Messages

826

General Gaming / Re: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions?

« on: September 03, 2018, 07:42:48 PM »

Still, great to see creativity in the racing genre again, which of course means it totally failed in the marketplace.

Just out of curiosity, what would you consider other, recent racing games that tried things a bit differently? I can really only think of DiRT Rally with its time-rewind feature to compensate for the difficulty, and maybe that racing-platformer hybrid Skylanders game I guess...

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: F-Zero AC/GC Discussion

« on: September 02, 2018, 05:56:57 PM »

It's ironic that Star Fox has continued on with constant misfires while F-Zero has not.  You figure the series that got the lousy game out of the deal would be the one to get mothballed.  But maybe the problem is that F-Zero's standards have remained too high and Nintendo isn't interested enough in the series to put in the effort required to meet fan expectations.  This was the chance to transition F-Zero into a mid-tier budget series but Sega buggered that up by raising the bar even higher!

To be fair, before Star Fox Zero I doubt that franchise's installments were big enough failures to consider mothballing it, unlike F-Zero GX sadly.
Only Star Fox Assault was really a premium product (Namco developed); Star Fox Command was a partial reimagining by Qgames/EAD of the then-unreleased Star Fox 2, the 3DS remake game was again a team-up with Qgames, and Guard probably would have gotten different branding if they didn't have Star Fox Zero in the pipeline.

Sure, Assault also underperformed, and was a co-production as was F-Zero GX, but I think it may have escaped scrutiny because it released so late in the GameCube's lifetime. And even then, we still know Nintendo at least attempted to get Criterion to do F-Zero, and have given the franchise nods in Nintendo Land and Mario Kart 8.

I guess what I'm saying is, F-Zero hit a few more speedbumps down the road, but the Star Fox franchise hasn't made massive amounts of progress since 2003 either. Only it did get luckier in developing a HD era game than F-Zero. Which is a bummer, because I like both series, and kinda hoped the Retro Studios F-Zero/Starfox cross-over was real.

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: Safe Words 14: Famous Last Words 2. Round 3.

« on: September 02, 2018, 03:34:00 PM »

Unlike all of these dweebs running their shot clocks, I'll keep 'em waiting juuuust enough to keep their hopes up, but still swoop in on the nick of time to answer. I guess you could say that... unlike everyone else, I'm the only one here who has their **** together!

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NWR Feedback / Re: Why do you think NWR's forums rarely get active new members?

« on: August 30, 2018, 12:02:18 PM »

Did anyone compliment the minor changes to subforum descriptions yet? At last it says Switch, Wii U and 3DS in the console and handheld sectons!

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TalkBack / Re: Nindies Showcase Summer 2018 Roundup

« on: August 29, 2018, 09:38:33 AM »

Mineko's Night Market aiming straight for that Animal Crossing-shaped hole in the Switch line-up.

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: FIX IT

« on: August 27, 2018, 12:11:45 PM »

I think that was Mop it up that changed your profile during the sabotage.

Thought so yeah, a while back she suggested I change my username to include Steep already haha.

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General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: August 27, 2018, 11:44:05 AM »

Kinda aimlessly walked into a store today and noticed that Wii U games have really fallen in price, so I picked up the following for 18 bucks:

-Art Academy Atelier: always admired the stuff I saw from this on MiiVerse. I wouldn't mind learning to draw, I used to make small doodles on MiiVerse after finishing games.
-Rodea The Sky Soldier: this one always was exceedingly expensive but here I found it for 12$ with the Wii game included too. It has a reversible cover as well. I've read the actual Wii U title is pretty garbage, but the Wii one is supposed to be decent.

There's a few more titles for that system I would like to buy, such as Game & Wario, Mario Maker and the claymation Kirby game, but those are still hovering around 20$ each it seems.

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: FIX IT

« on: August 27, 2018, 07:10:36 AM »

Gotta commend whoever changed my account, especially the Mega Bummer title feels very on-point. Is there any way I can keep that or nah? (I never use ebay lol).

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Daemon X Machina!

« on: August 27, 2018, 07:00:28 AM »

New trailer is really cool, love the synthesizer bit during the name reveal. Are the Armored Core games like, actually any good? I've never played one, but I think I might want to get a Switch around this timeframe for Smash/Daemon X if the latter is gonna be any good.

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NWR Forums Discord / Cattank Resistance draft: sign up here

« on: August 25, 2018, 07:46:15 AM »

Fellow cat lovers, as well-behaved followers under the Beloved Cattank Regime, I think it is time to acknowledge a minor imperfection in the flawless plan of our Supreme O-Purr-Lords: the lack of a resistance to crush.

Sabre-rattling and battle cries are certainly welcome of course, but it must be understood that a military campaign without targets will have inherent limitations.

To serve our Dearest Commanders, I thus propose the following: we begin recruiting Cattank Underground Defence Draft Legion Etcetera Staff (CUDDLES for short). Once enough CUDDLES have been trained, we start meddling ever so mildly with Cattank Invasion Forces - at last presenting our leaders with the true enemy they so deeply desire!

The reward will undoubtedly be ever-lasting admiration from our Most Wondrous Elite!

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: Nicolas Cage did magic mushrooms with his cat

« on: August 25, 2018, 07:35:40 AM »

That explains all these cattanks, at least.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: You vs Khushrenada 2: The Revenge! Gold Edition.

« on: August 25, 2018, 07:30:06 AM »

I have Smash Wii U and Mario Kart 8, and could probably make time next week? I've also got need for speed but 1.) never played it and 2.) it's EA so I'm assuming they took it offline already.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Run the Series: 2D Zelda Games.

« on: August 21, 2018, 07:45:46 PM »

Big Zelda fan here, so I've mopped 'em all up. Even the ones with levels in muddy swamps which make me go aw, dirty floors. Guess that makes me...

...the Floor Master.

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: The Lettuce Cat is so last week. Mock me for being behind the times. Happy Mask Shop

« on: August 21, 2018, 07:36:13 PM »

So glad to be reading about this news today, very relevant to the contents of my filter bubble!

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General Chat / Re: If your Identity seems to be different....

« on: August 21, 2018, 07:34:33 PM »

No worries, I'm here to mop up any tears and accidentally hurt feelings!

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: Trouble Connecting to Nintendo Wi-Fi

« on: August 21, 2018, 07:18:53 PM »

I'm only here for the questionable memes.

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General Chat / Re: Bah Gawd, It's Khushrenada's Music! Khushrenada Week Aug. 20 - 26, 2018 is here!

« on: August 19, 2018, 04:54:07 PM »

Psssh who reads posts nowadays? It's 2018. But sure sign me up!
Maybe you should do it the other way around, just assume everyone is game unless they say otherwise. That'll get us lazy bums to speak up.

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General Gaming / Re: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions?

« on: August 19, 2018, 03:18:21 PM »

Oh, goodness. Great review.

I have five favourite RPGs. And those five are as follows:

Chrono Trigger
Xenoblade
Final Fantasy VI
The Last Story
Final Fantasy IX

In that order, too. I long so much for an HD revisit of this game for Switch. I'm not sure what Mistwalker Studios are doing at the moment (maybe phone games, LOLs), but Nintendo need to buy them outright, and make them their new "Final Fantasy" studio. I seriously love The Last Story so much, as I feel it could be a stronger series than Final Fantasy could ever dream of being. Sakaguchi knows how to create wonderful characters, and their stories are so fantastically woven together in The Last Story. I want The Last Story II...and then TLS III...and TLS IV...and so on.

If Nintendo aren't going to get Camelot to continue with Golden Sun, then The Last Story should be their franchise RPG series. Yes yes, they own Monolithsoft, and Xenoblade is all kinds of wonderful, but there's something about the characters and story of TLS that Xenoblade just can't touch. They're so memorable, and their actions speak massive amounts of volume more than the previously mentioned RPG series.

Thanks, I love that people here still remembers games like this and Pandora's Tower! Yeah Mistwalker are doing mobile games now, they're called the Terra Battles series I think. Apparantly the director said he intended Last Story as a one-off, but I also found this article of him expressing at least some interest.
 
But yeah given MonolithSoft's recent success with XC2 and the speed at which they can produce (XCX, Project X Zone 2, Breath of the Wild assistance, XC2, XC2: Torna are all within 3 years of each other), I expect Nintendo sees them as their main RPG house now - with AlphaDream & Intelligent Systems on the side. [EDIT: whoops totally forgot about Pokémon haha]

I think Last Story could really benefit from a Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn type of sequel, with characters from the Gurak kingdom in the lead roles this time. A major gripe for me with the story was how the genocide on their civilians is just never brought up again really, despite being a rather brutal, heart-wrenching sequence. A sequel from their perspective could paint our heroes as (accomplices to) genocidal mass-murderers; I'd say that's enough reason for conflict to rise anew. The current ending, while satisfying, is a bit too happy and perfect given the events that transpired.

From those of your list I've only played Chrono Trigger, which I loved as well. From Final Fantasy I only played 8 and low-key hated it, should try 9 or one of the classics one day... I did start Xenoblade X years ago, but maybe I'll download the first Xenoblade after I'm done with Pandora's Tower instead to complete the 'Rainfall trilogy'.

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: Safe Words 14: Famous Last Words 2. Round 2.

« on: August 18, 2018, 09:49:43 AM »

Startled and worried for my cover nearly being blown, I request the employees do not speak to me without prior announcement over e-mail. The excuse I give is that my doctor says my heart can't take any sudden surprises.
Whew, that was a close one, now let's continue this operation!

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General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: August 17, 2018, 02:28:24 PM »

Just want to mention that I love seeing your reports about a bunch of old Wii games.I haven't had much time for gaming lately - but have a whole shelf of Wii games still waiting for my attention so am living vicariously through your reports.

Thanks! I basically missed out on the entire Wii generation back in the day, dropped out of gaming for quite a few years. What I like a lot about Wii is that many of its games seem designed to be played in shorter bunches. Lots of them are level-based still, so if you have more time again in a while, maybe start with something like that? There's plenty of games you can fire up for 15 minutes and put down again.

I played the game twice back-to-back a couple years ago and absolutely loved it and I don't remember it being that difficult. I don't remember any specific tips or anything but I remember that I never had to grind.There is a timing based charge attack, are you doing that correctly?

I'm definitely not doing charge attacks enough, no. I grinded for 30 minutes to get some money and materials to make an armour now, added 120 defence points so hopefully that should help me out. The freaking boss just broke my sword too, like thanks a bunch swamp thing. I think I just have to accept I'm really bad at this game. The chain is probably better used to keep enemies away while dealing with other ones, I think I went in too much with a hack&slash mentality.

Pandora's Tower warning: You can **** your save over right near the end of the game based on a few factors, so I recommend leaving your monster lady love alone as much as possible in case you need to activate one-off interaction scenes to get through a glitch that stops you from going into the last tower(s).

Yeah I saw the glitch warnings, thanks! Someone on GameFAQs suggested it might be the opposite, where if you have a whole bunch of interactions left, the game crashes because it has all those stored. We'll see I guess, first I even need to get there - spent nearly three hours today on the sixth Tower, so it's a while off still.

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General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: August 16, 2018, 10:17:19 AM »

After really liking The Last Story, I moved on to Pandora's Tower. Did anyone here play that? I could really use some advice, because I'm now in the sixth tower and even the most basic enemies are routinely wrecking my ****. Already died five time without even making it to a third room, it's ridiculous how much the difficulty has suddenly spiked. The GameFAQs for this one are really bad unfortunately.

I'm constantly short on absolutely everything, too. Money, useful supplies, healing items. I've upgraded the sword just twice, purposefully not upgrading the dual-blades or scythe. Did you guys & gals struggle this much too, or am I just really really bad at it? Are you supposed to just dodge-roll everywhere? Do they expect you to return to previous towers and grind for scraps? I'd assume not because the cash drops are pitiful and everytime you venture to a tower you're also risking Elena's transformation gauge...

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General Gaming / Re: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions?

« on: August 16, 2018, 09:58:59 AM »

Here's a big one, The Last Story (2012, Wii).



This one got recommended to me on the Discord, and man was it a ride. The Last Story is a fast-paced action RPG where you fight in real time and simultaneously direct your party of mercenaries around. They get caught up protecting a lady of royalty of an island nation on the verge of (basically nuclear?) war with a southern continent.
No random battles, all the fetchquesty bits are entirely optional, a score with so many highlights, fantastic localisation with loads of U.K. accents represented and fun banter... Yeah I really dug this one.

Are there problems? Sure, the framerate can't always keep up with the size of the city they've created and will outright stutter during some of the bigger fights in the mines with loads of enemies and particle effects from spells popping off everywhere. The multiplayer mode is also down of course now, since it was online only - no local option.
The game is kind of ugly by today's standards too. Lots of bloom, and the major hub city is essentially all browns/beiges/grays. I personally also really dislike many of the character designs, though your mileage may vary there. Their voice acting picks up the slack though, really strong here.

Those technical & visual problems aside, I would also say the game makes some... curious narrative decisions at times. I'm pretty sure there's a sidequest which allows your main character to date several NPCs? I didn't follow that quest so could be wrong, but it feels inconsistent with the otherwise pretty central love story.

More importantly however, the game gives these false choices sometimes. There's fairly major reasons why you would want to refuse to cooperate with the Duke, and many characters encourage you to turn down his offers. But actually turning him down is basically impossible, since your character is dim as a lamp and won't see the super obvious warning signs until it's way too late.
While that's kind of neat in that the story basically makes you an accomplice to actual fucking genocide, it also really, really sucks you can't prevent that from happening because of these false choices. Don't pretend like I have a choice, especially on major themes like this, if you're just gonna force the player to pick one option anyway.

I have one more curious complaint about the pacing: the game is just around 40 chapters long, which I cleared in 27 hours. However, around chapter 30, 31~ish the plot basically goes full-throttle towards the finish. I suppose it's a good thing that everything felt tense and critical enough to wanna keep playing, but it basically overshot my planned bedtime by oooooh four hours? Haha, I suppose blaming my lack of self-control on the game is unfair, but that felt a bit wonky in terms of time balancing.

I've read some things online about people thinking the battle system doesn't really take advantage of all its potential until the very last bosses. Not sure I agree with that, as it gets really complex and stressful by the end. The last fight especially is really tough and took me close to an hour to figure out. Up until there though, the game is mostly smooth sailing which I like.

The game is just kind of delightful really. You can paint your armours in really garish colours, so I had the big brute guy in hot pink and black, the shy introverted girl in a hideous tint of snot yellow, my main character I tried to turn into a walking rainbow for shits & giggles, had another one in Halloween colours running around. The game also tracks some really idiotic stats, like the amount of times you bang your head on street signs, trip over fallen oranges, and even rewards you for rudely bumping into people a lot. You can even load banana peels on your crossbow to trip up people and they even work on one of the final bosses, hilariously.

Add to that quite some strong characterisations, again, fan-tas-tic music, fast-paced combat, skippable filler chapters, some gorgeous CGI cutscenes, and you basically get what Final Fantasy 8 should always have been: a quarter of the length, techno-fantasy mix, floating castles, prison breaks, sewers, romance to actually root for, much more streamlined inventory stuff and way less obtuse.

Recommendation: if you have The Last Story still wrapped on a shelf somewhere, hook up your Wii (U) and play this one. You'll know within half an hour if you'll like it, since it hits the ground running and rarely lifts its foot from the gas. If I was an objective reviewer, I'd point to the problems and give it four stars. Luckily however, I can freely choose to ignore them and declare this my favourite Wii game since Brawl.
FIVE STARS.

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General Gaming / Re: What is the last game you beat? Thoughts/impressions?

« on: August 14, 2018, 11:58:59 AM »

Metroid Prime 2: EchoesThe treasure hunt in this game is atrocious. There are nine INVISIBLE small bug things scattered throughout the huge map and you are given zero indication of where to find them. It's indefensible and a sin of game design. There are some things Metroid Prime does well, like it makes platforming in first-person work and there are really fun movement options with things like the morph ball. However the last part of the game ruins any goodwill with it's pseudo remake of Milon's Secret Castle. Prime 1 also had a treasure hunt though I remember it's macguffins were all placed in rooms you've not visited yet, and if you simply explore the entire map you will get to fight the final boss. In Prime 2 this isn't the case with it's INVISIBLE items placed in hard to reach areas of placed you've already visited making it near impossible to finish the game without a guide. Lastly another thing that bugs me is the kill rooms where enemies with too much health lock you in a room and force you to kill them, it doesn't help that the shooting mechanics feel dull, like it's missing something that I can't quite put my finger on.

This is the biggest Metroid game I've yet to play. Every time I think about doing so I read something that makes me hesistant, like your post haha. Are those invisible bugs only there at the end, or could one hypothetically get them during the playthrough already? I might compromise and just keep a guide with their locations open, the Metroid Prime padding scavenger hunts are such a drag on the games. Kills the pacing, needlessly adds time, and it's not like they tend to add some sort of critical element without which the story would make sense.

Red Steel 2 was one of my favorite Wii games, and probably the best Wii Motion Plus game in my opinion. It's a little light on the content, but it felt about average for an action game to me at the time, Of course, I did a 100% on all side quests and upgrades so that helped. I really enjoyed the boss fights, and normally that is one of my least favorite things in games.

Yeah the boss fights are certainly the highlight. I haven't played other Motion Plus games besides Nintendo Land, so couldn't compare, but yeah it does feel pretty accurate. What else required Motion Plus, Skyward Sword, Flingsmash, and Wii Sports Resort are the only ones I know of tbh.

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NWR Forums Discord / Re: Can we laugh at the Sovereign Citizen movement,

« on: August 14, 2018, 11:47:05 AM »

What in the world are these people hoping to accomplish?

Semi-serious answer: I guess they kiiiiinda have a point that it's basically impossible to choose to be a non-state citizen, without moving to like, Antarctica/the high seas/the Moon. Living in a state tends to come with obligations towards that state (taxes, expectation of being held to said state's laws), but because nation-states are so prolific and basically cover most of the habitable Earth, you can't really opt out of those obligations.

In practice, the only benefits of being a sovereign citizen would be precisely that - the ability to break laws and duck taxes. (Well, I guess you might feel super empowered or whatever, being sovereign and all.) That said, these people probably still wanna use roads, public courts, hospitals, maybe schools - so it's not like they're prepared to completely opt out of public life.
Seems like they want to enjoy benefits of modern states without contributing to them by paying tax and obeying laws? I wonder if the movement has sincere believers, or if most of them are like the guy here trying to get out of a DUI haha.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Dec. 7, 2018 Dreams Come True - Everything is here!

« on: August 10, 2018, 12:05:01 PM »

They're going to have to use like a scrolling character selection screen, or like netflix-style columns.

Watch 'em implement a "suggested for you" column with only Ganondorf, a few blue haired swordfighters, and Wolf in it.