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Shorty

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Posts posted by Shorty

    Super Mario 3D All-Stars (RIP)

    in Nintendo Gaming

    Posted

    Nintendo doesn't dip prices, they have an image as a premium, quality product that doesn't do flash sales and cash-in bargains. The world is not as black and white as "Activision does it, why can't Nintendo?" They don't want to give the impression of "here's three old games at cheap prices" they want to say "here's a lovely, well organised, well treated collection of absolutely sublime games that you know will have been ported perfectly and look better than ever".  Activision also supplements a huge amount of their income from shifty practices like loot crates, pay to win and microtransactions, for one thing.

    If we wan't to talk bizarre decisions, it's the crazy choice to provide this in limited physical supply. Which will just lead to loads of NES-Classic style scalping.

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 2

    Outer Wilds

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    I just had to bump this because somehow it skipped my attention until last month.

    Truly extraordinary game, wow. It landed itself straight into my top ten games ever. It's a once-in-a-lifetime type. Like Portal meets Journey.

    I played this as a kind of sofa co-op partnership with my other half, which we've only done for a couple of other games namely The Witness and The Witcher 3. It was perfect for that, take it in turns, explore a new idea each time, bounce ideas off each other, figure things out together. We were waking up in the morning still thinking about the game and itching to get back on until it was completed. I was quite proud of us for working it all out as well, and pretty quickly, too. I was having dreams about it. That music and light at the end of each cycle haunts me.

    Such a stunning game, the design of it is absolute perfection, the way it's all there right from the start but you're completely lost at first, and the pieces gradually fall into place, I can't fathom how it was created so perfectly. We platinumed it pretty quickly after beating it and I felt almost empty knowing that there was nothing to go back for.

    I never had any concern with having to translate text each time...? Not even sure I understand what that refers to. There was almost nothing you had to do, unless you were trying to get the achievement for 100% log completion.

    Really looking forward to watching that doc later!

    • Like 3

    COVID-19 (The artist formally known as Coronavirus)

    in General Chit Chat

    Posted

    On 09/07/2020 at 8:44 AM, drahkon said:

    A friend's flatmate showed symptoms.
    His parents and sister had it (tested positive) and he spent a few days with them while they were still asymptomatic. He got tested...negative.

    Weird ::shrug:

    Other than that...I don't know anyone who was tested positive or showed symptoms.

    Could’ve been a false negative, still loads of those occurring, or he could’ve got tested too early. Or they may just not have passed it to them. We have to be careful with contact and distance but it’s not as if you automatically catch it by being near someone who has it, there has to be a direct transfer, so even a small amount of care (washing hands, not touching face) could prevent you catching it.

    Last of Us Part II

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    Man I want, want to write a load about this game. But I feel like there just isn't time. I'd almost rather have a whole podcast about it where I sit with three other people, who felt similarly or disliked but at least completed the game, and really hash it out. There's so much to say. The "ludonarrative dissonance", the disappointing lack of choice, the incredible world-building.

    I just want to spoiler tag a list of things that I liked and didn't like about the game, and thoughts I had on the way. I can't possibly gather together all my thoughts on the game so I'm just going to reel them out instead. It ended up mostly being a list of complaints, which I always find myself falling back on when I finish a game. I find it much easier to list the things that annoyed me. And it's weird in TLOU 2 because what's great is so passive, and what's bad is so aggressively prevalent, that it's much easier to bounce around the bad and hard to come away saying "but it's still... good?" Anyway...

    Spoiler

    Did anyone else find themselves just not pressing square, a few times? I felt throughout the whole game that I was robbed of choice, and I couldn't always tell if it was by design or not. Abby had disarmed Ellie, turned the knife back towards her, and the game told me to rapidly tap square because evidently right now, Ellie is the hero and Abby is meant to die. So I let go of the controller, and Abby sunk the knife into Ellie's chest instead, and I said, maybe out loud, "yep, I'm okay with that". Why shouldn't that be the ending? But no... the game just faded back in from the beginning of that QTE.

    Similarly, I tried to exhibit choice to not kill my fellow Wolves. The first time I had to run through that warehouse with Lev, I turned to my partner sitting next to me and exasperatedly said "What?? They've really fucked it up this time".

    Similarly, I tried to exhibit choice to sneak past the dogs. But the game thrives in making this nearly impossible, or at least so frustrating that you eventually won't want to try. The game suggests, even outright states in some of its hints, that avoiding combat is regularly possible. But it rarely is. And this is made clear by the way they litter areas with collectibles that you could only safely find after wiping out every enemy in the area. After any encounter you find yourself able to restock huge amounts of ammo as if the game was saying "hey, you probably just shot your way through this place in the end, here's some more bullets for next time!"

    Most of the time I found myself thinking that each encounter would've been much, much better with about 20% of the number of enemies. Make each encounter deadly, force me to be smart, but don't drag it out and out. There was a few points where my jaw dropped at the sheer number of enemies I was suddenly surrounded by. And the time I was most patient but most deadly became a ridiculous pile of bodies at the top of a staircase, as scar after scar showed up to investigate their missing friends and fell victim to the same fate as the previous one. Duck round a corner. Press triangle. Press square. Repeat. Other than that though, enemy patterns are wild and stressful and frequently encroach on you in pairs or pincer formations, if you've levelled up the right way you might manage, on your third attempt, to run and dive into the grass and crawl into a doorway but if you're fed up like I was regularly, you might just throw a molotov cocktail at someone's face and then draw your shotgun, instead.

    I'm sure many people are more patient than I am and stealthed their way through the whole thing, but at times I was exasperated. I embraced the faceless cannon fodder they had forced on me and I rolled with it because I wanted to pretend that hadn't really happened and go back to wandering through beautiful rainy Seattle instead.

    Because man, when it wasn't in violent combat, when I wasn't hating all the main characters for being miserable little serial killers, I was absorbing one incredible world. Like I can't really believe that something quite so amazing has been created. In terms of narrative, in terms of character models, in terms of leaves and moss on trees and lighting and skyboxes. In rain and snow and the movement of horses, and music. The little notes, the dusty PS3s, the reality of every building you crawl through.

    And it's only because everything else about the game is so good, that I'm so shocked when it has to settle back into combat mechanics that just feel like they belong in a lesser game. Because if this was just some other shooter, a Resident Evil or an FPS or whatever, nobody would be sitting around talking about how horrible it was that you had to shoot so many bad guys. But the more real, the more impressive and high fidelity the world and everyone in it, the more accountable the developers become. Which seems unfair in some ways, and at the same time that accountability is probably important to elevate higher tier games beyond their glaring foibles. Although cynically I find myself imagining there's a certain about of shareholder appealing, a degree of trailer appeal or streamability, a separation from being just a story walkthrough, all of which means the devs hand is regularly forced into adding in another shooting gallery.

    And it's important to say combat mechanics, not just gameplay. Because there's plenty of other gameplay that shouldn't be tarred with the same brush as the needless violence. Riding your horse, finding out which truck to climb on and get over a wall, reading a note - whether it leads to a safe key or is just some insight into what happened there. Searching for a few bolts to craft a new item is gameplay, being creeped out and crawling around a basement with the light on and choosing to run away from Shamblers or Stalkers is gameplay. Alternating between equally engaging characters and companions, trying out all the different and very well designed weapons, even occasionally approaching a well laid out bit of combat in a satisfying way... Just because it's mostly designed around absorbing the story doesn't mean it's not a game with wonderfully immersive and interactive gameplay. It's just punctuated all too often by these visceral missteps that quickly cut short any sympathy the game was trying to make you feel for the characters.

    I kinda want to say more but I'm in danger of just deleting this whole lot because I know it doesn't have a satisfying conclusion, so instead I'll just hit submit and get back to work....

    There are a lot of other things I would like to touch on, things that deserve more than a bullet point like the excellent diversity and accessibility, but there's so much to unpack. At the end of the game I couldn't believe it said I'd played for 28 hours, because it felt like hundreds (does it not count reloads? Cutscenes? Or was it really not that long?)

    Edit: Wow, I avoided any forums, reviews or journalism from this game until after I'd finished it. It's a crazy world out there. Reddit specifically seems so hate-filled about the story. I dunno, whole thing feels like too much of a minefield to debate. Also some of Naughty Dog's reactions have been pretty un-cool. But I think I'm firm in saying that I loved what I loved, and what I hated didn't stop it being what it was.

    • Like 4

    Dark (Netflix) - Final season available now!

    in General Chit Chat

    Posted

    Spoiler

    I think a lot of people felt the same about the ending, and even general direction, of S2.

    I said this elsewhere but the problem Dark has is basically the classic horror movie trope. It thrived so well on mystery, on the darkness and unknown. You didn't fully get what you were seeing, what was happening, where things were going. The show started as a mystery in a cave, a boy in a room on a chair with a device around his head. I knew so little about it that it could've literally been a monster that came into the woods and ate people. So you hang on every word, absorbing every new bit of info but being thrown more things to digest at the same time.

    Unfortunately as soon as that curtain lifts, you have to instead take what you've built and close out a satisfying arc with it. The best thing you can do then at least, is keep things short. And perhaps one of the worst things you can do is throw a total curveball that undoes some of the earlier stuff. A twist, sure. But anything that undermines the importance of the earlier stuff? That's messy. Like, deciding John Connor wasn't that important after all - kind of messy. And that's what new-Martha showing up did.

    Despite that, I'm still enjoying S3 so far. It could never recapture what it did in S1, but that's because it did magical things with mystery. I'm still hopeful it will close out well, as the characters and ideas are all still solid.

     

    Suggestions

    in Board News & Issues

    Posted

    Not a bad shout at all. To be honest, uploading images is something I never even turned on for admins as image hosts were so prevalent at the time. I'll look into it!

    Edit: Should be possible now

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

    Last of Us Part II

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    I want to write a lot about this game, might do so tomorrow. Certainly one of those most complete and incredible games I’ve ever played, despite some kind of glaring missteps. It’s so strange, it’s as if everything they did, the amazing production values, visuals, audio, voice acting, world building... elevated the game to a point that it has to be judged on a whole new level. Things that people are unhappy with would be so minor on a lesser title, and yet the game basically forces you to hold it to a higher regard.

    I can’t wrap my head around anyone thinking the story is anything less than fantastic. But in order to really accept and appreciate it I found I really had to separate out the components, the parts that were there to make it compelling, parts that were there to show what a shitty world it is and how terrible people can be, parts that actually wanted to hint at redemption... and then parts that had to go “hey yknow this is just a video game and we really need the player to just shoot some people for five minutes so they don’t get bored”.

    Such a weird dissonance, so much to dissect. A few real moments of frustrating disappointment. And they almost detracted from an outstanding video game. Almost. But man. How much of this game did I spend not pushing the analogue stick all the way? Yknow? Just... taking it in.... What a game.

    Gonna write in more detail (and spoiler tags!) next time I’m in front of a keyboard!

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 2

    Persona 4: The Golden

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    If I hadn't just put nearly 200 hours into Persona 5 Royal I'd probably be getting it just to play it on the big screen.

    If you have a PC and have never had a platform to check out P4G, I urge you to give it a look.

    • Like 1

    The Exercise & Fitness Thread: The Struggle Is Real

    in General Chit Chat

    Posted

    I have a weight bench which, when I moved to a smaller house, was tucked away and relegated to the garage.

    Now, it has pride of place in the living room since a dining table has become a second home working space for my SO :p

    Before covid, I was about the strongest/fittest I'd been for a long time since I'd been going to a bouldering gym twice a week for a year. Absolutely gutted that I can't do that at the moment. A huge number of people online have been building their own bouldering walls for the workout, but given the inconsistency of British weather and the faff that would be to move when I move house, not to mention a cost in the £500-1000 region... not something I'm taking seriously yet.

    So weight bench it is. And man, do those gains fall off quickly if you don't keep them up. I can still do bodyweight excerises quite well since that's the core of climbing, but my presses and squats have completely faded away.

    I was also walking to and from work every day before lockdown, so I've lost a huge amount of mobility, flexibility etc. And put on a loooot of that beer weight :indeed:

    Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (4th September 2020)

    in Other Consoles

    Posted

    I'm cautiously optimistic about these. It feels like everyone's ignoring the fact that they did HD re-release of these two games this last gen and they were pretty poor, messed them up with a couple of stupid choices, no split-screen, no park editor, some crappy design changes.

    From what I hear you'll be able to manual and revert in both games, even though neither was designed to have those...

    No doubt it looks gorgeous this time, but I'll wait for the reviews before jumping in for this one. Fool me once...

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