Sheikah

You get games every month for all 3 systems with Plus.

Oh right, got it. For some reason I read Shorty's post the other way round (that platinums do get taken away).

Platinum trophies or their icon aren't taken away when more DLC hits - you still have the platinum trophy displayed by your game. The only thing that changes is the percentage of game complete, which makes sense. I'm glad there is a star now for achievements. No obvious award for differentiating getting 980 gamerscore and all 1000 for a single game was a bit of a misjudgement. Can you see all these stars at a glance though? Seeing a person's number of platinums at a glance is more interesting than a score (or that level thing that PSN does).

Aside from 1 trophy, all of us here that got the Destiny plat got it without even trying for it.

What time today? I can do it tonight.

Personally I would place Bloodborne over Witcher 3. Witcher 3 was amazing but I think one of its weaker areas was its combat and difficulty. The combat was pretty repetitive and easy and didn't feel that refined (the same couple of moves over and over easily got me through). Putting the game on hard mode actually just made the game more annoying rather than difficult - stuff breaking all the time, for instance. Then there was also the fact that, as a high level, random items found in treasure were usually always of a lower level or just complete junk. Crafting was really the only way. Saying that, the storytelling and world building was phenomenal. Bloodborne was just bliss start to finish. Gameplay heaven with an awesome atmosphere.

Yeah I don't reckon they will abandon buttons. There's just no way you can play most of their games properly without them. To do that would be utterly insane.

The way I see it, we are going to have this raid as the main raid for a long time, and these challenge modes will come up again and again. That's fair enough, but I can see us rolling in 320 stuff before too long.

It's mostly because it's difficult to get everyone together again and/or a lack of enthusiasm in people continuing the raid. Personally, I'm not too bothered about getting regular loot since challenge mode gives you guaranteed 320 versions. It's very rare that I'll get 320 versions of things normally (I have only ever got 2 x 320 pieces normally, both in the same raid). I spend a lot of nights playing Destiny already, so I'm actually quite open towards doing all raid activities in a single night.

If you want I can get us an Oryx checkpoint some time on Tuesday night (if that's where challenge mode starts). Don't question the means.

Then let's start a signup for another challenge mode run next Wednesday, 7:30-8PM start time, since I know you can do Wednesdays. Who else is with me?! [sheikah] [space] [space] [space] [space] [space]

That's the first one. I already have some opinions on that one...

What were your thoughts on this in the end?

The lulz. The lulz will be had.

Since Zell has already signed up himself, Zell takes the last spot.

I think the sparrow racing is a bit cack. Easy enough, but sparrows just are not fun vehicles to race. I kinda wished they would redesign sparrow mechanics for this mode but I knew they wouldn't.

I'm a little more OK with this now that it sounds like each episode will not actually be an episode, but a game in size. I think 'episode' was conjuring ideas of very short games a la Walking Dead episodes. If they decide to go with a multi-game franchise I am good with that. And if the first part has complaints from fans (e.g. gameplay) they can sort that out, probably. Looking back at the video, it's not clear whether Cloud can free run in the battles or not. If not, if might be that it is rather turn based with a display that looks a bit less strategy. Time will tell.

Yeah, they keep needing to change their controllers to keep up with our rapidly evolving hands. On a serious note, massive change for the sake of change sucks. The PS controller has been progressively refined over the generations. That's exactly what Nintendo should have done with the gamecube pad, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel every time.

Where's yo Bloodborne platinum at Flink? You gonna take on that challenge?

Analogue sticks work well lower down, while buttons don't. It's why the D-pad has never felt right on a 360 pad, or a gamecube pad, which is a pretty big deal as the D-pad is often used in a lot of games (particularly as shortcuts, or in indie/retro games). You already know it's fine to have a stick that low down because that's exactly where it is on the right side of the Xbox pad, and it never feels weird. I agree that it feels marginally better to have the stick a fraction higher but it's not worth the tradeoff. That's also why some of the buttons feel unnatural and difficult to reach on the Wii U Pro controller. Shit needs a claw stance to reach them all.

Squirtle. Beats charmander. Jus' sayin'.

I honestly don't know anyone other than the staunchest Nintendo fans who think the Gamepad is a great controller. It's just...huge. Unwieldly, has a low res screen that makes games look worse, the right stick is placed in a daft position, it has poor triggers and the buttons are a bit junk. It feels like those Vtech pads you saw as a kid. You know when they release a Wii U Pro controller they are essentially confirming that many people did not want to use the thing. I bet if you polled people, most would just want Nintendo to stop dicking about with their controllers and make something ergonomic and sensible. Through many, many hours of use of the Wii U Pro controller (particularly Mario Kart) I also have major beefs with it. Stick placement, really hard buttons, and a cheap and light flimsy feel. It's night and day versus the gamecube pad. Night and day.

Yeah, I'm up for that.

I'm going to go ahead and start another raid signup for Wednesday. I'm assuming that another challenge mode boss will trigger (but if not, we can just run the raid anyway). It will be hard mode and given there's likely going to be a challenge, trickier than normal. Let's say between 7:30-8 PM (will aim for 7:30 though). Sheikah [space] [space] [space] [space] [space]

Is there any information on world sizes? PS4/X1 worlds are something like 36 times the size of the tiny worlds in PS3/360 due to improved hardware. Good news for Nintendo, but so late that I wonder if there was much point.