darksnowman

When on the Gameinformer site last week to look at their Xenoblade Chronicles 3 review, I noticed a link to a Nintendo podcast. So of course I made a mental note. https://www.gameinformer.com/allthingsnintendo It's been going since October 2021 so there's plenty to get through. I put one on today and it seemed like easy enough background listening.

I like the concept. It's akin to the way so many of Stephen King's works intersect and reference each other. That being said, I remember being kind of done with the MCU before it even got going. No, I'm not that big a curmudgeon. Hear me out a bit. Comic book films had kind of gone down the toilet at that point (imo, as far as I mind). After a couple of strong X-Men and Spider-man entries, I was worn out from the Batman trilogy--although I might not mind rewatching those again to see if my opinion has evolved. MCU, I watched Ironman on DVD (remember the hype!) and wasn't really fussed with the realism of it. It didn't exactly tally with my memories of the Marvel Action Hour plus I wanted (and still kind of want) these comic book films to be more like the Tim Burton Batman films--dark and fun--and what those early X-Men and Spider-Man films were going for. I watched Captain America in the cinema as I was curious how that'd be translated to live action. I expected it to be cheesy and overbearingly pro-USA, and got a film with some heart to it. I went on to catch the rest of the Cap films in the cinema (not caring for the whole Bucky obsession, chortled at the Pulp Fiction reference...) and I think that was it for me until the run-up to Infinity War when it seemed like every man and his dog was salivating. Prior to IW hitting the cinema, I marathoned my way through the Thors, Avengers 1+2, Guardians of the Galaxy Vols 1+2 , Ant-man, Doctor Strange, Black Panther. Gave Ironman 2+3 and the Hulks a miss. Perhaps some others too. At that point, I felt like I was "in" so I kept up with it all the way through Endgame and onto Wandavision. Caught up with Loki, Falcon and Winter Soldier and Hawkeye after the fact. Then recently saw Doctor Strange 2 (already wasn't a fan of Cumberbatch's depiction) and think I'm done now. Too much to keep track of--haven't seen Shang Chi or The Eternals and possibly more, and what's on the slate is relentless. They are all so samey. Critical mass has been reached. I liked that first Captain America film as it showed some heart, the rest is just quippy, empty viewing. From the upcoming list I'd lean towards watching more Loki and the Agatha thing, other than that, I'm probably going to decline unless I hear Julia Louis-Dreyfuss plays a big part in something or they knock it out of the park with something else. Right there with you. The rate they are cranking this stuff out at is brutal. Marvel have done a fine job executing its plan since Ironman. Fair play to those that are into it and are willing to keep up.

Where did you get 2 or has it been in the backlog for a while?

Yeah, maybe not for Stanway but it was coming for someone. The referee had been trying to let things go and they were pushing it too far, White being the main instigator.

The referee found her yellow cards then. England could do with trying to play some football instead of these dark arts.

Thanks for the offer of sending in a guest theme but I'm afraid it'd be the blind leading the blind with that one--all I remember is Digimon, digital monsters. Digimon are the champions! Yup, I only watched a handful of Digimon episodes before ditching it as a Pokémon knockoff. So by that logic, a Digimon theme would mirror a Pokémon theme night.

I don't know what they were gurning about because I could see it was a handball from here without a replay. Thought next year was meant to be the Pools year yet here they are going for the quintuple...

I'm not going to blog everything that happens, however... there was a code red situation. The goal for the day was to bring down the Vehement Phosbat. I'd softened it up the day before and hoping the damage might carry over, I did a bit of investigating (got a few pieces of fruit and discovered the spicy berries) before heading back around to the caves. I'd burned up most of the day getting sidetracked but was able to quickly finish the creature off thanks to it not having recovered its health from our initial encounter. All good, then. A productive day in the tundra. I sent some Pikmin off with the carcass and a piece of fruit then pulled up the map to auto-send one of the characters to the ship. As time was ticking, I wanted someone to be in position to ring the bell to call everyone in for the night. With two seconds left I got the notification that they'd arrived at their destination so I flicked control over... to discover I'd sent them not to the ship but a plantpot!! There was no time to rectify. About ~14 Pikmin made it safely into orbit.

That's fair enough--I'm not certain what games Smash draws its items from. Maybe it says somewhere in-game? Can't believe you couldn't think up a Digimon theme. It could have done with a bit of the limelight what with Survive being kicked to the curb amidst the summer RPG releases.

Fun game. At a glance, POW block and Stopwatch from the Mario RPGs or perhaps you've other reasons for not highlighting those.

Skim-read that as "So I kept seeing talk of a leak that has been proven right with the Wave Race tracks." I never knew about that either, and for a second I thought it seemed pretty rational because of the hover kart aspect before I caught myself on. I haven't sat down and thought about a wishlist of tracks I want so I'm happy enough with whatever they throw in.

Pikmin, eh? I continually count these games out... until I get around to playing one that is, then I realise how much care goes into them. Note to self: don't be lackadaisical about Pikmin 4. These games don't deserve to be put on the to-buy-when-on-sale list. Of the Wii U ports I've bothered with so far (Mario 3D World, TMS #FE), it looks like Pikmin 3 is the best of the bunch. Well, okay, MK 8 DX is probably up there with it too, I'll give you that one. It's early days for me on PNF-404. Reunited with Brittany. Got red, rock and yellow Pikmin at my disposal. Getting in the odd bit of fruit. Looking for the captain. There've been some funny bits of dialogue like when they talk about how people from Hocotate (like Olimar and Louis) survive on vegetables and they, who are from Koppai, are fruit eaters. All colours of Pikmin are stored in a single Onion now. My personal preference has me wanting an Onion per colour purely because it gives more of an impression that I'm building a base of operations. It's handy to just need to go to the one Onion, though. Something I assume is a holdover from the Wii U is d-pad for swapping between characters? When you want to swap, a d-pad plus appears on screen and due to that visual cue, I keep thumbing it on the controller before remembering the joystick does the job. The first time I tried to do this I was pretty confused for a minute or two as to why my d-pad inputs were not being recognised. Other than that, so far so great. The last thing I did was lose two red Pikmin to the darkling cave creatures. The reds were building a bridge and I watched on from my vantage point, wondering if they'd be preyed upon without me there to launch them into combat first. Now I know. Still, it's not like the first Pikmin where every loss was dearly felt -- I'll have some more sprouted in a jiffy. ...listening to their speech, Professor E Gadd is a giant Koppaite...? He has the look, too.

About time! Kind of an extreme final spoiler there but I totally get where you're coming from. I expected to end up being delighted through and through with LAL (a revered "lost" Square game whose demo intrigued me more than enough to be happy to make it a day one purchase), but with each passing chapter it whittled me down. I've been trying to let the dust settle a bit before attempting to pull together my thoughts on it. The graphics are obviously lovely and the game itself isn't archaic by any means--though some QoL features would have been a very welcome addition--there was just very little satisfaction to be had a long the way, imo. Fancy graphics and a grid-based turn-based ATB system will only get you so far. I'm going to mention a couple of brief spoilers now we're talking about how it wrapped up. I finished it twice. First time I went straight in and because justice was needed. No question. No hesitation. After witnessing that. I went again I genuinely could not believe that in this 20-25 hour RPG I thought I was levelled pretty well yet those end battles were a drag. Then of course guess who gets thrown into the fray at the 11th hour: And I thought I was going to have to reload, go prepare some more and do it all again. But I didn't, and nor did I feel fulfilled in seeing it out, tbh. In fact, I had already squeaked through a trio of situations just to get to the final form, if you get what I'm saying, and that too was just met with a sensation of relief rather than triumph. I believed the game was building up to go out on a real high with what transpires after finishing the 7 chapters. That hope was swiftly taken from me. How well did you save the game? For the longest time, I was just letting it autosave, then recording a proper save upon chapter completion but there was once that caught me out and I had to reset to the most recent save... which was an hour previous. It was the time trial bit. The autosave was in it and I could not escape. Yup, I wanted a customary screenshot of the "thanks for playing" part and couldn't believe they'd disabled it. In a way, it sums up what a bummer the game was. What I thought I was walking into was a gem of a game we'd never got until now. What it ended up being, I'm not even sure. It seemed to be shaping up to be a nice little curiosity of distinct settings and storytelling methods that were trying to poke and pull at the RPG status quo. For whatever reason, it didn't work for me and I came away feeling meh about the game overall. Last weekend I was mentioning new game + in my posts, right now I've no intention of firing LAL up again. I'm going to let it rest and perhaps next summer I'll be up for checking a guide to see everything I missed and finding those secret bosses that were all the rage here in the early going. Right now, I'm glad to say, I'm onto Pikmin 3 and it's looking like a true great from a previous generation.

On today of all days, the only thing this thread should have been bumped for is Nopon amiibo.

Not sure what you mean (honestly) as I think that's what my quote says anyway. However, I do know that Nintendo fans get antsy about such caveats as "it's good for a Wii game", "it's good for a 3DS game", "it's good for a Switch game" because what we want is games to be commented on as games and not shackled to how many bits their console was. The better SNES game in 94 was DKC and you know it. DKC games by Rare > DKC games not by Rare and you know it. OoT being compared, contrasted and repeatedly judged to be the best game ever is perfectly well and good and you know it. Tell me this, do you think Banjo-Kazooie is a great N64 game, a great game, or both? Some examples in the 16-bit RPG realm would be the likes of Chrono Trigger, FF VI and DQ V which all measure up to RPGs from later generations and then some. So while you might be viewing and reviewing LAL on 1994 standards, people who are seeing the game on shop shelves won't be, and nor should they. When Chrono Trigger came out here on DS, no one was telling anyone to temper their expectations because it was a SNES game. Same went for the FF ports on GBA, and DQ on DS. We were falling in love with them for the timeless classics they are.

Yep, it gives you some hope then reduces you to that, pretty much. You're getting dafter all the time. A SNES game cannot be in competition with a modern generation game!

Ja, alles klar? Yes, her! Danke!

I hopped through video via the news section on the Switch and didn't immediately notice any evidence of this? Maybe what you're alluding to will be more evident when racing on them. Kind of grown used to the track list being divided between the "good screen" and the "cheap screen".

@Helmsly The mind boggles to think what other things you are sitting on for when the day comes. Incredible.

I wasn't to realise that as I did space and ancient China first. I thought those, despite their shortcomings, were two pretty well-done stories with strong climaxes--especially considering their SNES origins. The doubts crept in as I went on to do feudal Japan (nice looking but, honestly, if there was something to that story it completely passed me by...) and the present day after that. Anything I could say about the present day would take longer to write and read than that chapter lasts. Twas but a fleeting moment, much like the present itself. Yeah in LAL they're connected by hate/odio but not a great deal more.

For some reason, the visual novel style of that first chapter accompanied by the battle at the end I thought recalled 13 Sentinels. The character selection ring also played into that perception. My opinion of LAL morphed and skewed between those bright-eyed early days and reaching the credits. After a couple of chapters, I realised that the game would have to go out on a strong note (whatever that was going to be, I did not know) for it to be regarded so fondly or else it would have been labelled as the nearly man of RPGs all these years, and everyone would have long since moved on. EDIT: It occurred to me that it's sort of like Rayman Raving Rabbids (the first one), with its scattergun approach to gameplay. If they had waggle at the time they'd have used it.

I can get on board with that feeling. Can you believe in the early going I was wondering if Live A Live was a proto-13 Sentinels?

Is that Alice Klaar?

How dare you. It was the first one I did on the demo and the first one I continued with in the full game. Perhaps it was because I was still in my Live A Live infancy but I thought things played out in a pretty shocking way. At least for an "RPG".

Will France be made to rue these missed opportunities.