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  1. Today
  2. Reminder that this launches on PS5 today! I'll probably wait for a sale, but I'm very much looking forward to whenever I get around to it
  3. Yesterday
  4. Vampire Survivors

    I’ve managed to survive over 10 minutes now on a few occasions, but I’ve been struck down each time by the new wave. I’ve no idea yet how to get past it, but I’m having a blast trying!
  5. Demo dropped for this: Progress from the demo does not carry over to the full release, but you'll get some handy items instead.
  6. The Star Wars Thread

    We get the first publicly released trailer for The Acolyte tomorrow, and it's teaser poster goes hard. Up there with the teaser poster greats in the series for me of The Phantom Menace... ...Revenge of the Sith... ...and The Last Jedi... Can't wait to see what they've got in store for us with this trailer, the one they showed at Celebration last year was hype as hell it's time to set the tone, Headland!
  7. Your 2024 Gaming Diary

    @Jonnas You should join me @Glen-i, @BowserBasher and @S.C.G for some of our N-E Mario Party NSO nights. You’ll quickly see how mad fun the N64 Mario Parties can be
  8. Your 2024 Gaming Diary

    And now... A Jonnas NSO Update Last time, I talked about multiple bad games that... were obviously bad even before I touched them But there are a few games there that I haven't really given a fair shot before, and they're generally well regarded. So I decided to do those next. The NES Classics So I went and tried to play the original Metroid. I knew going in that I never really jived with this game. Yeah, I still don't. Samus feels clunky to play, the environments are monochromatic and forgettable, navigation through the world is confusing... and when I picked it up, the first thing that got to me was that Samus can't crouch nor aim down, meaning she can't even shoot zoomers (the mini-lavos spiky creatures, not the generation). So, she's a slower, less fun Mega Man. I tried my best to play it, but I really did not enjoy any of my time with it. I understand a lot of what makes Metroid Metroid was already present here, but I do not enjoy playing this. I do really like Metroid II, but this one just does not gel with me. Next, it was The Legend of Zelda. I explored the map for a while. Moving around is fun, if a bit clunky (the d-pad from the joy-cons probably didn't help, admittedly), and it is a challenge to clear each screen of enemies... but the fact is that I never really found anything of note, beyond a couple of caves with shops inside. I did die 5 times, however. I also know, from cultural osmosis, that several clues are super cryptic (some relying on the instinct of "oh, maybe this bush/wall can be burned/bombed"), and that the dungeons should be completed in order, despite the open-ended structure. I can see that this is a game that requires a lot of investment on my part, and if I was still the age of drawing maps for pen&paper adventures, I'd likely be more into this. Sadly, not only do I lack the time for that, I never really played video games that way. Furthermore, the idea of exploring a whole big map, only to be told that the dungeons have a set order does not appeal to me. As such, I conclude that this is just not for me either. Next, a game that I thought would capture me more: Zelda 2 - The Adventure of Link. This one's structure is more linear, even if still cryptic, so I thought I'd be able to progress a bit more. Indeed, I played it for two sessions. Took me a bit long to reach the first palace, and once I did... I realized the true horror of this game: combat sucks, it's really unfun. Link feels a tad slippery, and his sword got no range. Not too bad when you're dealing with random encounters in the overworld, but in the labyrinthic palaces? Where it feels more like a gauntlet than a maze? Every single slime I barely couldn't stab, meant another blow onto Link's health, and nobody drops health in this game. Plus, the palace is huge, but there's no map. I had such a bad experience with the first palace (I ended up relying on rewind just to drag myself to the boss), I realized I wasn't going to enjoy this one. I now second anybody who says this game should be remade, just make combat bearable, please. (For the record, I'm not discarding the possibility of revisiting any of the games mentioned above. I just understand I need a specific mentality to handle any one of them) Finally, a strong note to end on: Kirby's Adventure. I had played the remake on GBA, but never the original. I always felt like the GBA game was a simple, but forgettable game, so I was never in a rush to play this one. Well, I can honestly say that the NES game is actually much better than the GBA remake! This is partly due to perspective: a short Kirby game on the GBA is inherently less impressive than a game that pushed the NES to its limit, and did things no other title on the system was doing. But it's also just how much more charming Kirby is on the NES, how the silent storytelling feels more at home on the NES, and just how marvelous some graphical tricks feel here. Taking this title on its own merits, I had a lovely time beating it and trying to 100% it (had to look up a guide for one of the secrets, I'll admit), it was that enjoyable. Unlocked a Hard Mode by the end, but that'll be a story for another time. 5 stars (As a bonus, here's Sakurai's take on his own game) A Party of Marios I mean, I played Mario Party before... Mario Party 4, that is! Plus, a couple of matches from the Switch titles. One thing that I remember from the Gamecube days is that a lot of people kept saying that N64 Mario Party was sooo much better, and I got curious. I certainly have my own set of gripes with MP4, and thanks to the NSO, I can now compare for myself, with a single match of each. No more fitting trilogy for Mar10 day. Mario Party 1 is definitely the first of its kind. Mini-games attribute coins seemingly at random (and sometimes they take coins from the losers), there's no items, and the only real choices you get to make involve branching paths on the board. This party feels anarchic. Mario Party 2 is bonkers. Now there's items, but god damn, so many mini-game spaces! Battle mini-games, item mini-games, Koopa banks abd Bowser collecting random taxes left and right... Compared to MP1, the rules of the game are better defined, and mini-game rounds are more consistent, but it's somehow more insane, I could barely keep up with it. The costumes are cute, though. This party feels reactionary. Mario Party 3 is much more reasonable. Mini-games and items feel balanced, there's fewer wacky events happening all the time, and there's a semblance of strategy now. Also, a Story Mode, but I know that's not fun in this series Anyway, after a match of multiple strategic decisions where I barely managed to eek an advantage in the last 3 turns, the game decided to award 3 stars to the CPU in last place, making them the winner, and rendering the previous 20 turns pointless. This party feels corrupt. General pros: These 3 games are really fast-paced, that's pretty cool. The menus are really creative and charming too; General cons: Mario Party 4 is sooo much better. ------------------------------ And with that, I have officially cleared over half of the N- What's that? Nintendo just added 3 Game Boy games this week? Instead of clearing that threshold, I'm now exactly one game short from clearing half? ... Dr.Mario (Game Boy) is exactly the same game as the NES version, except the pills are white, black, and gray. That's cute. And with that, I have officially cleared over half of the NSO! 120 games down, only 119 to go, baby!
  9. I really like Fennekin's line. That's an unconventional design for a fox creature of any kind, and it works really well. Not sure why Braixen is more popular than Delphox, but I like them both. Really cool witch, and excellent addition to Pokkén. Froakie's... Well, Greninja's line really, is pretty cool on its own as well. Sure, Smash Bros. exposed Greninja a lot, but it's a legitimately great design. Unfortunately for it, I like witches better than Ninja Plus, the existence of Ash-Greninja lowers the entire species' score. Chespin's line is decent. I don't really like Chesnaught's white colour, though, makes it look needlessly mechanical (when they already have a shell/shield, no less), and it's just garish, really clashes with the light green (the colour scheme that Chespin and Quilladin had going was perfectly fine, don't know why they would change it at the end) Overall, a pretty strong generation when it comes to starters. Chesnaught alone is better than the Gen V starters.
  10. I'm just now going through your recent reviews, and... That's not a brand new wrestler, that's Jushin Liger. There's probably a few other real-life wrestlers in that cast, if so.
  11. Do or do not. There is no try. It was a fun time but sadly I was hit with the save corruption bug when I updated the game. Luckily, I had yet to put much time into Battlefront II and so I didn't lose that much progress. Still annoying that it can happen though. It's shame that the medal requirements are only available once per life. Having to die or respawn on purpose in order to get one to count was a little annoying, especially when I was doing well. There was only the Demolition one that required farming, the rest came through natural play. I will say that the Marksman medal was a pain to get purely because of the AI. The amount of times Rebels would walk into my shots was ridiculous. So many friendly fire kills...many bothans died to bring me my medals. Having now played them both, I don't recall much of Battlefront II at all. It was Battlefront I that I played the Hell out of back in the day and I actually prefer that one over the sequel. Sure, the sequel is more polished and fleshed out but I prefer the simplicity of the original game. Capturing the outposts style gameplay makes for some great tug of war matches. So many times this would happen.
  12. Playstation 5 Console Discussion

    Whether I get one would depend on whether they start a trade in initiative like they did with the PS4 Pro. As I recall it was something like £130 for a new PS4 Pro if you traded in your old PS4 but it came with a physical copy of FIFA which just released and I got £50 for it. Can't see them being that generous this time!
  13. Playstation 5 Console Discussion

    Same here, the only exception is going for the 3DS XL. But I wouldn't bother shelling out for the home console "pro" versions. The Switch is on the TV anyways, I've not had the need to pay for extra screen quality etc.
  14. Virtual Reality

    Agreed. If they manage to get it to work natively on PC, that'd help a lot with support and demand. But seeing as this is Sony, I wouldn't really be that surprised to see it's a streaming mode that somehow needs a PS5 to work. If they got it to work with SteamVR with no additional hiccups, they would have the first consumer friendly eyetracked headset available, that is even connected through cable. That would be huge.
  15. Yep. Been doing the same, a rewatch of the animated show and just finished Book Two. So much story told but it never feels overwhelmed. It moves along at a great pace and sets up Book 3 perfectly. Im a few episodes into Book 3 now. Usually watching two or three at a time.
  16. Finished my animated TLA rewatch last week. Despite rating the season individually as a 10 for forever, I always manage to forget just how excellent Book Two is. Naturally, this has resulted in another LoK rewatch, perhaps forced a bit by wanting to cancel Netflix soon (nothing on the horizon but I have it for now). Finished Book One last night and even if I think it's a glaring step down from TLA, it's still such a solid and fun time. That being said, I'll go to bat for the soundtrack of LoK overall being stronger than TLA's the music in LoK is just so consistently rich and emotive. Onto Book Two today, aka maybe the weakest season of Avatar (and which is still fine, maybe saved a little by the Avatar Wan stuff).
  17. Played a fair bit over the weekend, completing the Sovereignty of the Republic in Galactic Conquest, and then played through all the ground maps in Instant Action. While going through these I took note of the maps I performed best at for War Hero and then played through those a few times, and that's now the only medal left to get to Legendary for the Infantry Class; this normally takes getting to 36 points in one life, but as I'm up to Elite for it I now only need 27 points per life, and I'm averaging 28 points, so it shouldn't take too long! Also maxed out rank to General: After I get War Hero to Legendary it's then a case of moving onto the other classes, and I've already got a few maps in mind for certain medals. While going through what I have so far, though, and just considering the fact these are related to trophies, I'm a bit let down that medals weren't tweaked to be stackable, as I had a few 100+ point lives which only nabbed me one medal, so I would've been better off getting myself killed or respawning to speed it up? But that's not how I feel anyone should really be playing the game if they're genuinely enjoying it also a bit surprised at the lack of trophies relating to environmental hazards in II, like getting eaten by the Rancor at Jabba's Palace seemed like a natural trophy to have, but oh well. The maps brought over from the first game have been fun, as has playing as Kit Fisto and Asajj (previously Xbox exclusive). However, a lot has been made of this considering that a fan mod just got dropped in, flaws and all, to do so: Definitely calls into question Aspyr's originally planned source for the modded content being added to KOTOR II and if they had any plans to give credit to them, before it got cancelled. Considering how this has been handled I'd imagine not? Back to the game, though, Aayla Secura has probably been the highlight hero character for me this time around, and I said it last time, but playing as a hero or villain is just so gloriously broken if you're smart about it. I love grabbing all command posts but one on maps with tight corridors and then just hiding around a corner from the command posts to take out 5+ guys with a single lightsaber throw doing so with Vader on Hoth felt real good. Still having such a blast with this, kind of getting me in the Star Wars mood. I know, I don't really have those that often, do I?
  18. I’d be fine with the same graphics and just better performance! Think I may have mentioned this before, but I still consider 1080p to be more than adequate when it comes to resolution. I’ve experienced quite a few games at 4K now and while the extra clarity is nice, in my opinion it is nowhere near worth the additional power required to process it, certainly not natively at least. Then again, I don’t use an enormous screen by today’s standards (42”) meaning 1080p content is still crisp on a 4K panel of that size, so even if I’m playing a title that my PC can easily handle at 4K I always drop the resolution down to 1080. And if I’m still using the same size display when Switch 2 arrives, I reckon I’d do the same with that too. Switch wasn’t completely devoid of hardware innovations. We got HD rumble, which has been criminally underused. Having messed about with it extensively in both LABO and Game Builder Garage I became a lot more aware of its potential, so it’s always incredibly disappointing when developers (even Nintendo themselves sometimes ) seemingly put minimal effort into utilising the feature at all! Err... We also got the IR camera on the right Joy-Con, which managed to be even more neglected than HD rumble. It briefly became a bad VR headset. The Ring-Con and leg strap? Yeah ok, it would be cool if Nintendo have some new quirky tech ideas for their next console. I get the feeling they won’t though, at least not anything particularly bonkers as it’s obviously a risk, meaning they’ll probably play it safe. This time. Oh-oh! I just made a prediction about Nintendo! Watch them go and release the wackiest hardware ever now.
  19. Balatro (PS, Xbox, Switch, Steam)

    1 million gambling addicts made... Thanks PEGI!
  20. Splatoon 2

    I actually own it. I bought it on sale a while back but never got around to playing it. There's a few bits of DLC that I wouldn't mind playing through (Mario Kart, Splatoon 3, Xenoblade 3, Splatoon 2) and so I may free up some time during one month and just focusing on playing all of this stuff. Still need to pick up the DLC for Xenoblade 3 and Splatoon 3 though. I really should have pulled the trigger on the XB3 DLC the other month when it was on sale. It's rare for Nintendo published stuff to be reduced in price.
  21. Splatoon 2

    The Octo Expansion DLC is part of the Nintendo Online Expansion Pak @Hero-of-Time, so if you sub for a month you won't even have to buy it. I'm with those who say it's a good time. It was the groundwork for the Splatoon 3 main campaign and has a lot of the same features / gameplay elements you find there.
  22. Vampire Survivors

    "Base Game Completion" is treated somewhat seperately from everything that was added after version 1.0 (it's not a seperate achievement list, but the game acknowledges the completion of all of the original achievements seperate from completing everything else; and also gives a particular noteworthy reward who I'm sure you're already well familiar with ).
  23. Splatoon 2

    I would definitely recommend the 3rd game, @Helmsly, even just for the story mode. It has a cracking campaign to play through.
  24. Virtual Reality

    ... yeah, pretty much exactly what most of us predicted would happen ended up happening. It's remarkable how such massive and established companies keep missing the bleeding obvious time and time again.
  25. Vampire Survivors

    A good tip when starting out is to focus on only a few weapons and constantly upgrading those at every opportunity, rather than collecting lots of different ones and therefore having a bunch of weaker attacks. Garlic is a great choice though, especially if you can combine it with the books that rotate around your character and the holy water. Get those 3 running simultaneously and powered up and you’ll be laughing. For most people (as has been mentioned) getting all the achievements is considered the end of the game. I have 100% completion on my Steam copy with around 50 hours playtime. Not sure if it’s still the case, but they used to add new unlocks/achievements with each update and DLC which would lower your achievement percentage, a lot of people were complaining about that though so it might be done differently now. Personally it never bothered me much and I actually looked forward to unlocking the new ones each time, but obviously some people just want to reach the end and be done with the game.
  26. Konami were pretty much the only Japanese publisher that really gave the N64 some proper 3rd party support. While most of their non ISS and Goemon efforts didn't turn out all that great, they certainly weren't for lack of trying. Here's something you might be surprised by... combing through the credits as seen on Mobigames, not a single person who worked on NBA In The Zone 98 on the N64 had previously worked on any of the prior NBA In The Zone games that were released on the PS1; and stranger still? Looking at the credits for the PS1 version? Not a single person who worked on that game had worked on any of Konami's other two basketball series that predated NBA In The Zone (Double Dribble and Run & Gun). Konami have always been a very strange company. You'd think that they would've wanted to tap into the institutional knowledge that they had already built from their previous basketball games, but nope. This isn't even all that out of character for them. As I previously explained in my Your Gaming Diary writeup for my playthrough of Castlevania Dracula X for SNES, Konami would often just throw everything out and start from scratch with staff who were completely new to a given established series. It's no wonder that the company was so dysfunctional and it's no small miracle that it actually did manage to put out so many stone cold classics throughout the 80s to early 2000s.
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