Messages

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond [Insert thinly veiled Back to the Future reference here]

« on: Yesterday at 10:45:21 PM »

Ah, but of course. No longer being on the pulse of gaming discourse has foiled me, as I’m sure there’s plenty of discussion of the previews in other waters. Ah well, the curse of not being in the loop constantly.

To its credit, the IGN Preview is hopeful when, after a point in their demo, the helper left to camp out in a particular area, so they were back to the usual Metroid rhythm. I just wonder "for how long" when it comes to that sort of thing, and while the character was with them they WERE responsible for keeping that NPC alive so it was an escort mission of sorts.

I'm hoping the game is good. Dread was alright, but 2D Metroid really isn't my thing and it's been a very long time since Prime 3. I'm just going to wait and see if we have an Aloy/Atreus 2.0 situation going on here.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond [Insert thinly veiled Back to the Future reference here]

« on: Yesterday at 09:13:14 PM »

I had a preorder on the Switch 2 version, but cancelled it after the footage IGN released of all the (bad) hand-holdy, cringy NPC dialogue that kinda betrays the game's age as having been announced in 2017. I'm just not in the mood for that nonsense in my Metroid experience. The hand-holding was bad enough in Fusion, Other M, and even Dread to an extent without having persistent NPC helper characters as well. I get enough of that annoying **** in every Sony game made these days. I was also extremely uncertain about the whole "large desert hub area" as it was.

Maybe I'll change my mind once the reviews hit, but I have other games to play right now anyway. I'm working my way through Xenoblade 3 right now, and the physical version of Yooka-Replaylee comes out in a month.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Of America Announces Black Friday Deals Including Dates For Digital Sale

« on: November 12, 2025, 06:41:38 PM »

Disappointing to not see Xenoblade X in this list, as I still need to circle around and pick that up at some point as I work my way through Xenoblade 3. Might pick up Princess Peach Showtime, and Echoes of Wisdom might be a good pick for a Christmas request.

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TalkBack / Re: Pokemon Legends Z-A Mega Dimension DLC Opens December 10

« on: November 06, 2025, 06:42:58 PM »

We know what this and the DK DLC are.  They were released so soon after the game's release that you know they were at worst almost finished when the base game launched.  A lot of DLC is just taking a chunk of the game out and charging extra for it.  But Nintendo can be a little more clever about this and not make it so obvious.  Have some patience and wait at least six months.  "We made some more content for that game you love" is such a better sell than "We held back on this to make you pay extra for it."

I wonder why Nintendo seems to have backed away from the "Expansion Pass" model, where they would dribble out minor additions over a course of time for the main game with a major expansion right at the end. Seemed to work out well for the Xenoblade games.

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TalkBack / Re: Pokemon Legends Z-A Mega Dimension DLC Opens December 10

« on: November 06, 2025, 02:07:27 PM »

I'm getting increasingly tired of Roguelike modes seemingly being Nintendo's go-to strategy for DLC. It's bad enough that those seem to be 90% of Indie games these days.

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TalkBack / Re: Previously Japan Exclusive My Nintendo App Comes To West With Nintendo Store Branding

« on: November 05, 2025, 07:02:21 PM »

That's intentional. Separate apps mean easier development, maintenance, and deployment. If everything was on a single app, code changes could break existing functionality in other parts of the app requiring a ton of regression testing before release. As separate individual apps, Nintendo can roll out bug fixes and improvements much faster.

TL;DR: You should want separate apps. If one app fails, it won’t take the other functionality down with it, and it's much easier to fix.

*shrugs*

I get what you're saying but my home screen has room for 1 app, and I prefer the convenience of doing everything I need to do in one app. It's frankly presumptuous for Nintendo to think it has a right to more than that space. Just saying, the PS App has its issues, but I can buy from PSN; manage my downloads; managed my screenshots and videos; and manage my online profile all in one place. Hell, when PS Stars was still active I could manage that there, too, and so long as PSN itself is operational it works just fine and has for years.

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TalkBack / Re: Previously Japan Exclusive My Nintendo App Comes To West With Nintendo Store Branding

« on: November 05, 2025, 08:42:52 AM »

Ok, Nintendo splitting up all these functions into separate apps is starting to get annoying. Is there a reason this couldn't have just been combined into 1 Switch App?

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Shifting Development Focus To Switch 2

« on: November 04, 2025, 11:09:03 PM »

It's a weird world we live in where a company can put out a new console but not shift its development focus TO that console until it's been out for 5 months already.

Oh well. Sony refused to commit to the PS5 for years after launch and Microsoft basically never did stop supporting the Xbone via the Series S, so that's an improvement here at least.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Announces Results For Second Quarter Of 2025-26 Fiscal Year

« on: November 04, 2025, 07:03:55 PM »

Water is wet. In related news, Nintendo fans buy Nintendo ****, probably literally if it was in a box and was marked as a limited time offer.

So where were these 10 million plus Nintendo fans during the Wii U's first 4 months?  Or the 3DS first 4 months when it started struggling so bad they had to make a massive price cut?  So you've gone from all Nintendo consoles had a good launch so the first month sales are meaningless, to apparently all Nintendo systems keep selling well after launch, so now all numbers are also meaningless.

Congrats on finding the exceptions that prove the rule, both of which are over a decade old. Would you like to go back to the Virtual Boy as well? Oh wait! Nintendo already is!

The Wii U is an especially odd example to bring up, considering how successful pretty much its entire library was on Switch, proving that they probably would have sold well on Wii U if the hardware itself was the least bit desirable and didn't have the Game Pad albatross weighing it down. Besides, we both know the Wii U was sent out to die, as Nintendo was already devoting all its resources towards saving the 3DS before the Wii U even launched. Very Virtual Boy of them, now that I think about it.

By and large, Nintendo fans buy Nintendo games, including a lot of lazy crap like 1-2 Switch; Welcome Tour; or MP Jamboree S2. That was never the question. What was the question was whether the more casual audience would join in, and if EITHER of them would buy anything OTHER than Nintendo games on Nintendo consoles.

The jury's still out on that one, and the Key Card situation Nintendo created isn't helping matters there.

MK World is a pack-in game. Its numbers are artificially inflated by the console numbers. I think that's a grain of salt that should be taken with these numbers, but the numbers are still good despite the game's issues.

You do realize people can buy a Switch 2 without the Mario Kart World bundle right?  If Mario Kart World was something people didn't want to play, why are they spending an extra $50 to play it?  If the price of the Switch 2 and it's games was suppose to be such a huge deal that would make the systems another 3DS at best and Wii U at worst, then why are all these price sensitive consumers buying a more expensive version of the Switch 2 with a game they don't even want?

OK...

1. "Do I realize people can buy a Switch 2 without the MK bundle?"

Personally, I'm happy to continue not owning World, as there's little about that experience I want to see. My Switch 2 right now is my Switch 1 backlog machine, and I'm ok with that.

Gee, I dunno. Do I?

2. When people buy a new console, they want a new game, especially if they had to sell their old console + games to afford it. Nintendo severely overpriced MK World at $80, but it's $50 if you get the bundle. So yeah, if you want a new console getting the bundle is an obvious choice if you don't care about actual ownership and you think you have any interest in a new MK. I don't and I bought my S2 to play my neglected S1 library, so I didn't.

It's worth noting that the only other Switch 2 1st party game worth a damn, DK Bananza, does not have a bundle so it hasn't enjoyed the inflated sales the inferior game received despite being a cheaper standalone game and being as close to a Mario platformer as the Switch 2 has.

Just saying, dude, you're taking rage bait from (so far, unnamed) online personalities a little personally.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: November 04, 2025, 03:53:32 PM »

On the subject of Blasphemous, the creators of that series made the recent Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, which is excellent. I highly recommend it.

Nothing really to add for this last month in terms of horror games. I got wrapped up in a bunch of other games like Shinobi: Art of Vengeance (also a very good game), the 2 Mario Galaxy games, TMNT: Splintered Fate, and Xenoblades 2 & 3 (I'm happy to say my 8 year Odyssey with the underwhelming Xenoblade 2 is finally over). I also knocked out a few more endings in Silent Hill f, which feels like an increasingly frustrating and pointless endeavor.

On a positive note, I'm very happy with Xenoblade 3 so far. It's basically what I wanted and didn't get from 2.
.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Announces Results For Second Quarter Of 2025-26 Fiscal Year

« on: November 04, 2025, 02:55:59 PM »

It took the Wii and Switch about 9 months to sell 10 million copies and both were treated as a huge accomplishment at the time for doing it so quickly.  The Switch 2 just did that in around half the time.  Nintendo's own forecast now has the system doing 19 million by the end of March which will not only put it well over the Wii U, but very close to the GameCube's lifetime total, all within it's first 9 months.

Oh and LOL at all the people that said Mario Kart World is not a killer app.  Yeah the sequel to a game that sold close to 70 million units is something nobody wants to play alright.

Once again this just goes to show how much of a bubble the online gamer sphere truly is.  All the negativity and outrage that has been manufactured for clicks, that many gobble up and repost all over the web, even when said information has been proven false, has no impact on the real world whatsoever.  Majority of the people who play videogames, want to do just that, play the games.  If you grew up playing Mario Kart and Donkey Kong, and still enjoy those games, and want to play the newest installments, you're going to buy a Switch 2 to continue playing said games since you can't play them anywhere else.

You seem to have an unhealthy obsession with other people online thinking negatively about the Switch 2. This isn't your first post complaining about the online discourse.

Water is wet. In related news, Nintendo fans buy Nintendo ****, probably literally if it was in a box and was marked as a limited time offer.

MK World is a pack-in game. Its numbers are artificially inflated by the console numbers. I think that's a grain of salt that should be taken with these numbers, but the numbers are still good despite the game's issues.

Personally, I'm happy to continue not owning World, as there's little about that experience I want to see. My Switch 2 right now is my Switch 1 backlog machine, and I'm ok with that. Pity the apparently good new Sonic Racing game forces you to play as Sonic characters on Sonic-themed stages, or I'd have more interest in it.

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Movies & TV / Re: All Things Netflix! Coming Soon: The Netflix Experience, Live and In Person!??

« on: October 26, 2025, 09:47:15 PM »

Alright, let's cross off 2 more Netflix shows off the never-ending list, starting with an anime, Delicious in Dungeon.

This one had some Anime of the Year talk going around about a year ago, and having watched all 24 episodes of the current season I just have to ask..."really?" This show is repetitive as hell, with Every. Single. Episode. of the show's first half having your standard D&D crew discovering a monster, killing it easily, and then eating it. It's always an easy kill, and the food is always great. Nothing ever goes wrong.

At the halfway point in the season, the show tries to change things up and introduce a longer ongoing story, but IMO it's just too little too late. I'm not into food porn, so this show really isn't for me. I need some actual stakes.


Speaking of, I'm now fully caught up on Stranger Things, having completed the 4th season. This season got a lot of hype as the one that "saved the show" after how "terrible season 3 was", and while I don't agree with the sentiment towards Season 3 I do think this is the best season since the first...mostly. It's certainly the most creatively-shot of all 4 seasons. I think the show completely fumbled the ball at the end, but for the most part this was a good season. Once again, all the characters had something to do, though the basketball team and Russian subplots wore on my patience. Aside from attempting to retcon Hopper back into the plot, I just didn't see the point of the Russian subplot. We didn't learn anything we didn't already know from Season 3, and it makes ABSOLUTELY no sense how Hopper got where we was considering we saw the US army storm the mall at the end of Season 3. SOMEONE would have seen him.

Something I really appreciated about this season is that the individual characters got to actually make major contributions to the plot. Eleven wasn't used as just the usual instant-win button. Characters live and die based on the actions of normal characters, as it should be. Eleven even got a bit of a "training arc" so she could jump in to contribute when it was appropriate for her to do so.

And wow, they really wanted to get their money's worth out of licensing Kate Bush's "Keep Running Up that Hill." Funny...despite being a child of the 80s, her version of that song isn't the one I'm familiar with and honestly I don't care for it all that much. It's just too..."pop" for my taste. I first heard the song when the band Track & Field covered it for an extremely memorable season finale of Warehouse 13:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xGbi6lYFO8

Minor quibbles about song preference aside (I understand the Kate Bush version is the original and is the only one that makes sense in this time period), I really liked how that song was used...the first time they did a big epic climax with it. Then the writers got greedy and tried to perform the same trick twice in the finale, and it just didn't hit the same way.

But yeah...that ending. Not a fan. I see that Eleven continues to only need a sensory deprivation tank when the plot decides she does. Let's just disregard all the hand-waiving the show's done with her mental location powers the entire show. And hey, I guess we're just going to throw out altogether the fact that the atmosphere in the Upside Down is supposedly to be so incredibly toxic that characters in earlier seasons were running around in Hazmat suits. I don't like what they did with Eddie, who is an extremely likeable character who just turns into a dumbass at the last minute...because they wanted to give Dustin some pathos. And what they did with Max was a total cheat. And HOW is anyone even ALLOWED to still live in Hawkins by the end of the season considering what happened? The military should be quarantining the **** out of that city.

Overall, yes it was good, but man does it drop the ball in that last episode. I still think Season 2 is by far the worst season so far. The show wasn't originally supposed to use the same cast from season to season, and you can VERY much see that with Season 2, where characters just wander around in circles making stupid decisions to pad out the plot while recycling most of the general concept from Season 1. It's boring, and aside from introducing Max very little of Season 2 had ripple effects on later seasons. Season 3 at least attempted to change the status quo, even if it did have to introduce the incredibly idiotic Secret Russian Base plot line, something Season 4 would have to spend a considerable amount of time resolving.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 17, 2025, 07:51:25 PM »

Good to know since I did have some interest in this game.  I've never played a Silent Hill game so the lack of connection to the rest of the series wouldn't bother me, but weapon degradation/breaking is one of my biggest gaming turnoffs.

What's weird is that Silent Hill keeps trying to make weapon degradation a "thing", despite players universally hating it, and yet the series keeps doing it. It was a thing in Silent Hill 4; Origins; Book of Memories; and Downpour, and now it's a thing in f as well. We didn't like it then, we still don't like it now, and yet I expect we'll continue to see it in future games...because. 

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 16, 2025, 10:17:35 PM »

Alright, let's talk about Silent Hill f. I've completed 2 of the game's 5 endings (the 1 ending you have to get on your first playthrough + the UFO ending), and...I find this game incredibly frustrating, and in the end I think it's a game I respect for its boldness more than I actually like. In fact, I kind of hate the game as an overall package.

Let's start with a familiar issue to anyone who played the Silent Hill 2 remake from last year: the combat is incredibly annoying and way too prevalent for how kind of bad it is, especially as the game nears its end. Even on the game's lowest difficulty, enemies hit like a truck and take way too many hits to down considering how fond the late game is of siccing 2-4 of them on you at once. The combat system, like those of the Souls games, is very much designed for one-on-one encounters with an emphasis on watching for enemy tells and countering. Unfortunately, enemies move extremely erratically and each type only has one move you can actually parry (and the parry indicator only appears if you are actively not doing anything), which to me made waiting for the parry an extremely unreliable strategy. Enjoy getting stun-locked and losing half your health when you misjudge an attack. I ended up just sticking to charging up a heavy swing on the axe and bashing enemies from a distance, but even that stopped being effective halfway through. There is a Witch Time-esque "perfect dodge" mechanic, but because enemies move so randomly I usually found myself activating it more by accident than by intention.

And all your weapons are breakable, so you're heavily encouraged to not even engage in combat until the game forces you to, as it pretty much does the entire second half of the game. And the game's 2nd half introduces an (I kid you not) honest to god Devil Trigger/Rage of the Gods mechanic that feels REALLY out of place in a horror game like this.

The game's atmosphere and exploration are truly exceptional (and the puzzles can be downright evil), but hampered by your character having an absolutely pathetically low inventory limit, which you can expand over the course of 2 playthroughs but still feels way too low even at max carrying capacity (especially since Med Kits take up an entire slot and you WANT those). What this leads to are many, MANY runs back to the nearest save shrine to sacrifice what you can spare to free up space and up your Faith currency.

By far the most frustrating thing about the game, though, is its story. Without getting into details, this game was written by an author that loves time loop stories, and accordingly you are only allowed to hear part of the story on a first playthrough. You HAVE to play the game AT LEAST 3 full times before the game will allow you to actually experience the full story with all the context left in. Other games like Nier have done this, but in Nier's case the gameplay didn't require nearly as much sheer commitment as this game, and even Nier only made you replay the 2nd half of the game multiple times (you literally skip the first half on NG+ runs).

To be frank, the way this story is setup and executed made me feel absolutely no emotional connection to the characters, especially with the story events set in this game's take on the traditional Silent Hill "Otherworld". As a first time player, you'll watch your character do some really bizarre, stupid **** in these Otherworld segments in a really cold, detached way. Yes, as someone who's beaten the game and knows what the game is doing, I get the message  they're delivering. I still think those segments are cold and incredibly boring, and I don't give a damn about the player character.

Many people have and will complain about the overall message delivered in the first playthrough as a prohibitive strike against the game. Between the story beats and the monster designs, this may be one of the least subtle games in the series. I personally find the message of the game incredibly offensive, but if I found the story engaging and the characters compelling, I would be willing to meet the game on its own terms. But with the way the game plays keep away with its plot for the sheer purpose of padding out the lifespan of the game via multiple playthroughs, I just can't recommend it. Game developers are asking a lot these days for players to even finish one playthrough of their game. Not just expecting but demanding 3-4 playthroughs of a long game like this is just pure arrogance, especially when the player has exactly zero agency in that first playthrough.

That said, I kind of have to respect the commitment to the bit, and that first ending ends in a really unexpected way.

I'll pick away at the game just so I can see the full story, but I'm finding this game extremely unsatisfying to experience and frustrating to play. I also have severe doubts that this game was originally conceived as a Silent Hill game. The links to past games are tenuous at best.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 12, 2025, 03:28:56 PM »

I quite liked Bug Fables, though it got a bit long in the tooth as it got near its end. Regarding the shoetage of party members, it was a crowd funded game working on a shoestring budget. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bug-fables-an-exploration-rpg-full-of-bugs#/

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 12, 2025, 01:23:26 PM »

Dana Gould is also probably his most annoying in the entire series in this entry.

I only know Dana Gould from writing on the Simpsons. I haven't actually seen his stand up or know his voice that well. Is it a case of bad writing, bad performance, or both?

It's the Bubsy problem, a typical issue with platformers of the day. He just never shuts up. As for the performance, I find it hit or miss in all the games.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 12, 2025, 10:21:19 AM »

Well, I completed Gex; Gex: Enter the Gecko; and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko from the Gex Trilogy release, and after some consideration I decided to count them as Shocktober games. For one, a huge chunk of all 3 games are taken up by the Horror Channel (or horror-adjacent 3's Egypt and ghost cowboy-filled Western Channels), probably at least 1/5 the content if not 1/3. For another, in Gex 2 and 3 Gex is wearing costumes themed to the channel, so it's in the Halloween spirit.

I never played Gex 1 before now, and it fucking sucks. It's an absolutely wretched experience, between the gotcha deaths; slippery controls; the long, labyrinthine levels (with no indication of where to go, naturally); and the hidden bonus stages you HAVE to perfectly complete in order to unlock the final world. This game is basically unplayble without save states and rewind, which this collection has. It is kinda neat that Gex can stick to walls and ceilings both in the foreground and back, but it's just not enough to make this game remotely enjoyable to play. Dana Gould is also probably his most annoying in the entire series in this entry. How? How in the world did this spawn a franchise?

Gex 2 was a game I played a ton of back on the N64, and it's still a pretty enjoyable game now. By far the game's biggest issues are a stubborn camera (typical of the era) and repetition. There are 6 themes spread out across 13 levels, each level having up to 5 remotes to find (3 of which will send you out of the level), and that's not counting the bonus levels. You just see way too much similar content, but what is here is still fun.

And no, this release is based on the PS version, so you don't get the N64-exclusive levels, though they are present in the collection in video form so they weren't forgotten.

I never played Gex 3 back in the day, and playing it now I'm torn on whether I like it more than Gex 2, as it does some things better and some worse. On the bright side, there are 11 levels, and they're each a unique theme. No theme gets re-used, outside of the bonus stages. The game also adopts a bit of the Banjo-Kazooie hub world structure, with levels accessed from themed areas instead of just generic TVs in a generic hub.

On the downside, the levels are surprisingly long for what they are, and while hidden remotes are gone this time the collectible remotes have gotten more annoying than they should be. You could just blast through levels in Gex 2 if you knew where you were going, but Gex 3 is a very plodding game by comparison. Instead of collecting just a set number of collectables (but not all of them) for a remote, there are 100 fly coins in each level and you have to find them all. This includes coins dropped by enemies, and there is no wiggle room. They're basically the notes from Banjo now, because everyone loved collecting those. -_-

If you're going for all the remotes, it just makes the game a slog. I ended up just giving up at one point after the particularly awful Mythology level (which is different than the N64 version that came later) and just skipping the final 4 levels, going straight to the final boss.

Overall, Gex 2 and 3 aren't the most amazing games, but I had a decent enough time with them.

Currently playing through Silent Hill f, which is...different. I'm not sure yet whether I like it.

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Movies & TV / Re: All Things Netflix! Coming Soon: The Netflix Experience, Live and In Person!??

« on: October 09, 2025, 08:36:46 PM »

Had a lot of family stuff going on lately so haven't had the energy to play much since finishing Xenoblade 2 earlier this week. Figured i might as well go on and continue with Stranger Things: Season 3.

...Really? THIS is the season of the show that's universally hated? THIS one, the one where **** actually happens; everyone actually contributes to the story; there are actual consequences to the things the characters do; and Eleven isn't just an instant win button for once? Really? 

Yeah, I thought this season was pretty alright. Granted, it had a bit of a slow start with teenage love bullshit and you have to accept some really stupid plot contrivances (i.e. everything about the Russians, *redacted* not getting dissolved into meat several times throughout the season when so many others were; etc.), but in general i thought it was well-paced. Refreshingly, while characters would act recklessly, they weren't generally weren't acting STUPIDLY like they were in Season 2. Yeah, the nostalgia key jangling was a bit excessive both at the start of the season and the end, but in general I thought that was a decent watch. I'm not sure why people hate this season so much.

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TalkBack / Re: Yooka-Replaylee (Switch 2) Review

« on: October 08, 2025, 10:32:50 PM »

I'm surprised to read that someone actually used that World Expansion system in the original game for its intended purpose. In my original playthrough of Yooka-Laylee, I always expanded the worlds before I went in for the first time, so for me they were ALWAYS way too big for what little there was to do in them. I was hoping this remake would have fixed that problem.

My biggest concern with this remake from everything I've read and what I saw in the demo was where the sense of progression was going to be when all of your moves (minus Flight) were unlocked from the beginning. Kinda removes the mystique of a puzzle if you know going into every single one of them that you already have the solution.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 03, 2025, 06:34:07 PM »

OK, change of plans: Yooka-Re-Playlee got delayed to December, and I won the local Silent Hill f GameStop preorder 2nd round lottery and got a steelbook. Also, my copy of the Gex Remaster Trilogy arrives tomorrow, though that most likely wouldn't qualify for this despite the obligatory Horror levels.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 02, 2025, 05:42:03 PM »

Probably not much from me this month. I was planning on playing Silent Hill f, but Gamestop utterly failed when it came to securing the Steelbooks they promised so I'm inclined to just wait till Black Friday to pick that game up. I am picking up Tormented Souls 2 later this month, but that comes out on the 23rd so it's possible I might not be done with that game by the end of the month. The other stuff I'm playing this month isn't horror-themed, like Yooka-Replaylee; Xenoblade 2; and TMNT: Splintered Fate (which I've been playing since the physical copy arrived a few days ago).

Might be a good time to play that port of Fear Effect that came out a month or so ago, or to do a proper replay of RE6.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Of America Executes Executive Shuffle: Bowser To Retire, New CEO, First Female Presiden

« on: September 26, 2025, 06:44:11 PM »

Broodwars has clearly just spent too much time watching rage bait YouTubers make mountains out of molehills..

Well, I wouldn't call YouTubers like ScottTheWoz or Arlo "Rage Bait"-ers, but yeah actually. It's been a slow news week and my office job gets very dull without something playing in my ear. It is helpful to know what people are complaining about, though. I don't GAF about Mario Kart, so I wouldn't have known about the outrage about Nintendo forcing players to play intermissions instead of actual races without it.

I originally intended to post this in the Switch 2 thread, but since we're here, why not:

I bought my Switch to play Switch 1 games with the performance they should have had at launch and to play the rare Switch 2 1st party exclusive, so from my perspective buying a Switch has been worth it so far. DK Bananza was extremely overhyped, but it was an enjoyable game, and I've made more progress in Xenoblade 2 in the last month than I did the last 8 years. The handheld experience is much better this time, and because I buy my games physically I have plenty of storage for all my old Switch 1 games. Apparently, Deadly Premonition 2 is actually in a playable state for the first time ever on Switch 2.

It is a console worth owning for my very particular use case, having a large backlog of games I either gave up on or never got around to, mainly due to very few games on the Switch even hitting 30 FPS, let alone 60. Fire Emblem 3 Houses was just infuriating at its sub-20 FPS. I don't intend to ever purchase anything other than the odd 1st party Switch 2 exclusive, so many of the Nintendo's decisions with the Switch 2 simply don't affect me. That said, there's a lot of small stuff about the Switch 2 that just bugs me, like my Switch 1 Pro Controller being unable to turn the Switch 2 on by itself and the home menu STILL not having themes of any sort (an issue I have with every console these days)

That said, I can't imagine ever using my Switch 2 as my dominant platform. The 1st party games are just too scarce and many just don't appeal to me, the pricing of absolutely everything is way out of hand, and as a physical game purchaser 3rd party games are a COMPLETE wash since they're almost all Key Cards. And Nintendo is burning a lot of goodwill with some of their decisions lately. For example, that DK Bananza DLC is blatantly cut content, and in no way earns that $20 price tag.

And nothing good has ever come of game mechanics being patented. I don't care how specific the use case is. We shouldn't have patents on game mechanics, as it just stifles innovation. Nintendo wasn't the first to invent a lot of what Pokemon does. They just did it better than anyone else at the time with extremely marketable execution, ending in 30 years of Game Freak just doing the bare minimum.

The Switch 2 has sold well out of the gate because there was ample stock, but we'll see how that momentum keeps up. I'm satisfied with my purchase for its very limited use case, but I absolutely understand why so many seem to be unhappy with it.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Of America Executes Executive Shuffle: Bowser To Retire, New CEO, First Female Presiden

« on: September 26, 2025, 07:45:11 AM »

What bad press and what was deserved about it?

My guess is Mario Kart World’s MSRP or merely Nintendo Switch 2 pricing in general.

Also, most people aren’t happy with Litigious Nintendo® though to be fair, the reporting on those stories is often thoroughly irresponsible and largely misleading. It’s easier to get mad about a sensationalized headline than it is to do even a minimal amount of reading.

The pricing, the Key Cards, the lack of 1st party announcements, the patent nonsense, locking VB games you can't even own behind expensive peripherals, bricking people's Switch 2's because they inadvertently bought Used Games that had been copied, etc.

And apparently a lot of Mario Kart fans are pissed that Nintendo patched World to remove their ability to guarantee 3 lap races in online matches. World in general got a rapid negative re-evaluation shortly after launch.

Some (especially YouTube channels and social media accounts) would say Nintendo has been rather "mask off" since the Switch 2 unveil, that the business side of Nintendo finally supplanted the creative one. In light of that, I can't say I'm going to miss the former EA executive leaving NoA.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Of America Executes Executive Shuffle: Bowser To Retire, New CEO, First Female Presiden

« on: September 25, 2025, 06:58:30 PM »

Considering all the bad press Nintendo has (deservedly) earned this year, I hope that this new President is much better at reigning in Corporate's worst impulses. Probably not, but one can hope.

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Movies & TV / Re: All Things Netflix! Coming Soon: The Netflix Experience, Live and In Person!??

« on: September 23, 2025, 09:55:15 PM »

So...Stranger Things: Season 2...well that was excruciating, and somehow Season 3 is supposed to be worse than this boring slog where nothing happened for long spans of time and all the characters are morons? And oh look...everyone has to save Will again, and Eleven continues to be an overpowered, walking plot device. Yawn.

Yeah, definitely taking a break before watching any more of this show. I've heard Season 4 is a return to form, but I'd have to get through Season 3 and I'm just done with this show for a while.