Messages

76

I'M BACK / Re: If Obi-Wan Kenobi is so great...

« on: June 01, 2022, 12:24:08 AM »

Excellent. I look forward to when it comes out alongside other great Star Wars shows like The Book of Ochi of Bestoon and the upcoming Max Rebo series.

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I'M BACK / If Obi-Wan Kenobi is so great...

« on: May 31, 2022, 09:32:17 PM »

Why isn't there an Obi-Two Kenobi?

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: What's Next For The N64 Expansion Pack?

« on: May 31, 2022, 02:54:21 AM »

I would kill for Ogre Battle on Switch.

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I'M BACK / Re: Welcome to Wii U!

« on: May 31, 2022, 02:50:50 AM »

*doodles inappropriate symbols on everyone's faces*

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NWR Mafia Games / Re: Mafia 89: RECVMake Neighbor Day 2

« on: April 26, 2022, 10:17:30 PM »

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Which character would you like to see in a new Mario Kart?

« on: April 21, 2022, 02:31:15 PM »

Dr. Goomba Tower.

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General Gaming / Re: 2nd Annual NWR Four on Four

« on: April 20, 2022, 08:51:23 PM »

It is, yeah. Groudon was mean.

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General Gaming / Re: 2nd Annual NWR Four on Four

« on: April 20, 2022, 05:19:18 PM »

I finished Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 3: Night of the Quinkin on PC.
I also have the last K.K. slider tune in Animal Crossing New Horizons on Switch so I'm going to mark that game finished for the purposes of this event to pad my numbers.

I'm currently working through a rom hack of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 called Explorers of the Skies which is something of a difficulty/QoL hack for the second set of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. It's been really enjoyable so far.

And I guess I'll work on Wind Waker on Wii U a bit for the Zelda game club although I don't expect to finish it.

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TalkBack / Re: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Switch) Review

« on: April 20, 2022, 05:13:46 PM »

Krome has generally been really good about preserving their old assets for games they worked on during that era.

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

« on: April 13, 2022, 03:59:44 AM »

I hit 100% on Ty 3: Night of the Quinkin on PC. It's an interesting, charming, and deeply flawed game and I had fun revisiting it for the first time in more than 15 years. Many of the game's issues come from it being rushed with only half of the develpment time the previous two games had but there are also some issues that come from just questionable design decisions that bog down the whole thing.

- The level design for the game's remarkably few traditional on foot missions is pretty solid. Although it is let down by the melee mechanic (we'll get to that) the more linear design works well for Ty. I haven't played the second game to completion in a while so I don't want to make any comparisons there but compared to the first game's more open design this game feels much more focused while still leaving plenty of room for collectables to be hidden.

- The melee mechanic is annoying and unnecessary but by the time it starts to become a problem because you start facing more advanced enemies in the on foot levels you can use the new boomerang customization mechanic to make yourself a pair of exploding boomerangs and start Michael Bay-ing everything instead. In what is a rather baffling move for a freaking Ty the Tasmanian Tiger game, most of the enemies are immune to having boomerangs thrown at them in order to incentivise the melee combat system. The only way past this that I am aware of is to make those boomerangs explode so if you decide to play this game for yourself, exploding boomerangs are absolutely your friends.

 For anyone who has played a game called "The Hex", I'm pretty sure the tacked on melee combat that gets added to the second Super Weasel Kid segment is a shot at this game specifically. For anyone who hasn't played The Hex you should really stop what you're doing and play that game instead.

- The boomerang customization mechanic is an interesting addition but because they tried to make combat an actual thing in this game and failed miserably you are kind of incentivized to just use it to create boomerangs that can quickly cut through enemies. In the previous games exploding boomerangs and the megarangs which would bounce between enemies were extremely overpowered. The boomerang customization mechanic allows you to create a boomerang that bounces between enemies and creates explosions upon contact which is a really good way to negate the game's shitty melee combat. There's even a turret section later in the game you can just completely bypass this way.

It is a completely different beast if you go for 100% though. At that point you are incentivized to build different types of boomerangs for different objectives. I had one boomerang that I built to be able to locate hidden objects for example while another one was built so I could use it to bring certain collectables to me, which is mandatory for a few of the game's collectables.

- The Crabmersible which is used in what is essentially this game's overworld is borderline uncontrollable with how slippery it is and takes a bit of getting used to but it is way more fun than it should be. You basically run around on a crab mech launching homing missiles at everything in your path. It is just stupid, mindless fun and even trying to force it to do basic platforming challenges for collectables when this thing isn't particularly well suited for platforming is fun in its own way, which I get the feeling was the intention.

- I would find the mech or "bunyip" missions much more favorable if they didn't have you go through the same levels twice, once with each mech, and usually with similar objectives. The levels themselves are also extremely similar to eachother thematically since one of the Mechs, the Thermal Extreme bunyip, has the ability to swim through lava so most of the mech stages has a bunch of lava to swim through and they are also all snow areas because I guess whoever designed these stages really liked that contrast. It results in a bunch of similar looking stages and the Shadow Bunyip and Thermal Extreme Bunyip don't feel distinct enough from eachother for it to feel like you are really playing the same stages in different ways. By the end of the game their abilities are similar enough that the only differences really are that the Shadow Bunyip has the ability to activate certain moving platforms with its grenades and is generally more satisfying to use in combat while the Thermal Extreme Bunyip has the aforementioned ability to swim through lava and a grappling hook.

- The Go Kart stages are kind of hit and miss and in what appears to be an attempt to pad the game out are now mandatory for story completion instead of just being a thing for 100%. Some of them have interesting objectives like having you pick up some collectables during the race before finishing in first but the demolition derby missions feel extremely luck based, especially since some of the items are difficult to use and this game's red shell equivalent is kind of inconsistent when you use it.

- The Gunyip Stages are generally more enjoyable than the helicopter and submarine stages from Ty 2 but that is not a particularly high bar and they are easily the weakest part of the game. They are however mercifully infrequent. There is a dogfighting minigame that is kind of fun, although it is quite shallow.

- The story is weird. When I was young I appreciated how dark and edgy it was but coming back to it as an adult what I've noticed is that the game kind of just stops taking itself seriously once you get out of the tutorial. It feels like some higher up at Krome decided they wanted the series to go in a grimdark direction but everyone else in the team realized it was an awful idea and did what they could to retain the series's more humorous and goofy side. While you lose the series's vibrant and colorful Australian landscapes in favor of a post apocalyptic and weirdly alien hellscape you still get the series's generally fun and charming writing.

Unlike other 3d platformers that went in a similar direction around this time, Ty feels self aware enough to be essentially in on the joke and while this anachronistic element can be jarring it definitely feels like the lesser of two evils compared to actually going serious like a certain hedgehog game with guns and mild swearing that came out a month after this one originally did.

There are people who criticise the fact that there's a new character who exists because they needed someone who wouldn't recognize Ty for a story segment and is completely forgotten about afterwards but the fact that this character introduced the line "Zombie Frills, meet Mr. Boomerang!" into my life more than makes up for it. The game's dialogue is camp and stupid in the best way and there are some absolute banger moments that you'll have to see for yourself.

The story does feel extremely rushed towards the end though. It feels like there's a cutscene that just didn't make it into the final game that would have revealed that at some point the series's usual villain Boss Cass was possessed by the Quinkin so there's a jarring moment right before the final boss fight where Ty walks up to the suddenly posessed Boss Cass completely unphased by this new development. Since Boss Cass's voice actor passed away a few years ago idk if this is something that they could fix whenever this game inevitably gets brought to the Switch with new enhancements unless they recast him and that would be extremely unfortunate in and of itself because Boss Cass has some of the best voice work in the series.

But honestly the story in Ty games is only worth paying attention to because of the fun dialogue and corny Australian accents anyways and Ty 3 has both in spades.

- The Steam version added a hardcore mode where if you die the game erases your save data which I'm not touching with an eleven foot pole. The Steam version has achievements for completing and 100%-ing the game in hardcore mode which is kind of shitty because this game really was not remotely designed around that. It is really easy to die during the gunyip and crabmersible segments so I'm going to recommend you not do hardcore mode.

Although I haven't finished the second game in a while I would probably recommend it over this one just because of how much of a stronger overall package Ty 2 is but if you liked that game and what I've said interests you than go for it.

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I'M BACK / E3 2022 predictions thread.

« on: March 31, 2022, 10:26:43 PM »

I figured now is as good a time as any to open the door for some predictions so what does everyone have for us this year? I'm thinking this year Phil Spencer will burst onto the stage in a space suit.

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Movies & TV / Re: Khushrenada's Annual Oscar Thread. 2022 Edition.

« on: March 28, 2022, 01:01:23 AM »

Well I'd say this year's Oscars certainly... Slapped.

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TalkBack / Re: Switch System Software 14.0 Now Available: Adds Folders

« on: March 21, 2022, 08:20:01 PM »

FUCKING FINALLY!!! WOOO!

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General Gaming / Re: I for one welcome the glorious return of overconfident E3 2006 Sony.

« on: March 20, 2022, 12:29:39 AM »

So Grand Turismo 7 pulled an EA/Activision and patched in microtransactions after launch.

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General Chat / Re: Windows 11/10 best operating system - The Windows Thread

« on: March 19, 2022, 05:00:37 PM »

And now that next gen has come around and I have the money I'm off to an actual laptop. It cannot be overstated how nice it is to have a laptop that can match that responsive feeling you can get from a Smartphone.

I'm on a GTX 3060 with an RTX 5800 and 16 gigs of RAM on a beautiful 16:10 screen.



Also Windows 11 is nice.

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Movies & TV / Re: "No way. People are blind." - The Miraculous Ladybug thread.

« on: March 17, 2022, 03:10:26 PM »

I just started the fourth season and things are really starting to pick up for this show. It feels they're really starting to take some risks after playing it fairly safe for the first 3 seasons and the show is all the better for it. 3 seasons of building up a cast of side characters has really paid off.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Wii U External USB Storage Devices

« on: March 16, 2022, 08:03:59 PM »

The Wii U can run an SSD with a single USB port but if you already have an external drive set up there isn't much reason to swap over unless that drive starts to fail.

Considering the Wii U doesn't have a large enough library to require more than 256gb of storage it should be pretty easy to find one for relatively cheap but the Wii U cannot take advantage of the higher speeds. This is very much a case where the advantage is only needing one USB port.

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NWR Mafia Games / Re: Mafia LXXXIX: Resident Evil Neighborizer Remake Sign up thread

« on: March 16, 2022, 04:39:31 PM »

The dead channel discord has been set up so that players can opt in to receive notifications via discord when a day thread is posted on the forums. You just have to follow the directions on the #roles-and-pronouns channel and you'll be good.

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NWR Mafia Games / Re: Mafia LXXXIX: Resident Evil Neighborizer Remake Sign up thread

« on: March 16, 2022, 12:43:00 AM »

I'm out unfortunately. work is insanely busy and I just got off of a pretty toxic mafia experience on Wah's server where my so called mafia partner decided to trash talk me in the dead chat when he was killed while leaving me with basically none of the information on what he was doing that I needed to pick up the win from there when I was very clear throughout the game that I was incredibly busy with irl **** so I'm really not in the mood to pick up another game.

I'll help with the dead channel though.

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General Gaming / Re: PC gaming sure is gaining Steam these days. (The PC gaming thread)

« on: March 14, 2022, 03:44:32 PM »

There. I have finally joined the modern computer bandwagon. The most striking thing about this laptop is how many things it just does on its own like automatically connecting to Bluetooth devices that I had to do weird workarounds with to get going on the old one.

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I'M BACK / Re: Happy MAR10 Day

« on: March 12, 2022, 02:11:31 PM »

Didn't you hear? Mario is dead. This is no doubt his greedy estate trying to cash in again.

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General Gaming / Re: NWR Speedrunners

« on: March 11, 2022, 01:54:18 AM »

I'm quite fond of Keizaron's streams, although he isn't doing as many speedruns these days outside of Ender Lillies and stuff for a show he does on the GDQ channel called The First Step.

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TalkBack / Re: F-Zero X Added To N64 Library On Friday

« on: March 08, 2022, 08:21:29 PM »

FINALLY! F-ZERO ON SWITCH IN HD WITH ONLINE PLAY!

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TalkBack / Re: Next Main Pokemon Games Scarlet / Violet Launching

« on: March 01, 2022, 09:05:03 PM »

In any case, as someone who hadn't really been into Pokemon since Gen 1 (though I spent a fair amount of time with Diamond and Pearl as well), Arceus looked potentially interesting. But it seems that asking Nintendo/Game Freak to even wait a month before announcing its replacement was too much to ask.

Game Freak doesn't have any real control over that though. Pokemon just hasn't been a games franchise in a very long time. The series is the embodiment of the whole Space Balls merchandising clip. The mainline games exist to push and tie into other merchandising opportunities for the series by being the primary mechanism from which new Pokemon are introduced. The series has become a mechanism to push new content. Every 3 or so years now a new generation of pokemon is announced so they can sell new merchandise and kind of soft relaunch the series for a new generation of kids.

As of 2019, which is the last time we've gotten official numbers for revealed publicly, the games only account for about 27 billion dollars worth of the revenue that the series has produced, and this includes the countless spin offs we have gotten over the years.

Merchandise accounts for about 83 billion dollars worth of revenue for the series. It is absolutely the main focus for the series and the games have absolutely suffered for that but considering that Pokémon is the number 1 highest grossing media franchise it's kind of difficult to argue with their approach when it's making them so much money in such a consistent basis.

Because that's the core of the issue here. We aren't talking about a video game franchise. We are talking about a multimedia juggernaut that makes stupid amounts of money.

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General Gaming / Re: PC gaming sure is gaining Steam these days. (The PC gaming thread)

« on: March 01, 2022, 07:53:47 PM »

I tried to get a full on laptop but the one I got had a faulty keyboard so I had to send it back.