Messages

251

TalkBack / Re: 3DS System Update 6.0 Brings New Games to StreetPass Mii Plaza in Europe and Japan

« on: June 18, 2013, 04:18:10 PM »

I get a good number of street passes every day so if they sort out the bugs and the games are good I'll be happy.

252

TalkBack / Re: Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U Revealed, Mega Man Playable

« on: June 11, 2013, 01:18:45 PM »

Megaman was definitely overdue for Smash Bros inclusion.

253

TalkBack / Re: Eyes Down Front, Mister

« on: June 08, 2013, 06:59:04 AM »

I think that's a big vulnerability of the xbone, it seems designed around the concept of one person per TV. One person watching sports and checking their fantasy league. One person chatting with people on the internet.

254

TalkBack / Re: First Trailer for Sonic Lost World Released

« on: May 28, 2013, 03:14:15 PM »

See? Enemies.


As far as return to form, I thought it's generally agreed upon that the last two Sonic games were already this return?

255

TalkBack / Re: Monster Hunter 4 and Ace Attorney 5 Nintendo Direct Broadcasting May 31 in Japan

« on: May 28, 2013, 01:45:39 PM »

Felynes! Screw those little bastards!

256

TalkBack / Re: Six New Characters to Appear in Sonic Lost World

« on: May 25, 2013, 04:54:56 PM »

Those look pretty hostile.

257

TalkBack / Re: Two Project X Zone Demos Coming for European 3DS Owners

« on: May 25, 2013, 09:17:33 AM »

The eShop lists it as 35€ which is pretty cheap for a 3DS game.

258

TalkBack / Re: 3D Sonic the Hedgehog Review

« on: May 25, 2013, 09:16:16 AM »

Honestly I never cared about speed in Sonic, it was a silly gimmick like setpieces in CoD. Only speedrunners had any chance of controlling the game when it was at highspeed because you couldn't react, you had to know beforehand what the level was like.

259

Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 87: Time and Space

« on: May 25, 2013, 09:13:26 AM »

Time and Space and Space beyond Space where will it end

260

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Downloads - May 23, 2013

« on: May 23, 2013, 01:08:49 PM »

In Europe we don't get Dream Land 3 but we do get a 30% rebate for owning the NES Kirby (which was 30 cents).

261

General Gaming / Re: Why don't games use photo-digitized textures?

« on: May 21, 2013, 05:08:26 PM »

Photos aren't really good source material for games. You can use them as a bit of detailing but with all the shaders and such games need different information than that contained in a photograph: The diffuse texture should be free of directional light (because there's dynamic lighting in the game), normalmaps must contain the structure of the material, ...
Even back when photos were used more often they still required significant cleanup, e.g. a wall won't be uniformly lit in real life but when you want to tile that texture it can't have notable edges.

That said, photos are often mixed into textures to add a bit more realism than what you can paint by hand. You can never just plop a photo on an object and have it look good though.

BTW, remember the "proprietary face scanning technology" EA had during the Gamecube era? That was mostly just feeding very noisy and practically useless data to their lead artist and having him make everything by hand anyway.

262

Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 338: Turning Things Around

« on: May 21, 2013, 11:27:06 AM »

I don't get why there's any question whether the Wii U is a hardcore system. What else should it be? Look at the games, Nintendo Land is the only thing that could arguably be aimed at casuals and even that is decidedly less aimed at those than Wii Sports.

As for the guy who got the Wii U as his first system in years and is happy with it, don't forget that the Wii U has all those late ports. They're of some truly great games, we're just ignoring them because the rest of us already played them much earlier and/or cheaper. For someone who's been out of the market for a long time they're all new games.

263

TalkBack / Re: Lego City: Undercover Review

« on: May 17, 2013, 03:15:34 PM »

A big electronics retailer here has a 3-for-2 sale, I tried to get LC:U as one of my three games but it was freaking sold out! Instead I picked up Soul Sacrifice...

264

TalkBack / Re: Super Metroid Live on Wii U eShop

« on: May 15, 2013, 04:47:06 PM »

My cart is kinda busted (got it from a flea market, the battery save is kinda janky) so this is a good investment.

265

Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 337: Eat My Maturity!

« on: May 13, 2013, 11:23:41 AM »

Supposedly there's a piece on Polygon about how that Dyack thing is shady but even with the best intents I'm worried about legality:
1. SK is on the verge of bankruptcy (or already bankrupt?), just selling off tons of assets to a shell company (probably for a low price) won't fly with the courts. Look at how THQ was torn apart just because selling them whole would bring in a few millions less.
2. Are these assets not affected by the destruction order that resulted from the Epic countersuit?


I wanted to say something about the game you talked about in the outro but I can't even remember what it was...

266

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Downloads - May 9, 2013

« on: May 10, 2013, 12:37:25 AM »

If you want to go searching, the phone game is called Game Dev Story and is made by Kairosoft, experts at developing back-patting games.

267

TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Downloads - May 9, 2013

« on: May 09, 2013, 12:58:01 PM »

Yet more Minis puzzles... Bleh, screw that franchise. Since it's conflated with MvDK it pretty much prevents DK'94 style games as well.

268

Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 336: We Didn't Take the Rocks

« on: May 06, 2013, 01:52:33 PM »

I figured from listening that you were not talking about complete game finishes but just runs.

269

Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 336: We Didn't Take the Rocks

« on: May 06, 2013, 10:20:01 AM »

Roguelikes with more persistence?

ZHP (PSP, available for the Vita on PSN) is a lot like that, while you do get reset to level 1 after each run (and lose almost all your gear on death) it does keep a lesser persistent level, it keeps the NPCs and such, it has some persistent upgrades you can put on your character, etc. Also it's made by Nippon Ichi so there's a lot of humor there.

There's also The Binding of Isaac, while it's not directly persistent it has a TON of unlocks that do mean that the game evolves as you play it more. The actual gameplay seems more based on the original Legend of Zelda and of course there are tons of references to other games.

270

Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 334: Stupor Guide

« on: April 22, 2013, 11:47:46 AM »

Oh yeah, I remember playing lots and lots of Donald Duck in ABC on my C64. Not only did the train control job give you the most money per delivery, it was also easier on higher difficulties because the train moved faster and the only penalty for mis-directing the train was that it would have to go the whole way around again which of course is less of a penalty when it's faster. One edutainment bit of it was that you had to pick the coins and notes you wanted to pay with and then correctly select the change.

271

TalkBack / Re: EarthBound Confirmed for North American/European Release 

« on: April 17, 2013, 11:27:57 AM »

It will. A good part of the demand for old games is people who want a legal copy. If they can get a cheap, legal copy they drop out of the cart market and thus demand drops.

272

TalkBack / Re: Release Date for Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move Appears in eShop

« on: April 16, 2013, 04:02:13 PM »

MvDK wasn't as good as DK but it's better than this stuff. Also that screenshot looks like Pipe Dream and I really don't need more of those games.

273

TalkBack / Re: Rumor: Level-5 Localizing Guild02?

« on: April 16, 2013, 01:56:19 PM »

Also AFAIK they got trademarks for those game names in the west.

274

Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 80: Excitebots the **** Out of It

« on: April 09, 2013, 11:00:31 AM »

I found that Bioshock went pretty heavy handed with the Nazi allusions very quickly. They even have a big sign saying "Strength through Leisure" on Battleship Bay, a direct riff on the Nazi project "Kraft durch Freude" (Strength through happiness) that included things like Volkswagen. Because of that I deliberately tried to land as many executions as possible shortly after getting the melee weapon.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 332: Cartooning

« on: April 08, 2013, 11:35:41 AM »

One major thing about PN03 is that the game is practically broken in easy mode (you can just kill everything before it becomes a threat, even bosses can be killed just by spamming supers) and normal mode starts you off with a badly balanced first level. I think the "pop and shoot" complaint applies doubly to Vanquish though since it's a cover shooter and sticking to cover is the safest option.