Glen-i

Gambling adverts seem to be following the path of cigarette adverts. What with them being forced to have that disclaimer on them. Ideally, it'll follow that same path all the way to being banned outright, but I'm not 100% certain that will be the case.

Interesting, if I'm understanding that article correctly, then comments from outside a trial, especially from people of high profile, are more likely to be used against their intended cause instead of helping matters?

Yep, sounds about right. Not even remotely surprised. I've only just seen this thread for the first time. And yes, flags with Dragons are far and away, the best flags. Why have a boring cross pattern when you can have badass lizards? The fact that Pokémon Sword/Shield was in a region based on the UK and didn't have a Welsh Dragon inspired Pokémon is the biggest of missed opportunities.

I'm watching Newsnight and it opened with saying that Chelsea and Man City were out. 20 minutes later, the host had to update that news, saying that all 6 of UK's teams are out. The following video explaining it is kinda out of date now. That pyramid @Nicktendo mentioned is falling apart crazy fast now!

It's a good outcome, but I do wonder how much that outcome was influenced by the inevitable (but totally justified) outrage that would've happened if a guilty verdict wasn't reached. I know that the jury selection process in the US requires members to be as impartial as possible, but I can't imagine anyone can be exactly that with how much coverage it got. "The Court of Public Opinion" can be a dangerous thing. We'll have to see if future and similar police killings will follow this path.

I can almost guarantee that won't happen. It has been fascinating watching this from my viewpoint. It's such a massive miscalculation in how well everyone took it. I don't think I ever saw anyone who would actually defend the Super League position. And this is the country where people can blatantly break Covid restrictions to take an "eye test" and still actually get some people to defend them.

I mean, where else are you going to get a high def model of Banjo that doesn't look like a rectangle?

But I never sell my consoles, so...

As a guy who really doesn't care about football at all, I appreciate the last few posts from you footie nuts explaining the deets. Feel like I understand it a bit more clearly now. Although I already figured that money was the obvious reason. Yeah, the amount of potential income from this Super League move is eye-watering. But I do have one question (and remember, don't care about football, so don't get too mad if I overlook something). How is this different from how the Premier League came about?

I think you might be getting confused with event quests that take place in the arena. Those let you take your equipment, so it's effectively just another quest, albeit with a special quest reward. But arena quests (those that give you preset equipment), don't do this. One thing I have noticed though is that arena quests don't allow any carting what-so-ever. 1 person faints, it's all over. A bit more strict then previous games, that generally allowed 9 carts.

From what I hear, it's the purest form of Visual Novel. Don't expect any actual gameplay here. If that's fine with you though, it's probably worth checking out. Because it's apparently very good in that regard.

No idea, but seeing as that has never been the case in previous games, I wouldn't bet on it.

Also that.

Quote taken from a machine translation of Bloomberg's Japanese website. Article in case anyone can actually read it This is worrying, especially if one of the big three platform holders are a possibility. Having Square Enix confined to only one console would definitely suck.

If it's any consolation, once I get back online in May (hopefully), I'll have every quest to do along with the arena quests. So people here will have opportunities to play with N-E.

Skyward Sword is a very interesting case of backtracking, it's done in a way that I think is actually quite engaging. Whenever the critical path forces Link back to a previous area, something in that area has fundamentally changed that, in turn, changes how it must be tackled. (Faron Woods getting flooded, Eldin Province effectively mugging Link of his stuff, forcing him to employ stealth, etc.) It's not quite the same thing as most backtracking. Actually, it seems like a more extreme method of how Ocarina of Time handled repeat visits. (Zora's Domain getting frozen over being the most obvious example there) I think you've hit the nail on the head there. Most people would hear "Metroidvania" and immediately think of a 2D perspective. Much like how @Dcubed mentioned Metroid Prime being incorrectly called an FPS.

Huh. I always thought it just showed up randomly on an internet forum and it just stuck eventually. Learn something new every day.

Why do so many people think embedding buttons into the screen is a good idea? Yes, I too would like to cover 40% of what I need to see with my thumbs! Who cares about the entire point of 16:9 ratio anyway?

Sony have always used cinematic games as a selling point, even way back in the PS1 days. FMV's was one of the huge selling points compared to the N64. (The advertising for Final Fantasy VII is a very blatant example of this) So it doesn't surprise me that they would fall back on that for all this time, because it does work. Well, to an extent, it wasn't quite as effective when put up against the sheer accessibility of the Wii, this kinda made Sony change track a bit and not solely focus on the cinematic experience for a while. But then WiiU happened, tripped Nintendo over, and Sony went back to cinematic games.

Part of me wonders if Metroidvania was first coined by a PlayStation diehard that wanted to claim that Sony had their own answer to Super Metroid for that reason.

Yeah, I had this issue when I got my first jab. The next day, I basically spent all of my time in bed. But it passed soon afterwards. It was horrible though. Headache was the worst part. Meant that I couldn't handle playing on the Switch to pass the time. Kinda concerned that it'll happen again when I get my second jab in about 3 weeks.

Honestly, it's precisely because games are more than just the setting they take place in that makes them so difficult to categorise compared to movies. 1. Is there such a thing as a 3D Metroidvania? If so, which games qualify? Yes, it's called Metroid: Other M. Moving on. OK, seriously though, the point I want to make is that the fact that Metroid itself has managed to translate the gameplay it's known for into a 3D space perfectly fine 4 times already proves that 3D Metroidvanias exist. The key problem here is what makes a Metroidvania? I actually believe people have lost sight of the absolute fundamentals of what makes Metroidvanias what they are. For me, there are only 3 aspects of it. 1. The playable character will collect some kind of upgrade that expands their repertoire of abilities over the course of the game. 2. The player must use the previously mentioned upgrades to travel back to previously accessible areas and uncover new paths that lead to more upgrades. This must be done in order to eventually "win" the game and it must be a method of progress that is fundamental to the entire game. 3. The area which makes up the game must be interconnected in a way that allows the player to freely explore every area once they have access to all of the previously mentioned upgrades. The first point actually applies to a lot of games. One of those that jumps out in this case is the Zelda series. So I'm gonna use that as an example as to why this question is so hard. So Link will no doubt collect all sorts of items that lets him do more stuff. That fits point 1 perfectly. Point 2 is when things get complicated, there are plenty of times where Link can use items he collected to go back to an area he had been to before and collect more upgrades to make his life easier, but the majority of the time, these won't be necessary to actually complete the game. It'll make things easier, sure, but it's not required. But then that causes an issue... In fact it causes an issue way back in Zelda 1. You see, in order to finish that game there's a point where you must use the Raft to reach one of the 8 dungeons. This is necessary to finish the game. (Unless you utilise glitches, but that doesn't count) And as for point 3, don't need to explain that. So does that make Zelda 1 the same genre as Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night? To me, that just sounds silly. But then it hit me. The reason I fell into that problem was that because Zelda 1 uses point 2 a couple of times, I thought that means that it fits the Metroidvania genre. But the key difference between Zelda 1 and Metroid is what makes up the majority of their gameplay. Zelda is about exploring 8 separate labyrinths in order to collect 8 shiny triangles to go beat up a giant boar. Sometimes Link will have to use items he has found to backtrack and reach new labyrinths to progress. The goal of Metroid is to get to Tourian and blow up all the Metroids there and then explode a giant brain in a jar. The difference comes in how often you'll have to backtrack and use new items to reach previously inaccessible areas. You won't make 10 minutes of progress unless you utilise this tactic. So, simply put. It's far too hard to define a genre in a way that neatly sorts everything. It comes down to where you draw the line. For me, Metroidvanias have to not just fit the three points I made, but those points have to be the main fundamentals of the game. And that's why I think Metroid fits, but Zelda doesn't, despite some similarities. 2. Does "Action/Adventure" describe anything? How can we do better? No, it really doesn't. And that's terrible. I think that the only realistic way to sort this problem is to drop Action and Adventure as genres because games are too complex for those rather simplistic descriptors. You see this with some subgenres garnering fanmade names. The likes of Bayonetta and Devil May Cry have gotten the description of "Stylish Action". The problem with that is that it's a stupid description that tells the uninformed little about what the fundamentals of the game are. (Combat focused action game that rewards those who learn the intricate combos of the playable character and the attack patterns of various enemies). And there's the likes of "Souls-like", which even I'm not certain of what that means. Sure, if you've played Dark Souls, that will give you a decent idea of what to expect. But then people changed it to "Soulsborne" because one game was released by From Software and it didn't have Souls in the name. That example just comes across as hardcore fans wanting to exclude other games because they're seen as somehow inferior to their super hard series. (Don't deny it, that fanbase is notorious for skill-gating the Souls games) So the unfortunate truth is that, 9 times out of 10, you can't describe a genre in a meaningful way with a snappy title.

Final Fantasy defo has some of the most heaviest hitting soundtracks in gaming, but if we're solely talking about being able to maintain consistency, there's a really noticeable dip in quality once Nobuo Uematsu stopped composing for the series around Final Fantasy 10. That soundtrack, while good, is noticeably weaker than the PS1 entries. And then you get to FF 12, which is disappointingly forgettable. Probably the lowest point of the series as far as music goes. I'd also say that Dragon Quest let's itself down because stingy Sugiyama hates everyone outside of Japan and greedily refuses to give them access to orchestrated soundtracks in the games. When your soundtracks have a golden opportunity to reach many potential new fans via Smash Bros and you fob them off with MIDI arrangements that don't even include the super famous main theme, then you're just handicapping yourself with your own arrogance. (Of course, no concrete confirmation if that was the case, but given how Sakurai expressed his disappointment on not getting that track and having to make do using only the last 6 notes in Hero's victory theme, it's pretty obvious)

Well, it's clear that you and I have different views on what constitutes variety. It seems to me like you prefer to have multiple different flavours of a similar genre, (different settings, characters and mechanics that said different setting might provide), while I would much rather prefer to have different genres completely, even if I have "been there, done that" many times before. For the record, I completely reject your insinuation that "X series has similar games, so they're all fundamentally the same" but I get the impression that you already guessed that from our previous discussions on that very topic, so I won't bother going through that song and dance again. Agree to disagree?

You say built to a formula but many of those games are very different, and there's a good amount of totally new IPs there too. Compare this to Nintendo who rely on almost all sequels for their big games, or Xbox who have very few exclusives, and they're still doing a much better job than everyone else. Gotta agree with @Ronnie on the point he just made. Nintendo's biggest IP's may rely on sequels, but those IP's cover a wider variety of genres then Sony's current big hitters. Zelda has action adventure covered while Smash Bros is a unique take on the fighting game. Mario Kart is a cartoon racer with Animal Crossing being some kind of life sim(?) And when Nintendo commissions another company to handle one of their IP's, it normally ends up being a different genre. (Hyrule Warriors and Cadence of Hyrule are good examples of this, both Zelda games, both play noticeably differently to the source material) And then you've got games made by other smaller studios like Kirby (2D Platformer with a focus on the combat more than the actual platforming) and Pokémon (Monster collecting RPG). It's all come from years of curating a franchise out of them, while Sony tends to drop IP's after a while and rely on third party support to cover other genres.