the 3D platformer collect-a-thon itch for a bit and I actually 100% it. You have to love 3D platformers like Sunshine or Banjo Tooie to be able to like this, but if you do it’s a pretty fun romp.

Princess Remedy In a Heap of Trouble [PC]

This is a fun, short bullet-hellish game with an old-school Atari aesthetic. It’s pretty fun, but honestly I like the mechanics in the free game better (though this has more content). It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s quirky (and kinda short), try out the free game and if you like that one give this a try! The main difference is the “date” mechanic, where people you heal can join you to give you a different special power from healing, to various kinda of bombs, time freezing, homing bullets, etc. Once you find one though, it’s hard to convince yourself to try something else.

Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion [Switch]

This is Splatoon 2′s expanded hard/challenge mode. I’m a big fan; a few of the challenges are eh, but overall the aesthetic and branching map structure are super fun. The expanding on the lore and bonuses are also great; even though earlier I don’t normally go for the extremely hard, I found myself 100%’ing this. There’s a really tough challenge at the very end of all that, and I would say If you liked Splatoon 2, pick this up. It’s the expansion of Single Player that it deserves, though prepare for a few frustrating challenges.

... But now you have to pay for a terrible service to play it online so keep that in mind...

Celeste [Switch]

This is a fucking great game and you should buy it. It’s a challenging (very hard) platformer in the line of super meat boy and maybe even I Wanna Be The Guy, but this does it extremely right. restarting is very quick, the controls are incredibly tight, and the levels are genuinely clever and fun.

The story is also really solid, and I can’t recommend the whole package as a solid game.

Grow Up [PC]

This is the sequel to Grow Home, a game I’ve quick-reviewed a long time back. I liked the whole explore a whole planet and find some neat stuff, however the challenges are reliant on some weird procedural animations which don’t necessarily cooperate. It kinda overstays it’s welcome as a result, though the open nature of it is really fun. I have a hard time recommending this one, but it’s still a pretty solid romp even if it fights you a bit.

Sonic Mania Plus [Switch]

Having 100% the base game which I highly recommend, I was expecting a lot more things to do with this. Encore mode is fun; I really like how you can change up your characters and have to adjust on the fly. The new special stages are tough but fun, but the pinball minigame is.. not good. Gets old pretty quick. additionally it doesn’t add much after encore mode. Might and Ray have abilities that meaningfully add some neat gameplay stuff, but after how great the base game was, I was expecting a little bit more. That being said, the DLC is a nice bonus for the base game and you can’t really go wrong with it.

Lovely Planet [PC]

So I made a point to only play this game when I was drunk. The first few times I happened to be when I played it, so I stuck with it. This is a quick-restarting FPS with a focus on perfect shots and maneuvering to destroy all the target and get to the end as soon as possible.It’s hard as balls but really silly, so if you’re into perfectionist gameplay it’s worth a go. Probably not drunk tho.

Ever Oasis [3DS]

IIRC, this came out at a time where there was a lull in Nintendo games, or at least 3DS games so this one was very much skimmed over. It’s a mix between a town management sim and Zelda-style dungeon crawling and resource gathering. On paper, and even somewhat in game, this is a cool idea; you get townsfolk who can go with you on missions, each with their own abilities, and what you get outside of the town is used to help expand you town, which will buff you/your townspeople's abilities to go further in dungeons.

In practice however... they don’t really mesh. The limitation of 1 item per party member and items being locked to specific people you need to find, going to dungeons is a chore as you need to find out which characters you need to actually play (often not your best). Meanwhile, time passes so quickly and your town’s shopkeepers run out of resources so quickly, it’s a full time job to keep up the town and then you run out. They mitigate this near the end game by have the ability to make parties out of townspeople who can’t own shops, which are very rare. The ending is good up until the last moment where they do a thing that doesn’t make sense to get some points for emotion but... It just doesn’t work to me.

All in all, it has a demo to show how a dungeon works, and if you like management AND what that dungeon has to offer, go for it. Otherwise, the setting and character design are great but not enough to really hold interest

Q.U.B.E. 2 [PC]

The First game was Portal-esque in that you navigated the first-person Cube puzzle maze without any dialogue while manipulating the chambers with a variety of cube-spawning and extending abilities. You had to piece out and interpret the story yourself. This is the opposite; there’s a lot of dialogue, story set-pieces, and it’s bizarrely paced. You’ll get through most the game in like an hour, but then the last 2-3 chapters are the bulk of the game. Those are pretty fun, but the game is still incredibly short and I liked the tone of the first better. It’s short, it’s not bad, but it doesn’t really stand out.

NES Classic

So I dunno if I love or hate this thing. It’s great because it’s an official NES with controller and emulator and gives me the opportunity to play a buncha games I hadn’t before, but the controller cable is too small, the damn thing has trouble getting enough power (EDIT: This was actually my aparement’s faulty wiring, though if you aren’t supplying it with enough power the sound won’t work either), and this things existence is probably part of the reason we’ve not seen a proper virtual console support on Switch. You can hack it to be able to upload other ROMs to it, which is neat (I haven’t done that), but ultimately it’s worth looking at the games and asking yourself: Do I really want to play most of these? Do I really want to buy this when I’ve already bought most of them?

SNES Classic

This is the same as above but more expensive with less games... But to me is a better value. It has a better selection of games (in my opinion), though they could’ve included some better ones. It still has the power issues (which are overcomable easily) but comes with 2 controllers with longer cables. Also StarFox 2 is a very nice game. I’d recommend this more than the NES Classic, but again, weigh what’s in it vs what you actually want to play if you can’t already

WarioWare Gold [3DS]

This is a compilation game done right. It has the WarioWare charm and the voice acting adds even more to it. The microgame selection and adaptations are wonderful, and honestly I don’t have any complaints. It has changed everything to fit in one of 3 (+2 smaller ones) categories: Mash, Twist, and Touch (+ blow and short). These are normally separate by category, but near the end they mix and match and even do some fun mix-up with it in the very last rounds and bonus game modes. Whether your first WarioWare or a veteran, this is in my opinion the best in the series, and I would suggest you give it a go.

Monster Hunter World [PC]

So this one is hard. I really wanted to like it, and after playing Dauntless I thought I would. I even promised friends I would play it with them frequently and keep up but... between friends being able to play when I couldn’t and the game’s wonky controls and online issues, I was falling behind and getting frustrated. That’s kinda side stuff; if I really liked it I could’ve caught up. The truth is, I liked Dauntless better because while it was also very buggy, the combat was just a lot more straightforward and responsive. Monster Hunter seemed like Dauntless with a bunch of annoyances added onto it. There are tons of collectibles and recipes, weapon sharpness is entirely pointless when the monsters run anyway to give you breaks, the weapons I played seemed sluggish to attack with, and monster attacks were unclear a lot of the time. Everything just felt like a pain in the ass or waste of time to deal with and put a lot of focus on inventory management or grinding, and to me the core game you would do that for just wasn’t there.

Like I enjoyed the free roaming and exploration, but the fighting is just not for me and that’s the whole point of the free roaming and all that. I feel bad about not liking this after enjoying Dauntless, but I just am not into Monster Hunter and will be skipping the series from now on.

Katamari Forever [PS3]

I got this one thinking it was a compilation game of all the Katamari games!

It was not. It’s actually the hardest Katamari game... Which kinda surprised me about how much of a dick they are when you start out since their controls are incredibly weird and unintuitive (you get used to them) and anything short of perfection will get the Kings to any where from passive aggressively imply you did poorly or just straight out call you awful and not to bother.

Here’s the part where randomly in the giant text post I just completely break whatever I was talking about because I’m 95% no one actually reads this so for shits and giggles the first person to reply to my tweet where I posted a link to the blogpost stating that they found this paragraph will get a free me replying back to that tweet saying “nice” back. An enticing gift amirite? Anyway continuing on.

That being said, it’s pretty fun after all that; there are one or two levels designed to be super annoying but the ones where you play the core game of quickly building your Katamari are for the most part very solid. This is for existing fans of the series, but i had a pretty good time with it after I got past the barrier to entry.

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: Ultimate Edition [PC]

I’ve talked about liking Shantae before on this blog; I mentioned that I liked Pirate’s Curse but the fact that side missions and collectibles were actually required for game completion. This Shantae looks great and all, but they completely tossed out the open-like nature and makes it a series of linear levels that you have to revisit at least 2-3 times to find the stuff that should’ve been off somewhere in a different series of areas and optional that’s really just slightly out of reach due to a power up you arbitrarily find after the level you needed to use it in ends. Dungeons are completely gone; the game literally is just “go right” and remember all the little things you couldn’t get to for when you have to backtrack over and over again.

That’s just the base game, and even with all that said it’s not a bad game, it just doesn’t really feel like a Shantae game anything other than aesthetically. I spent a few hours trying to 100% the base game, but after getting 99% and discovering I had to backtrack yet again to a snake merchant to trade for dances just to use them once and trade back, I just had 0 interest in getting the final percent. There are also a variety of different takes on the same campaign where you play as Shantae in different costumes with different abilities, Risky, or even Bolo + Skye + Rotty, and again those look fun but... I don’t really want to play the same game another 10 times.

Dragalia Lost [Android]

This is Nintendo’s first jump into mobile with a new IP, and while it’s definitely banking hard on more traditional gacha mechanics (you can get 5 star items instead of Hero characters only), it’s definitely not bad. It’s pretty generous with stamina and resources, at least when you start, and my only major complaint is how you seem to hit a wall in terms of how long it takes to really progress about a week or so of playing every day in. And it’s quite a wall; there’s quite a lot of grinding needed once you get to chapter 6 (the current final chapter that really feels like just the end of a prologue (Edit, they recently added chapter 7)), so you really need to like it. The levels are kinda simple as well, though there’s a maze-like area in the story that’s a bit more clever so it’s a start at least. All and all, it’s worth a try, but if you don’t like the top-down brawler after the first world, it’s not worth forcing through gacha mechanics for; especially since after you complete normal story mode, all you’re going to be doing is grinding to get through hard and the summoning currency gets scarce fast. For reference, getting enough to be able to challenge the High Dragon quests and not immediately die in them takes 2 months of grinding specifically for that purpose if you use your stamina optimally, which you won’t because events are more fun anyway

Overcooked 2 [Switch Download]

So this is actually really fun with a friend or 3; and that’s where it really shines. Sure, you can do it single player but it just doesn’t feel as fun. This is a sort of quick time-management game where you have to frantically run around cooking various recipes before they run out of time, to get a star rating at the end. There’s some bad levels, but the majority are really fun and it feels very fair even in single layer; I always think at the end regardless of the rank that I could’ve managed my dudes to do even better. The only real complaint is the loading times seem... unnecessarily long. Especially for restarting a level. It’s nothing too bad though.

Luckily this has online multiplayer, so I highly recommend picking this up on a platform that your friends have it on, ie Steam. I got it on Switch and in hindsight since I strongly dislike Nintendo’s online service I really wish I had gotten like a 2-pack on Steam. That’s not a complaint with the game though; I really liked it!

Super Mario Party [Switch]

Probably the best Mario Party in a very, VERY long time. This is going to be a longer review. I played this first with Keewy and his roommates and we had a great time in every single game mode (except online).

The Mario Party mode is really good; they’ve shrunk the map and reduced how much stars cost to 10 coins, but 10-15 turn games can still take an hour to an hour and a half. This makes it a much simpler, easier to get mode, but the real star here is them bringing back the Ally & character dice mechanic from Mario Party Star Rush (had it’s good moments, but was on 3DS so that’s it for that). Each character can roll a normal 1-6 dice, but they also each have a unique die that has different numbers on it. These are for the most part balanced; character with higher numbers on their dice also have downsides instead of a 1. 0′s, losing coins, and in some cases gaining coins (because you still don’t move), and it adds a level of strategy to it where otherwise it would be just “roll and hop for the best. That’s what it is still, but sometimes you can choose. You can also pick up other characters who will help you in minigames, give you the option to roll their die, and add 1-2 spaces to your roll. It’s super fun.

The River Rafting mode is 4-player co-op, and it’s pretty fun as well your first run through. Not single player though; this very much shines with 4 people. However, because there are only like 8? 4-player co-op minigames, you see every game on your first run so it doesn’t really hold up after your first couple runs.

The dance mode is great; it’s like Rhythm heaven but Mario Party themed. Again, these minigames are really fun, but once you play through all 3 difficulties, which takes about 10 minutes, there aren’t any you haven’t played.

2v2 is ripped straight out of Star Rush, which is a great thing. Again, don’t play this with a cpu on your team at least. As far as I can tell, even in Mario Party mode, CPU’s make the same brain-dead decisions on the boards regardless of their difficulty level. Anyway, this has the same 4 boards but opened up vastly; You now roll, combine it with your partner, then add any allies you may have picked up along the way’s 1-2 rolls and other bonuses. The point is to land on the starspace and buy it, and it’s just a good time to see the strategy involved with either going for the stars, allies, or secondary goals. By far the best alternative Mario Party gameplay style in a while (way better than Island Tour’s linear maps and 9-10′s Car mode), but again there’s only the 4 maps.

So I guess my only true complaint is that while there are a lot of minigames, they’re split so much over the different modes they don’t feel like a lot and you see repeats frequently. Additionally it would be nice to turn on/off the bonus stars at the end and other options involving maybe skipping some of the cutscenes (star moving, places changed, etc.). All in all, the best and most interesting Mario Party in a long, long time. I highly recommend it if you have a friend to pick it up with.

Just Shapes & Beats

Got this game for a bit of random multiplayer. It’s a pretty fun, music based bullet hell game all about staying alive through the song while crazy stuff happens on screen. The story mode doesn’t overstay its welcome, but there’s also plenty of content and challenges for those who are so inclined, and only one of the levels felt utterly, bullshitingly unfair (which is really good with bullet hells) so It’s a fun time if you’re into top down bullet hells, and better with a friend in challenge mode

Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee [Switch]

I could write a dissertation on this game and how it’s neither good or bad; it’s just kinda... there. Some aspects are incredibly disappointing; the capture mechanics are absolute garbage, forced motion controls are atrocious, player/npc animations and interactions are completely stilted and lazy, the world is very bland vs Sun and Moon, the performance in handheld mode drops frames sometimes which is unacceptable, there’s almost zero post game, and even more. It’s by all means an HD reskin of a Gameboy game running on their crappy 3DS engine.

But there’s a lot of good here as well; seeing pokemon in the overworld is amazing and should be the case in the series moving forward, partner pokemon (eevee) are fun and fucking adorable, riding pokemon is great, having fast captures makes chaining a really fun mechanic, Having some of the E4 and Gym leaders interact with you during your quest makes the world interesting, connectivity with go is very limited but still good, having only one pokemon be obtainable only once in the game is a welcome and frankly overdue change in the game, removing breeding/abilities/held items really streamlines the mechanics and makes the game more enjoyable in a lot of cases, and I could go on.

I’m not going to recommend it, but I mean if you liked any pokemon game you’re definitely not going to not have fun with this one, even if the randomness in the capture mechanics frustrates you to no end

Super Smash Bros Ultimate [Switch]

So I mean it’s smash bros. Not much really to say about that, it’s pretty good. I kinda like Smash Bros not just for the multiplayer but the single-player as well, which is why Brawl is still my Favorite so take that as my approach here. The normal gameplay is fine, though the input buffer feels wonky at times and some characters are much harder to play against than others, which in combination with the sheer amount of characters makes it very difficult to get the hang of and counter accordingly, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just the barrier between playing casually and playing a bit more seriously feels sudden when randomly coming across characters that have inherent advantages from being wonky. Cloud for example seems to have a move for evertyhing, can spit out attacks very quickly, and if you try anything silly they’ll just charge a better move, and then randomly fighting a Ganondorf is like “I hope they don’t know how to read you because you can die at like 35 from a single fuck up”

The Single Player content though was... Disappointing. Not nearly as bad as Sm4sh, but it seems like they spent so much time putting as many characters and stages in the game as possible that they realized they wouldn’t have time to do old game modes the same way, so they made a system which allowed them to make custom smash battles with weird attributes and built the entirety of the bonus content on that. There’s really only adventure mode which is just a progression of Event Matches which gets somewhat stale and repetitive quickly, Mob Smash is just not really that fun past your first run or two, All-Star Smash is actually near impossible and not even rewarding, Classic does one or two cool ideas with routes but they clearly got lazy with a lot of characters there too, and the only platforming challenge in the game is the bonus level which takes 30 seconds and never changes.

Their Online mode is unacceptably bad and lacks options for random fights as well, and given that they’re charging for it this is just flat-out unacceptable. Buy it if you like playing Smash for the Multiplayer (which is almost everyone), but this is a hard pass if you were expecting a large amount of interesting content like Brawl’s Adventure mode had. Or are incapable of learning past a certain point, like me.

Katamari Damacy Reroll [Switch]

So after having played Forever earlier in the year and hearing how much praise this got, I had very High expectations! Unfortunately the controls are still ehhhhh and the game is surprisingly short; I beat it over the course of a 4ish hour flight. It’s definitely a lot nicer to you than Forever is, but in terms of amount of content it’s not aged well. If you’ve not played it before, pick it up on sale, but as far as I can tell this outing doesn’t add anything new to the original and it’s just a straight up re-release

Mario Tennis Aces [Switch]

So does anyone actually look forward to Mario Tennis Games? The past two have been husks of content and this one’s not really much better. The charging mechanic is interesting, but doesn’t feel that consistent or fair in some scenarios, but like was anyone waiting for this to get announced? Or is this just a “safe” series that sells okay and pads out the library for quick cash?”

It’s weird that they knew the Adventure mode was something fans really, REALLY wanted and touted it as some huge deal, even advertising it with a cool pre-rendered cutscene, and the whole mode with all challenges turns out to be at most a couple hours long, repetitive, and only actually has the two cutscenes (the 2nd being like 10 seconds). They made some silly RPG level up mechanic which didn’t feel like it made any difference, you can’t change your character so you’re really only learning how Mario plays, and it does a really poor job of explaining the different kinds of shots to you so it’s not even good for learning the game. I wasn’t expecting an experience worth telling for generations with the plot either, but even that gives up on itself; Luigi is possessed but he doesn’t do anything the whole game until you fight him, not even with the 3/5 power stones you have, and these power stones you spent the game collecting don’t do anything or matter because Bowser comes out of no where and “takes” the racket and power stones and challenges you to an admittedly fun boss fight. Not in a cutscene mind you, you’re just told this happens. It’s just lazy.

The game has some visual issues too; it’s missing any sort of stylistic flair and honestly just looks like an up-res’d Wii game, though with smoother models. Shadows flicker and cut through textures, and something weird’s going on with anti-aliasing that makes everything look blurry as hell too. I will say props for going to the effort of making tennis costumes for every character though; so that’s more effort than what went into Ultra Smash.

If you’re a huge, HUGE fan of Mario Tennis, go nuts. But uh, yeah this isn’t really worth your time for the price otherwise

Starlink: Battle for Atlas (Starter Pack) [Switch]

Yeah so it’s rich coming from me, but honestly this game is only hindered by the physical toys. As far as I can tell you can only play as generic Mr. No Personality or Fox, and then you only have the two options for weapons. The game could get interesting combat-wsie with the combinations of ships and like I think 14ish different weapons? But with just the starter pack you run through what the game has to offer pretty quick.

It is interesting though how I very rarely play Ubisoft games and hadn’t played one since their open-world formula milking, but right away I could tell that it was a Ubisoft open world game. There’s a lot to do, a lot of planets to explore, movement is fun and surprisingly easy, combat is pretty straightforward and has potential, but the key thing is that there’s like 30-50 facilities on each planets with like 4 different types of objectives (3 of which are “kill the same bad guys immediately here”), and you can spend hours on one planets doing some minor variance on that same thing over and over and over.

It’s a pretty good start in terms of base mechanics for what would be a cool system for an open StarFox game (and I know it wasn’t trying for that) but the repetitiveness of exploring, frankly pathetic writing in terms of characters, and locking a lot of the interesting content behind toys detracts from the experience. It’s definitely not un-fun, but after clearing 4 planets and seeing that’s just what the game is doing I don’t have any interest in continuing.

At least other than to see StarFox, because Ubisoft did them better justice than Nintendo has in years.

Best Game I Played in 2018: Celeste

Easy choice here, Celeste has a wonderful story, looks gorgeous, plays like a dream and managed to be an incredibly challenging platformer that didn’t make me lose my patience ever, which is AMAZING considering how little patience I have whenever I fail at a game.

I was going to pick the best game that actually came out in 2018 but honestly it’d be between like 4 games that I had gripes with in some way or another, so i’m going to say Overcooked 2 is pretty fucking solid and leave this whole run on sentence in the heading font because why not it’s my dead blog I can do whatever the fuck I wan-

Anyway that’s it. Hope everyone had a good year

#Game Impressions

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smashingatsonicspeed · 6 years

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AUGUST SMASH DIRECT THOUGHTS

Boy! That last Smash Direct certainly added more hype then there already was for Ultimate. Just like with the E3 Direct I’m going to go through the major things covered in the order they were announced

SIMON & RICHTER BELMONT

Simon was technically leaked twice. He was among a seemingly credible leak that mentioned Ridley, Snake, Ice Climbers, and no cuts. And then Simon apparently was accidentally leaked through some goof up by Nintendo. (Though I dodged it since I know it was only one night before the reveal so I still didn’t know for sure if Simon was in until the reveal). But either way this ia amazing, Castlevania is certainly a worthy inclusion in Smash on the likes of all the other NES franchises represented. But what wasn’t leaked was Richter as an echo. Richter was the protagonist of Rondo of Blood. Which wasn’t exactly on a Nintendo console unless you count Dracula X in the 90s. Richter was also in Symphony of the Night which has never been on a Nintendo console. But he’s famous even in the meme-wise cause he’s the one who’s there for when Dracula yells “WHAT IS A MAN?!” in the hammy voice acting that was normal for this era of gaming. He was also an unlockable character on a DS game but otherwise Richter isn’t too Nintendo famous. But he is the most popular Belmont in Japan. They just needed to still feature the most iconic Belmont as the main inclusion still. I’m fine with Richter though. Though when I play as either of them, I’m playing Simon more for sure.

P.S. The trailer was great, not just for the super cool footage of Simon. But it was hilarious seeing Luigi running scared. Luigi getting killed by Death has quickly even become the latest Smash Bros. meme

DRACULA’S CASTLE STAGE & BOSS

The stage itself looks fittingly creepy and will have some pretty amazing music I imagine too. And Dracula being a boss is great as well. I kinda wish they’d have him yell “WHAT IS A MAN?!” when he came in. But I imagine that would be a bit much and ruin the moment. But it’d be hilarious to me.

NEW ECHO FIGHTERS: CHROM AND DARK SAMUS

When Chrom showed up I actually smiled. Now I’m no Fire Emblem fan. And yes it’s another sword user, and a fourth Marth-like character. But given how humiliated Chrom was in Smash 4. Not just in the Robin/Lucina trailer but the memes it caused in the Smash fandom that made a once proud and potential newcomer into a butt monkey on nearly the same level as Ridley with the TOO BIG memes. Even for characters I don’t necessarily want to see I would not want that fate to happen to their fans. It’s just brutal. Though at the very least Chrom seems to borrow a few moves from Ike as well. I even thought at first he was an echo of Ike before I checked later that it was actually for Roy. So I’m pretty happy Chrom actually got to have his chance. I am also certainly using Chrom more then I ever will for Roy.

It’s no doubt though that Dark Samus stole the show for echoes. She’s already my favorite echo so far and she has some slick-looking animations that may make her more worth playing then regular power-suit Samus. Metroid fans can be happy that they’ve doubled up the reps. And both of them are well-deserved additions.

ECHOES CAN EITHER BE STACKED OR SEPARATED ON THE CSS

This also may lessen the disgust that people had with Dark Pit’s inclusion back in Smash 4. Just put the echoes in the corner of the character they’re echoing. I’m certainly going to keep them stacked myself. I think the CSS will also look cleaner that way

ALL CHARACTERS WILL BE REVEALED BEFORE LAUNCH

In other words, Sakurai has had it with those final roster leaks only weeks/days before release. Base Game speculation’s days are numbered until the final Smash Direct before release (Which would be likely in October or November). DLC speculation will immediately start after it. But we’re going to have our explosion of reactions to the final base roster done soon enough. Going to be some tense times until then

RETURNING STAGES

There’s so many returning stages! I’ll just say that Brinstar Depths, Magicant, and Fountain of Dreams are particularly ones I’m excited are back. Yoshi 64, Venom, Fourside, New Pork City, and Windy Hill are also nice to see.

CAPTAIN TOAD ON NEW DONK CITY

Welp, Captain Toad is looking very unlikely now. He could be DLC potentially since he isn’t a major stage hazard nor an Assist Trophy. But with a focus on longtime fan favorites and bringing every veteran back. Captain Toad just fell to the way side. It’s a shame, if the newcomers have been chosen in the same fashion Smash 4’s was. I think Captain Toad would of been a near certainty. This also unfortunately means that the last chance for a playable Toad has left us. Smash can’t include everyone, even with some characters like Ridley finally getting their chance, there are still some characters that would certainly count for Nintendo All-Stars that just couldn’t quite make it. This is probably one of the few disappointments I had with the direct. But I’ve dealt without a playable Toad for 4 games already, I can deal with another.

103 STAGES

Man that’s a lot of stages. Not to mention we won’t have to unlock any, they’ll be there from the start. Though Sakurai mentioning this does have me suspicious that this means there’s no more base game stages to add unless they are really trying to hide any newcomers that may come with stages. But it seems odd to point this out exactly if there were even just a few more stages in reality

STAGE HAZARD SWITCH

If you’re a competitive player or even just dislike stages where you’re fighting the stage more then your opponent then you absolutely should love this option. More viable stages and everything

STAGE MORPH

Now this is cool. And could definitely add to the Chaos of a match especially if you randomize both stages. Imagine you get a nice stage that would be competitively legal but then BAM you get something like Great Cave Offensive or Big Blue as the stage morph stage. Plenty of opportunity for hilarity there. Should be fun.

800+ TRACKS + 20 SONIC SONGS + STILL ONLY 2 FINAL FANTASY SONGS

Man this game’s soundtrack is going to be crazy! I am interested in what they have new for Sonic. There’s apparently only 20. If every Sonic song returned that was in either of the last two games. There’d be room for only 2. But if none of the Brawl ones return that leaves room for 6. And that’s not counting the possibility they cut some songs. Though perhaps another bummer from this is apparently Final Fantasy is still only getting 2 songs. So now we know it wasn’t just DLC budget getting in the way. Square is still being stingy.

STAMINA NOW A STANDARD MODE THAT CAN HAVE STOCKS

I’ve always kind of liked Stamina mode as something to be a change of pace of the regular gameplay. So it having it able to have stocks is quite cool

FINAL SMASH METER

Now this is really cool and may even open the possibility of some tournaments allowing Final Smashes in tourneys. I doubt it will be in really serious tournaments anyway, but could certainly allow for some hype in tourneys that do allow it.

SQUAD STRIKE

It’s a little vague at the moment. But Squad Strike might be the closest to something like the match in Smash Tour with a different character per stock? Though it could also just be a 1v1 match for each character. Also opens up for battles between teams.

OFFLINE TOURNEY RETURNS

You can have offline tournaments again like in Brawl and Melee! I sometimes just did CPU only tournaments with those which was kinda fun to watch. Just overall neat to have that back

SMASHDOWN

A cool option to have people not just use the same main they’re great with and also encourages people to diversify the characters they use.

TRAINING MODE UPGRADES

Training now has essentially a ruler to know your character’s launching power! Very cool and Competitive players will love it since it’s much easier to measure things.

CLASSIC MODE BACK TO MORE STANDARD

This is definitely a return to form for Classic mode. It’s kinda like SSB64’s but it’s a different set for each character that’s predetermined. No matter how many times you go through with one particular character it will be the same. While that may arguably sound like a step backward from the complete randomness of Melee’s classic mode. I actually love this a lot, the team can choose a particular set of opponents that make sense for that character to fight. Or even if it makes absolutely no sense, then it’s up to the fanbase to think of a reason for why they fight. Also what seems to be a thing is each character has a name for their run. Kirby had Gourmet Clash and Roy had A Journey of Swords. Bringing the same kind of intrigue that the Punch-Out Stage titles bring. I am excited to go through with every character like I always do.

NEW POKEMON

Alolan Exeggutor is hilarious, Abra will certainly provide some salt on some people, Mimikyu was a character often seen as possible to be the Gen 7 rep so might of been the first major reconfirmation not counting the Captain Toad one found later. Vulpix is a cute addition to the pokeball lineup. And Ditto is amazing. I almost kinda want the enemy team of this game to now be Ditto fighters.

NEW ASSISTS

Only 2 possibly major reconfirmations in the form of Zero and Shovel Knight. Zero was often seen as a possible 2nd Mega Man rep and Shovel Knight was considered the most likely if an Indie were to ever make it. It’s a miracle Shovel Knight even got this far though. Yacht Club games should be proud. Other then those though, Klaptrap looks annoying to deal with, Kapp’n seems funny just for the characters in the bus’ faces, Chef Kawasaki is the return of Kirby’s old Brawl final smash repurposed, Nikki’s a cute character to include, and the Majora’s Mask Moon is amazing as an assist trophy idea. It doesn’t even discriminate, even KOing the one it summoned. There was also the Rathalos assist trophy that turns out to also be a boss

ASHLEY DECONFIRMED

At the tail end of the Assist Trophy section was the sudden appearance of Ashley and not even with the name tag. Though they made her eyes red again. Ashley was considered one of the possible likely newcomers revealed this direct mainly because last week WarioWare Gold released. So it would be great timing.But it wasn’t to be. Sorry Ashley fans

MAIN MENU AND A MYSTERIOUS SPIRITS MODE

The menu looks more refined then Smash 4’s though I didn’t mind the Smash 4 menu as much as most people did. However most of the buzz is of course around the mode Sakurai had blurred out. Through some deblurring people found the mode will be called “Spirits” but that’s still too vague to know what it’ll be exactly. Based on any hints though from the bosses, it seems it will be some kind of Adventure mode. My guess is something in between Melee’s Adventure Mode and Subspace. Not as extensive as Subspace but more content then Melee’s adventure mode for sure. Perhaps you find the spirits of the characters to unlock them. But anything else is definitely all speculation at this point. It’ll be interesting to find out what this mode will be all about when we get to it.

KING K. ROOL

You know they just had to leave us with one more thing. And it certainly was a big one. K. Rool was only 2nd to Ridley in being one of the most wanted characters in Smash. And was often seen on the top of the list on the ballot. Also gotta say the trailer is amazing to show all those heroes and the villain and then it cutting to Donkey Kong, cause that’s when exactly you know who’s coming. The Dedede fakeout was also hilarious, though I doubt it really fooled anyone. K. Rool was in Smash and Donkey Kong finally gets a much needed increase of representation. Perhaps we’ll see Dixie soon come up as a Diddy echo. But until then K. Rool is what Donkey Kong fans as well as a good majority of Smash fans wanted. And he’s here cementing this Smash as certainly even more fan service focused then previous games.

Overall, an amazing direct. and can’t wait to see what else is in store for this game. We still have more characters and of course the Spirits mode to see. The road to Smash Ultimate is getting smaller each day and we’re surely in for a few more spots of interest along the way. Cannot wait to see what’s revealed next!

#Super Smash Bros. Utimate #Super Smash Bros.#Simon Belmont #Richter Belmont #Castlevania #Chrom #Fire Emblem #Dark Samus #Metroid #King K. Rool #donkey kong series #Donkey Kong Country #K. Rool

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monsters-conquer-the-world · 6 years

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10 Games

For Jack’s 10th birthday, Will got him a RetroPie. Pretty cool, especially since it’s so easy to just dump a zillion games in there and let the kid go nuts. But that’s a one-way ticked to analysis paralysis, so Will had a a super sick idea. He asked me and Jess and some other friends to put together a list of 10 must-play classic/retro games and write a little bit about why we chose them. As someone who loves video games and writing and lists, I was ALL ‘BOUT THAT.

Now that Jack’s birthday has come and gone, I can share all the junk I wrote about these ten games that mean so much to me! Check it out:

I love this idea. I know the initial prompt was just "pick your favorites" but I couldn't help but impose a bunch of additional caveats. I know where this list is headed (and I have a pretty good idea of what games will pop up on the other lists)! I could have easily listed off 10 Super NES games or 10 N64 games, but I wanted to hit a variety of consoles and franchises. I would have liked to have hit a variety of genres and studios too, but I can't lie: I love platformers, and I love games by Nintendo. It was challenging but rewarding to shave this list down to ten--a lot of old favorites and recent discoveries couldn't fit on the list, leaving these few. The ones I've always treasured, the ones that stuck with me, the ones I memorized the music and sound effects to, starring the characters I love, exploring the worlds I wanted to live in. Maybe you'll dig 'em too.

NES

Super Mario Bros. 3

I had spent some quality time with our Atari 2600 well before we ever had an NES in the house. I have fond memories of playing but not really understanding Pac-Man, Haunted House, and the bleak nuclear apocalypse masterpiece Missile Command. But the first game I really wrapped my head around was Super Mario Bros. (and Duck Hunt, but that's not as relevant!). Mario and Luigi's multi-screen adventures under a friendly blue sky expanded my concept of what a video game could even be--plus it was super fun, and Rochelle and I could both play it together! Super Mario Bros. 2 was technically more impressive, but so weird (and flanked by so many similar games) that it didn't rock my world like Mario 1 did (though I of course have a huge soft spot for it anyway). Then Super Mario Bros. 3 came along and Mario had learned how to fly. It was bigger, more beautiful, and stuffed to the brim with secrets and surprises! It was so exciting even Mom and Dad would play it with us. Super Mario World is maybe the bigger, better, beautifuler game (and you can ride a FREAKING DINOSAUR), but I'll never forget the day I woke up to find my dad and sister playing this in the living room because we finally owned it. It was too good to just keep renting! Kid Icarus

I didn't catch Kid Icarus the first time around. I didn't even play it until high school, but I was inspired to track it down because of my love for Greek mythology and the Metroid series. Kid Icarus takes place in a world heavily inspired by (but still distinctly different from) the swords, sandals, and sorcery epics of ancient Greece! It's considered a "sister game" to the original Metroid, released around the same time by the same team, and the game shares a lot of the core elements that make Metroid so unique and awesome: eerily lonely, dangerous worlds to explore, a challenging beginning, player-empowering character growth, and a focus on exploring vast, often vertically-scrolling worlds with satisfying run'n'gun'n'jump gameplay. Kid Icarus borrows all the best stuff from Metroid, but tempers it with a slate of unique design choices: instead of one sprawling world, KI is split into discrete levels. The first world is an ascent out of Hades with vertically oriented levels, the second world is a horizontal trek across the surface world, the third is another vertical ascent into the sky, and the finale is a horizontal, forced-scrolling shoot-em-up to reclaim the heavens! Every fourth level is a sprawling, maze-like, Metroid-ish dungeon, capped off with a frantic boss fight! Plus, Eggplant Wizards, credit cards, and RPG-style character upgrades! They don't make 'em like this anymore!! Duck Tales

It's not as groundbreaking as Super Mario Bros. 1 or as innovative as Super Mario Bros. 3, but that doesn't change the fact that Duck Tales could possibly be my favorite NES platformer of all time. You don't need to know anything about or even like the original cartoon (or the comic books that birthed it) to appreciate the challenging charms of this hop'n'bop classic. Duck Tales only has a handful of levels, but they're huge, full of hidden treasures, packed with alternate paths, swiss cheesed with secret passageways, and just gorgeous translations of Disney's lush cartoon worlds. Getting to choose your own path through Duck Tales' roster of big beautiful worlds is reminiscent of the Mega Man games (also by Capcom). What really sets Duck Tales apart is controlling Scrooge. He's spry for a septuagenarian billionaire, but his real talents lie in swinging and pogo-sticking off his cane! It's delightful cartoon nonsense, but if you get the hang of it, it's also incredibly satisfying, allowing you to make some wild, death-defying maneuvers. If you dig this and find yourself hungering for more bounce-centric gameplay, Shovel Knight takes Scrooge's cane, turns it into a shovel, and builds a deeply satisfying modern classic around it. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze finally gives Cranky a chance to shine as a playable character, and he straight-up jock's Scrooge's style, cane and all. It rules.

Super NES

Yoshi's Island

The first thing you'll notice about Yoshi's Island is that it looks like it was drawn with crayons, markers, and colored pencils! The second thing you'll notice is that Mario is a freaking baby! It's an odd premise, but it all comes together in perhaps the best sidescroller ever made. With Mario mustache-less and diaper-clad, this game puts you directly in control of Yoshi, and he is a joy to play as. Hovering to extend his jump power, turning enemies into eggs and chucking them, and butt-stomping are Yoshi's primary tools of the trade, and they mix things up nicely. This doesn't feel like "just another Mario," but it also feels right at home in the Mario pantheon. Beyond the Yosh-man's most basic maneuvers, there are some wild power-ups that turn Yoshi into a helicopter, a train that zips along in the background, a mole-tank, and more, plus special areas where Baby Mario gets superpowers and runs up walls and stuff! Yoshi's Island is another magical micro-world, jam-packed with extremely clever and fun level design and very possibly the biggest and best boss fights of all time. Ya gotta play this one.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong-Quest

I know I just talked about Yoshi's Island maybe being the best platformer of all time, but Donkey Kong Country 2 is right behind it, nipping at its heels. DKC2 has a wildly different aesthetic, dropping you into beautifully computer-rendered pirate shipwrecks, janky-but-glitzy night time carnival rides, endless bramble patches, a skyscraper-sized beehive, haunted forests, and more! They're not just beautiful to look at, but beautiful to listen to, because DKC2 features one of the all-time greatest video game soundtracks. Maybe the greatest. But this game ain't just another pretty face!

DKC2, like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Duck Tales, is stuffed to the gills with tricky little secrets and hidden areas and surprises. This game doesn't just have secret levels, it has a secret WORLD. This game doesn't just have a secret world, it has an entire secret ENDING. The classically solid platforming is accompanied by a wealth of mine cart challenges, awesome animal buddies, mini-games, and enough level design variety to keep you coming back for every last hidden treasure.

Super Metroid

Super Metroid doesn't just have secrets, it has mysteries. This was the first game to ever actually scare me. The first one to ever creep me out. And that just made me want to play it even more. It feels lonely and dangerous. Unlike the games earlier on this list, it is one HUGE and continuous world. It is a world of incomprehensible alien horrors, ancient moldering ruins, and high-tech space-faring bio-terrorists. This world, named Zebes, is a world where the sky continuously rains acid and almost every living thing inhabiting it wants to kill you. Good thing you're Samus Aran, the toughest, smartest bounty hunter to ever clean up Space Pirate scum!

Samus explores this acid-drenched nightmare planet by running, gunning, and jumping... but also by solving puzzles and thinking her way out of traps. With each power up she gets a little stronger, and can find her way deeper into this gnashing alien hellscape. It's a game that is sadly beautiful just as often as it is ghoulish. The story, simple and sketched-in as it is, is also deeper and more moving than you will ever expect. The boss fights are as massive, memorable, and epic as the ones in Yoshi's Island, but about a thousand times more intense and frightening. The music perfectly sets the dark, burbling mood of each region of Zebes, and by the end of the game you will feel like the most powerful hero in the galaxy. This mix of sci-fi, horror, and adventure isn't just a must-play, it's a life-changer.

Gameboy Color

Wario Land II

I love the Mario series, but I'm also absolutely crazy about Wario. He's a fat, greedy, chaotic, prideful, disgusting, bull-headed oaf. He's the polar opposite of Mario... and that's why I love him! He's not exactly a villain, but he's a definitely a troublemaker, and it is hilariously fun to walk (or stumble!) a mile or three in his shoes. The game before this, Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land is a ton of fun (as is Super Mario Land 2 before it!), but Wario Land II is the first one that truly feels like a Wario game. What makes this game so different? Wario can't be killed!

You read that right, there's (almost) no way to actually "die" in this game! No way to lose lives. That might sound too easy, or boring, or both, but it's not! Wario might be unkillable, but all KINDS of bad stuff can and WILL still happen to him. A LOT. He'll get flattened, set on fire, trapped in bubbles, fattened up, frozen, drunk, zombified, and more! And here's the kicker: those wacky conditions are required to solve the puzzles and challenges of each level! On top of that ingenious and perfectly wacky set of game mechanics, the story branches off in wildly different directions: you'll blow up the annoying alarm clock in your castle, play street basketball against a giant bunny, be nice to a chicken, visit Atlantis, race through a weird world of mouths, noses, and eyes, and more! There are multiple endings, multiple hidden exits, and multiple secret treasures and minigames to find and conquer. Almost all of the Wario Land and Wario Ware games are oddball masterpieces, but WLII is the perfect balance of weird, smart, funny, and challenging.

Nintendo 64

Super Mario 64

This is it. This is the game. In 1996, when I was in sixth grade, Super Mario 64 was the only thing I cared about. I begged and wished and hoped for a Nintendo 64 that Christmas, but it didn't come. I was crushed. Occasionally I was able to rent an N64 and Super Mario 64, and I'd lose whole days to this magical, miraculous game. When I couldn't rent it, I'd bug my classmates about it endlessly. "What level are you on? What's that level like? What stars can you get? What secrets have you found?" They'd answer a few of my ravenous, bug-eyed questions before getting uncomfortable and leaving to do something else. What was the big deal? Why was I (and still am) so obsessed?

The leap from Super Nintendo to Nintendo 64 was like the leap from console and computer games to virtual reality. But instead of short, funny minigames, it is a huge, sprawling world where anything seems possible. A magical, secret garden full of surprises, wonder, challenges, and secrets. Where the sun always shines in a cloudless sky... except when you plunge into the death-defying Bowser levels or the inappropriately terrifying Big Boo's Haunt. Oh Mario can definitely fly in this one like he did in Super Mario Bros. 3, but just the simple act of running around in circles and jumping through 3D space felt like a joyous miracle... one that puts 2-dimensional flight to shame. Each world (accessed by jumping INTO paintings in Princess Peach's sprawling but empty castle) is colorful, full of possibility, and chock full of distinct personality. Adventuring through 3D space for the first time ever was incredible on its own, but doing it in such richly detailed, lovingly crafted worlds made me want to play there forever. I still do.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Take everything I just said about Super Mario 64 and multiply it by ten! Well, sort of. Ocarina of Time took the lessons learned from Super Mario 64 and applied them to the dungeon-crawling, puzzle-solving Legend of Zelda series. The result was an incredibly groundbreaking game that I cherished almost as zealously as Super Mario 64. I don't think it's aged as well, but I don't care. Ocarina of Time is a grand story, spanning seven years (!!!) and the entire fantastical country of Hyrule. As Link, you jump forward and back through time, meet strange and wonderful new friends, discover hidden kingdoms, face the blood-soaked evil of Hyrule's past, save its future, outwit cunning puzzles and traps, steal and ride a magnificent horse, challenge towering, Super Metroid-style end bosses, wield magical weapons, break hearts, play beautiful music, and go fishing. It's an entire, epic fantasy life in one little cartridge.

This was the first Zelda game I ever spent SERIOUS time with, and the fact that it plays like a fantasy-fueled hybrid of Super Mario 64 and Super Metroid means I've lost entire days to it. I've played it start to finish at least 8 or 9 times. It never gets boring. Like Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time invented how we make and play 3D games. This was the first 3D game where you could lock onto enemies and points of interest, plus a bevy of other camera controls that come standard in 3D games now (or at least they did for about a decade after Ocarina's release). The story is surprisingly cinematic and even gripping at times. You'll want to live in this world. You'll be sad when you see the end credits. Not because of the ending itself, but because there's no more game for you to play... until you start it all over again on the next save file.

Star Fox 64

Star Fox 64 was a life-changing event for me, just like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. So is Star Fox 64 a slow-paced, exploration heavy adventure into beautiful and fantastical solitude like those other two games? N O P E. It's a guns-blazin', fast action, dogfightin', barrel rollin', rock'em sock'em intergalactic action epic in supersonic spaceships! Piloted by talking animals! That actually talk! YES!

Instead of the wide-open freedom of Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of TIme, Star Fox 64 either puts you on (invisible) rails in a forced-scrolling attack run or in a contained 3D arena. Here's the kicker though, the levels are all so perfectly designed and the action is so expertly paced that you never feel restricted. You're too busy racking up kill combos, saving your wingmen, and navigating through flying, burning space debris and buildings and asteroids and terrain to think about what you can't do. And even on rails, Star Fox 64 gives you ways to explore! Most levels have multiple exits and there are a whole mess of different, branching paths through the entire, war-torn Lylat system. The game is designed to be played start to finish in a single sitting, but experimenting with repeat playthroughs is the only way to experience everything this laser-blazing action classic has to offer. On top of all that, it's got a great story, iconic, meme-worthy dialogue, and an absolutely banging soundtrack. It might not have changed the face of interactive entertainment like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, but it delivered the ultimate shoot'em up space adventure.

#Super Apartment Friends #video games #mario #Metroid #zelda #NES #SNES #N64 #Nintendo

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ambiguouslyliterate-blog · 6 years

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Video Gays: A Sam and Lana Fluff

I threw my controller in a fit of theatrical rage, proclaiming, "This game is rigged!" as Sam sat next to me, bursting with the laughter of a great conqueror. “Fuck Billy Hatcher!”

She and I sat atop her mattress, our small Gamecube tourney reaching its climax. I closed my eyes, unable to look at the bold and blocky "LOSE" on my side of the TV screen, behind it a pool of deadly computer-generated water. I hadn’t lost the whole game, just the round, but I knew at this point who the win would go to.

Crossing my arms, I threw my body sideways, colliding with her. She put an arm around me, kissing the top of my head. The side of her body and arm in her hoody felt like a blanket and I nestled in closer.

Sam's rested her hand on my head, first peacefully, then mussing my hair. "You're really cute." She said, a hum in her voice, "Almost makes up for the fact that you're horrible at videogames."

I chuckled and gave her a weak punch in the ribs and we both snuggled closer to each other. I peered at the pile of games beside the tv set. Scrolling down the titles we had already played, Sonic Adventure, Pikmin, F-Zero and 007 I felt so utterly defeated that my games won might as well have been negative twenty. Of course I had a few wins; Metroid Prime 2, a bad Sonic fighting game, a tie game in Smash, and the game of Billy Hatcher on the screen was still up for grabs, but I think I knew it was my time to surrender.

"Well I wouldn't say I'm horrible," I began, attempting to give my words an articulate and prideful step as I spoke, "But I do believe it's time for me to retire."

Sam shifted forward, arms gripping me tightly and adoringly like you would a scared child being urged to enter a haunted house. "Aww really? You don't have to! I'll go easier on you!" She claimed. Just as she had an hour or so ago and an hour or so before that.

"Yep," I sighed, slithering loose of her arms so I could recline onto her lap, "It's time for me to retire," I let my arms sprawl to the floor, "My professional gaming career is over..."

"Nooooo!" She cried out, crumpling around me, crushing me with feigned concern and also boobs. We both began laughing and she pulled away, her eyes opening and locking with mine.

We kissed. It wasn't the grand scene it usually was; no gasping for breath, no tongues twisting, no fiery sexual tension, just a cute little peck. And I liked that.

I closed my eyes and snuggled comfortably into her stomach and she curled her arms around my head and back. I let out a satisfied sigh.

"There are always the benefits of retirement of course," I said, grinning at her, "Hang around, get social security, spend time with the wife."

Sam and I both chuckled. I looked up at her. She was still smiling but her eyes were somewhere else, looking through the floor at her side. She was biting her lip.

Biting her lip always meant something. She did it when she was thinking and when she was stressed and when she wanted to do something risky. Was she stressed? Was she hiding something? Was it both? Was it something I said?

And then it dawned on me. It was something I said. I just said wife. It was just for the joke, but maybe she didn’t know that. Maybe she thought I was-- Shit. This was too much! Too fast! Too something!

I began to sat up but I stopped partway, my movement edgy, stuttered. My voice came out on its own but came stuttered in a mess, "W-well, I mean, wife is a very traditional way to-- fuck..."

Sam let out a breath; the kind of quick, sheer breath a friend lets out after hearing a friend make a terrible joke.

"It's fine babe, I'm not... I mean, I’m not super opposed, I guess." She said, still looking off to the side.

A kind of excitement began creeping up from my chest. It was wrapped in tatters of concern and dripping with some leftover regret, but it was excitement regardless.

"Oh... Well, that's, glad to hear it... Or-- shit." I fumbled again, covering my face with a hand.

Sam chuckled and pulled the hand away, giving me a sultry look as she pushed some hairs away from my face. She smirked. "I mean, you’re cute and smart as hell, and you’re fun to hang out with... You’d make a good waifu." She said contently, punctuating her sentence with a kiss. Waifu? My thoughts began to haze. I wanted another kiss but didn't push for it. I liked it better when she did it.

"But maybe...” She was looking at the floor again, “Don’t say that..." She quickly trailed off into silence.

Sam shook her head, refusing to continue. She looked into my eyes for a second before kissing me.

When we pulled apart, her eyes met mine once more but soon drifted off again. I wasn’t sure if she was smiling anymore. Her eyes came back to mine and I could tell she wanted to say something but she would just shake her head and look away again. She bit her lip. I knew exactly what she wanted to say.

I tried to imagine myself saying it in her place but I know I would do the same. I couldn't look her in the eyes and say it. I knew if I tried anything that came out would be like a word scramble.

Just then, she pulled me close. I pulled my arms around her sides and rested my head in the nape of her neck.

Neither of us were able to see each other’s faces anymore. I bit my lip in a Sam-like fashion, scrutinizing my next step. But I knew. I knew that she felt the same warmth and joy every time she saw me. She wanted to come over whenever she had the opportunity and invited me over even though she could never get her dad’s permission to do so. She did everything she could to spend a moment with me because whether or not she was able to say it to my face, I knew it was because she loved me.

"Sam... I’m sorry. I love you." I said, my voice shaky but sturdy enough.

Sam hugged me tightly, almost too tightly, a disbelieving laugh puffing from her lips.

We just lay there like that for a while. She didn’t say it back, and she didn’t have to. She just kept laughing, breathlessly, both relieved and exhausted.

“God... You’re such a fucking dork!”

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Learn more about Sam and Lana here!

#fluff #my oc's #sam #lana #gamecube #video game date #lgbt #wlw #bisexual #romantic asexual #my oc #date night

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aurimeanswind · 6 years

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Back Again—Sunday Chats—7/8/18

Welcome Back!

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, and I wanted to open up with a bit of a litany of excuses as to why that is! I know when you’re just on the outside looking in its hard to know exactly why I haven’t been posting these or asking questions, or really anything on Sundays. It’s a combination of things.

First of all, the last two Sundays I have not been home to write up Sunday Chats. Three weeks ago I was in Cuba! Well, technically I was at Key West, the day before I’d go to Cuba, on a cruise ship. Most importantly, the only internet access I had was through the data on my cell phone, and so I couldn’t really post Sunday Chats. In theory, I could solicit questions via my phone, I could write it up offline, and then go on and post it when I’d get home the following Wednesday, but I really didn’t want to because it was honestly a genuine vacation for me. I wanted to kind of check out and try and not be online so much. Of course, I failed a little bit in this regard, I was checking Twitter ravenously any time I had an internet connection, because I have a problem. For the most part, when I was off on my cruise with my mom and my brothers three weeks ago, I was without an internet connection, and it was a little nice, but also a little stressful.

The week before that, it was E3! We were living in the Microsoft/Bethesda press conferences! I was going to write something that day but honestly between the post shows and just consuming E3 I honestly did not have time. I’ve done like, reaction write ups in the past, but I was a bit more down to live in the moment this go around.

Then I was in San Francisco! It was the day after Kinda Funny Prom, which was lovely, we’ll get to that in a bit, but that Sunday I was seeing a movie with Barrett Courtney, my sweet boy, and was just exhausted after KFP and everything then. I had stayed up way too late the night before talking games and eating pizza. I had a great time, but I was still pretty checked out.

The Sunday between those two, I was completely exhausted. Honestly? I’m still exhausted. The best thing, I think, to alleviate my normal “post-con depression” type thing I get after a Kinda Funny Live event and seeing all my friends is taking another, separate vacation just beforehand. I had barely enough time to stay at home and just sit on my couch and play video games before suddenly being whisked off to San Francisco. So getting home, I am just so happy to be home, to be sleeping in my pitch-black room on my comfy foam mattress. To lay on my couch and play whatever video game I want (which mostly has been Tales of Vesperia... again) and just... relax. Ya know what I mean? I just want to relax. I’m a solitary person. I’ve talked many a-time before on here, but I just love to be alone a lot. And I just want to be alone sometimes, especially after several back-to-back socially exhausting experiences.

And that’s a big part about why I’ve been so crappy about doing Sunday Chats consistently. Even before this last month of vacations I’ve been very touch and go about SC. Now that I have fully transitioned into being a full time employee, I work a lot more than my body is used to, even if I am four months into my new role at my job. It’s a lot for me. And I’m barely keeping up with my IP work of being an editor there. And that’s, I think, more important, because I am making decisions and a team is relying on me for that.

I essentially circle around two days off a week, Wednesday and Sunday, and so I work Thursday-Friday-Saturday, plus I have the podcast on Friday nights. Without getting too into the details, Saturdays at my job take quite a toll. Like, a lot on me, so just making it to Sunday, I’ve genuinely forgotten completely about Sunday Chats because I am sleeping in and resting and just trying to get my bearings. I know it’s not much of an excuse, but I’m hoping to turn Sundays into equally as productive days as they are relaxing. It’s just about finding that balance.

As per usual, my trip to San Francisco was motivational in some ways, so I feel inspired to continue to work harder and do more now that I’m home, and hopefully that can last me until PAX West in a couple months.

But that’s generally where the status of Sunday Chats is. As a big update, while not going into effect quite yet (maybe not even for months) but Sunday Chats will soon transition to be a full feature on IrrationalPassions.com. I think it’s a natural transition and it makes sense. It’ll still be available and accessible to all, but I want to play around with some format ideas I have, and I think it makes sense to be there since it is, predominantly, about video games, as it always kind of was. I want to have these heartfelt chats there, because I think as the “editor-in-chief” of the site, it helps build a rapport with the audience of that site which seems to grow every month.

Now that’s all done, let’s get to the editorial!

My Feelings and Emotions in San Francisco

I like this title because it’s just all about the feels. As many frequent Sunday Chats readers would know, depression is just slowly becoming one and the same with me. Like two amorphous blobs just close enough to each other that they become one. Like slime enemies from Dungeons & Dragons that just jell together on spiritual and self-hatred-like level.

So I’ve been through a rough like... 2018 to be honest. And so being in a place where I was just genuinely surrounded by affection and good vibes was really, really moving for me. I put out a twitter thread about the feeling which I think encapsulates most of what I’d want to say, and you can read that here.

But a big thing is how being in SF has proven to be a huge opportunity for me in the past: a time to “schmooze” as some people say, and talk to people, make connections, market yourself, or just meet as many people as you can and spread “the brand” as much as possible. And honestly, I just wasn’t here for that this year. I’ve gotten to a very, maybe even regressive place in my life, where I’d rather not get out there and try and be at the center of things and meet as many folks as possible. There were certainly several folks I had never met before that I wanted to meet, but for the most part I spent that time focusing on more intimate interactions with specific people.

A lot of this manifested in folks I’ve admired for a great long while, and that’s the fellows at OK Beast. I got to have a real heart to heart with Ian Preschel, someone I just haven’t been as close to for whatever dozen reasons that usually amount to time, and understand him better as a person. I got to have an emotional moment with Moises, someone I admire so goddamn much and for some reason keeps saying I’m the reason he started writing. I got to spitball ideas with Alex Van Aken, my fellow Alex-in-Arms, and share the wonders of running a business Slack with Blessing. They’re people I just genuinely look up to and inspire me legitimately every day, and I’m excited and hopeful to collaborate with them in the future. I have nothing but love for all of them, including Brandon, wherever he is out there.

I got to spend a ton of time with Barrett and Alyssa, my hosts, and Jacob Bryant who was also rooming with me at their place. They’re just family to me. Enough said.

I got to spend a huge chunk of time with Nicole Humphrey and Cameron Abbott, two very special friends to me, and for reasons I’d rather not put on blast here, it was very important to me that this time was worked into my trip, and I’m so glad it was.

Those dense, meaningful interactions are what I live for. It’s literally why I started the show Get Acquainted (new episodes coming soon I promise!) and they were the highlights of the weekend. I won’t list them all here, but suffice to say on a personal level this trip was very important to me, rather than on a “business level” which it has been for me in the past.

Thank you all for being open to wasting your time with me, I’ll be forever grateful.

ONTO GAMES.

What’s On Tap

Hollow Knight

I HAVEN’T TALKED ABOUT THIS GAME ON SUNDAY CHATS AT ALL YET AND IT’S INCREDIBLE OMG.

I love this game.

Final game time was 42h and 7m, and all of it was excellent. Well... Not all of it, there were a couple very frustrating bosses. But most of it was excellent.

One of the best Metroidvanias ever made. Symphony of the Night, Super Metroid, Ori and the Blind Forest, Hollow Knight, and Metroid Prime are the best of the genre full stop. It sits proudly in that number.

Don’t think. Play it.

Unless you really don’t like hard games, because it’s very difficult, but crazy rewarding!

Ys VIII

I just got this pretty recently and am only about four or so hours in, and so far it’s just a wonderful delight.

Compared to the demo I played a great many months ago on PS4, the Switch version does take quite the graphical hit, especially if you have a hangup about anti-aliasing. There are a LOT of jaggies to be seen here

BUT, I think performance wise it’s still very solid. Some hitches here and there, but during combat it’s generally smooth, and that’s what’s most important.

Very good. Recommended.

Captain Spirit

Honestly, there is too much to say here. Don’t hesitate, go play this. I do not care if you’re like Jurge Cruz (social media editor at IP) and are dead inside and don’t like Captain Spirit. It’s free. Go play it.

Nuff. Said.

More thoughts coming soon.

Questions

Remember you can tweet me your questions by looking for my tweet with #SundayChats in it on Sunday afternoons, and you can be a part of this write up! Much love to everyone who always shows up (I’m looking at you Brandon Gann! <3)!

Goddammit Tyler you keep asking me wrestling shit and you know I hate wrestling...

Uhh...

What if I just showed up and was Noctis?

Originally posted by ffxvcaps

A great many things! Event wise, I’m very excited about PAX West. Assuming I can still make it, which I should be able to, it’ll be a blast.

Plus there are new shows and new things coming from IP soon that I am just hyped for.

But let’s be honest with each other? Okay? Let’s all be real here?

Motherfucking Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition.

‘Nuff said.

My favorite Romantic Comedy of All Time just so happens to also be my favorite movie of all time, Silver Linings Playbook.

It is, in my humble opinion, a perfect film. It is the only movie I have watched over 10 times.

It’s very important to me, and while it may seem dumb to many of you, it told me that even fucked up bad people like me can find love in both themselves and others. And I really needed to hear that when that movie found its way to me in 2013.

Good LORD am I the WORST to ask about this. Well, first, Jamie. It was a goddamn pleasure meeting you at prom.

I mean, look at us:

I was very drunk and I’m so sorry.

But on a real level, a few things.

First, I did this horrible thing where I wrote everyday for almost three years straight and that was just a self-made torture and I have to keep myself in shape motivationally speaking or else I’ll have to do that again. And that sounds torturous. But as far as building strong habits I think that did help a lot. I mean, Sunday Chats is a direct by product of that, and I think generally people seem to like SC.

Second, I spend a lot of my brain energy trying not to worry about shit I have zero control over. If I misread a text and think someone hates me for whatever reason, which I do pretty much on a daily basis, I’m either going to text them back and ask, or do nothing, and if I’ve decided to do nothing, then I don’t get to be upset about it. If someone is doing some wack shit, I’m either gonna keep talking to them, or nah. Just do it, and everything else, well there is nothing you can do about it. Usually. But my depressed-adled and crazy-ass garbage brain still spends many an hour worrying about things I have no control over. But I’ll say this, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at it. Skill comes with time and age.

Third, I think finding someone on relatively equal footing as you but maybe doing something better or more interesting or just simply different than you can really be motivational. It’s easy to get demotivated by someone else’s success, but words I try and hold onto every goddamn day are “someone else’s success does not equate to your failure”.

I hope that helps!

I have not had a lot this year, unfortunately. Avengers was great? I looooved Ant Man and the Wasp! Adored it. Just saw it yesterday (on Sunday, actually!) and it was phenomenal.

But outside of that I don’t have much. It’s crazy to say that in a year where a new JK Rowling Harry Potter movie is coming out, but Johnny Depp is in that movie and he is fucking human trash and for some reason WB is letting him just waltz around like he hasn’t done horrific things.

But anyway, I’d very much like to see Fireworks, from the same folks what made Your Name, but the dub wasn’t playing anytime I could see it this past weekend. :(

Maybe if it goes up on streaming soon (which I’m hopeful it will) I can see it.

Outside of that, I got nothing.

As someone who actively dislikes breakfast and most breakfast food, this is tricky for me to answer. I know your whole breakfast fetish Quin, so I won’t shit on you here, but I guess it’d just be a simple bagel (everything bagel. or poppy seed, depending on my mood) or maybe pancakes/waffles.

My thing is waffles/pancakes aren’t breakfast food, they’re anytime food. Or 1am food.

I have traveled a lot yes, but it’s been to a lot of the same places over and over again unfortunately. Not that that’s necessarily bad, but it’s been a lot of SF, Boston, etc, etc.

Having just gone to Cuba, I finally have a passport! So it’s time.

It’s time Japan. I’m coming to you.

And hopefully Ireland too. But those trips will likely have to wait a bit and be very far from one another.

ISLAND BOY!

Well, that is a nightmare scenario for me, because I’d definitely die very quickly. BUT. If I had to choose.

First up would be Bentley from Sly Cooper, because he is a big needy nerd like me and would want to get the hell out of there ASAP just as much as I do, and he could make like, a series of small helicopters out of coconuts or some shit.

SECONDLY.... Hrmm.... harder choice.

There is a really great joke here about choosing Fi from Skyward Sword because maybe she could just DOUSE our way to a better situation, heaven knows...

But I’m mostly above that.

I’d say Cappy from Mairo Odyssey just because I just looked at my Cappy hat and it’d be fun to just capture turtles and crabs and stuff on the island. Not Bentley, he’d consider that an invasion of privacy.

I don’t know if YOU should get Detroit, but I absolutely love it. I’d say read Logan Wilkinson’s excellent review of the game, available here:

http://irrationalpassions.com/detroit-become-human-review/

He liked one relationship in that game a lot more than I did, but generally we’re on the same page with it. I love the game, and if Heavy Rain did anything for you then I think Detroit is better in just about every way.

I’ll say this: it’s not like 2018 has been BANGERs for me, but after 2017, where two of my new favorite games EVER came out (Breath of the Wild and Persona 5) it’s just so impossible to follow that up. That being said, I’m medium to high excited about MANY games this fall: Spyro, Tomb Raider, Valkyria Chronicles, AC Odyssey, Life is Strange S2, Code Vein, Darksiders 3, and Smash Bros. That’s a whole lot in just three short months to eat up like some yummy yummy candy.

So while I think he first half of 2018 has been pretty great, mostly because of Hollow Knight, but also Ni No Kuni 2, Celeste, Yakuza 6, and Moonlighter, its still been good. It’s been a big one for me to reconnect with my indie darlings. And that’s big for me.

I hope that helps!

Checklist

It’s been a while eh?

Well here are some recs!

“The Short But Chilling ‘Captain Spirit’ Weaponizes Empathy Against You” - Patrick Klepek - Waypoint.

I have barely read this but everything about it jives with me. Another one to check out only after you’ve played Captain Spirit, which I assume all of you are going to do, because it’s free, and because I asked you so nicely to do so.

The Music of Persona 4 Golden - Blessing Adeoye - OKBeast.com

I mean, it’s about arguably the best video game soundtrack of all time, from one of the best music-takers in games, that just so happens to be on my favorite video game of all time. What do you want? Go watch.

OK Beast Podcast Episode 100 - OKBeast.com

I’ve found myself far more into OKBP since they merged OKB and PPR into one show. Here is their 100th episode, where they decided to rank the best 100 video games ever. For some reason.

Like, what if on Ep 400 of IPP we ranked the top 400 video games of all time? Fuck that.

Love those boys.

That’s it. That’s all she wrote. Or rather, that’s all I wrote. Sorry this posted Monday, I hadn’t checked my work schedule for a minute and then I saw at like, 8:30pm I had to open today and that means I have to wake up at 6am and I figured I should be responsible and get a full night’s sleep. Still didn’t fall asleep until about 10:30am, but I wrote some of this last night.

I’m rambling.

I love you all.

Do me a favor though?

Keep it real.

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