James rants about the worst game he's ever reviewed. Plus: your Listener Mail, and Metroid references throughout.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/rfn/32101
Over the years, some of the most memorable James rants have come from his reviews. The start of this episode is sure to join that pantheon, as he struggles to cope with the nightmare of... Crazy Hunter. No, it has nothing to do with deer. Returning super-guest Nate Andrews follows up with a game opposite in quality, the stellar Walking Dead from Telltale. Anticipating the imminent release of Crashmo, Nate also loads up Pushmo to revisit the eShop favorite. Guillaume scratches an RPG itch with Persona 3 Portable for PSP, and we consider the prospects for that series coming to 3DS. Jonny concludes the segment with updated --and significantly more jubilant-- impressions of La-Mulana, the last great WiiWare game. He also spends a few minutes on FTL, the difficult but strangely addictive space roguelike that everyone's talking about.
We emerge from the Now Playing break to catch up on just a few of the excellent emails you've been sending over the past few weeks. One listener is concerned about how expectations affect reviews. Another questions how abundant 1-ups can affect our perception of a game's difficulty. We also dig through our collections for games that are worth far more than we originally paid. This email adventure concludes with some fun speculation on how Metroid will translate to the Wii U experience. Please contribute even more great questions and ideas by sending your own email -- we read everything and use as many as possible for the show!
One last, important thing: we announced the new telethon last week, and now the event page is available to provide all the details you need, plus links to donate early. Bookmark this page, because it will be updated frequently as the planning gets hot and heavy! Plus, that's where you'll want to be on the day of the event, November 10, to access the live audio and interact with us and fellow NWR fans throughout the telethon.
OK. I'm sorry Guillaume, but you disappointed me today. How can you not mention the amount of time that must be put forth to accomplish anything in the Persona games?! Yes, I agree -- the story is good; however, a two-hour opening cutscene (non-cinematic) is inexcusable! I'm not going to play a game for 20 hours just to get to the good stuff. I'm convinced the Persona games are some of the worse designed games ever made. I still love you though. :-*It didn't take me 2 hours before I got to do anything in Persona 3, and it's been a while since Persona 4 but I'm fairly certain I had fought at least one battle before the first hour was up. I not only think it's "not that bad", I never even suspected there was an issue in the first place. Heck, you're pretty much on rails for a while, so you're done with the exposition and explanations pretty quickly. Heck, the first time you play through Chrono Trigger, when you talk to everyone in town, it probably takes you longer to get to the first fight than in Persona 3.
It's even more prevalent in FES because you can't control you party memeber and even though I cringed at this idea at first, I learned to deal with it and I actually thought it helped me connect with the characters better. IDK, maybe I am looking into it to much, but I am glad to hear Guillaume enjoys it.
You can control them! Check the last option under "tactics".
I IMPLORE you to take another stab at it, and please try not to be turned off by the gameplay mechanics, because the soul of the game is nearly identical to why you are loving la mulana.
So if I don't like La Mulana's approach to progression or mechanics then I wouldn't like Dark Souls? I've heard the guys at 8-4 talk about Dark Souls quite a bit and it sounded intriguing. If it's level design and puzzles are anything like La Mulana though, maybe it's not for me.
Probably not. It requires a lot of trial and error. Right off the bat, you're given 3 different directions you can go, one of which is slightly less difficult than the other two, implying that is the path to take. Then after a while, the path splits again, and you have to run head first into each of them and figure out which of the paths is the least difficult, etc etc. So part of the difficulty comes from going on one path that is deliberately made too difficult because you're not supposed to go there yet, so the game kills you as a way of saying it's too soon. However, if you're good enough at the game, you can take those difficult paths right off the bat and be rewarded with really good loot. But if you don't like that style of progression, then you probably wont' like the game, because it punishes you for choosing incorrectly.
I would also argue that these kind of games, used to teach new staff how to make Mario games are vital in order for the series to survive. The old guard at Nintendo are not going to be around forever so they have to pass the torch, look what happened to the Sonic series when new people were brought in! As such I feel it is a smart move by Nintendo as Mario is a mascot that the company needs going forward.
Dark Souls has utter bullshittery too. Take for example Curse - instant death, respawn with 1/2 life. It lasts forever (and can stack) unless you manage to reach a random dude some distance from the closest spawn point - with half of your HP.
Regarding how much Metroid Prime Trilogy is going for used, the price I usually see it for is $70 used (though at least mine came with all the extras, like the collectable artwork)..