Messages

51

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: May 19, 2019, 08:03:30 PM »

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch):

So I've had this for four months, but only really started it this week. I was apprehensive, because Zelda games are my manna, and I was afraid the the open-world scourge had eaten its soul.

I was wrong, it's incredible. I never read much about it and only saw gameplay in trailers, but I was worried I would hate the weapon system and lack of form. But the game is completely enchanting in a way that far surpassed my diminished expectations. It somehow manages to be brush shoulders with overplayed open-world design trends, while completely reinvigorating this approach in a way that joyously communes with the very first game in the series (which is also one of the very first games I ever played). The total interrelation between landscape, control, tools, and progression is absolutely captivating, and I'm frequently delighted by the audio-visual design. The world is gorgeously realized, the characters are fantastically modeled and animated, and the minimalist piano soundtrack is perfect. 

I'm only about 12 hours in, so maybe I'll become jaded, but as of now this game is breathing into my soul. Love the shrines, love finding Koroks, love organically collecting information and environmental awareness. And I just unlocked the camera, which is yet another layer of interactivity and observational reward.

I don't mind the weapon system at all, and find it adds well-tuned risk and pressure to the massively variable path you can take through the game. It's also well balanced with the permanent nature of the stamina, health, rune, and armor upgrades.

Only quibble so far is that it really feels like there should be a dedicated recipe book/progression system, which I gather is not in the cards. But even then, the cooking system is generally freeform and intuitive enough.

I could go on and on, but I'll save energy for the game itself.

52

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

« on: May 10, 2019, 08:26:20 AM »

Sekiro: Coda

So I just finished the "evil" fork and beat the only remaining boss. I think the award for toughest fight now goes to Emma/Old Man Isshin. Took me a solid 2.5 hours, over three sessions, because it's extremely tiring. Emma is much harder than the throw-away Genchiro phase of the other final boss fight. You can wipe her out in 30 seconds if you get lucky and hit every deflect perfectly, but she can also rip you apart in a flash. Probably two-thirds of my attempts she either killed me, or I let her kill me because I had already used up too many gourds. Isshin's first phase is pretty brutal, as his deflect counter is almost instant, and he has several perilous attacks I did not know what to do with other than dodge and flail. And depending on which attacks he selects you can have pretty limited opportunities to get hits in. His second phase is the easiest part of the fight, as the fire attacks are trivialized by the umbrella and let you take big chunks off his vitality with the follow-up attack. I did have to resort to gobbling a few disposable health items, but I was close to burning out and could feel my hands shutting down. Still, an excellent fight and a fitting culmination of two playthroughs.

Although I wasn't quite as jazzed with my second run. With the exploration gone and the boss speedbumps removed, you realize how small the game truly is. That's not a major complaint, as I rarely replay games and don't really think it should affect how they're designed, but it nonetheless took a little bit of shine off the experience. This was not helped by the fact that the bosses on New Game seem to scale damage output and defense, so it didn't feel much different than the first run other than that I was much better at the game and could one-shot most of them. Still, I wanted to really egregiously tear through the game as a bonus, and that wasn't the case (outside of mooks, which can still chomp your health). I feel like they should have let you keep collecting beads and get a screen-wide bar going. Was very unhappy to get hung-up on the Guardian Ape for 30 minutes because he's still annoying and did the same massive damage.

53

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

« on: May 06, 2019, 09:05:59 PM »

I think it's a really excellent game, but my opinion of it has dimmed slightly after playing Celeste, which does this style even better.

[Team America vomit.gif]

Sekiro: Shadows Always Ring Twice (PC)

Welp, got sent home from work early today due to a server crash, and thought I'd take an opening crack at the final boss with the spare hour. And lo and behold I beat the mofo in about 45 minutes. The first phase of the true dude is really intimidating, but I was able to figure out how to deal with the perilous attacks and other patterns in about a half hour, and then it took me about ten minutes to get his much easier second phase down (mikiris!) and then I beat the third phase the first time I got to it, although largely because I managed to do a lightning reflect for the first time (outside of Dunce Dragon boss). Only spirit emblems I used were on the umbrella to block the wind attacks and do the follow up slash. And that's it! I beat all other available bosses. Now I feel kind of empty and nonplussed, especially after expecting a potentially non-viable climb over the last battle.

Time estimates for major bosses:

-Guardian Ape: 1.5 hour
-Corrupted Monk: 1 hour
-Real Monk: .5 hour
-Genchiro: 1 hour
-First Owl: 2 hours
-Second Owl: .5 hours
-Hate Demon: 1.5 hours
-Bridge Knight: 2 hours

The rest were 15-30 minutes, but mostly on the shorter side. Hard to say what the hardest boss truly was. The Bridge Knight is not actually difficult, but I hadn't really learned the combat at that point. The first owl is legit difficult, but I also stubbornly refused to play defensively for the first hour and a half, but once I did I progressed rapidly, and after I actually killed him I was like "Oh, that wasn't so bad." And the "harder" version I found pretty easy once you figure out the dodge timing on the firecrackers and that you can mikiri his zoom charge. Hate Demon was a legitimate pain in the ass, but it took me like 45 minutes to figure out that the charge attack gets neutralized by any jump, no matter how sloppy. In general, I was bad at jump counters, so I had to actually train myself to respond to a perilous signal with jumping instead of just dodge spamming or tanking the damage. Though the Guardian Ape took me on the longer side, it was again largely because I refused to play defensively, and it's annoyingly time consuming to beat the first phase cautiously. Also, his rolling grab might be the single shittiest boss attack in the game. I also hadn't used the umbrella to that point, and once I figured out you could block the scream in the second phase, that was the ball game. (And the ape spouses were a joke.)

Least favorite thing: The ghost bosses, who don't even give you beads. It was easy cleaning them up near the end, but it really irks me that you basically have to use consumable items to have it not be insanely obnoxious. There at least should have been an unlockable divine confetti type renewable power-up, even if it was weaker than the consumable version. Terror is all around a garbage mechanic, but fortunately it only comes up a handful of times. (Still nowhere near as lame as that Dark Souls status effect that can permanently cut your health bar in half!) Enfeeblement, though a real ball-buster, is also kind of funny and works for that area of the game.

Only other significant issue: The spirit emblem system is fairly lame. This really should have been a rest-renew thing like the gourds. Having to maintain a stock adds nothing to the game and only discourages you from playing around with the arm tools and combat arts. In the last quarter or so of my run, when I started actually using emblems more to speed stuff up, I was shocked at how quickly my ~700 cache depleted. If I actually had to grind to buy more before the end, I would have been displeased.

Potential issue: Most of the combat arts (and many of the prosthetics) seem kinda useless. They take so long to wind up that it really didn't seem worth trying to figure out situational uses for them instead of just doing the meat and potatoes approach to fights, especially as I got better at the fundamentals. I'm sure there are tons of Youtube videos of people "styling" on bosses using this, that, or the other thing, but I didn't think he game really encouraged that. Which is fine, I guess, but I felt like I had unlocked all the skills I had any interest in by the time I was halfway through the game.   

Overall, great game. Hard but doable, actually fun to play*, manageable level of obtuseness for progression and side quests*, looks good and runs well*. I think I might do a new game run for the hell of it (victory lap) and to tackle the other, shorter final boss path.

*Unlike Dark Souls

54

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: April 22, 2019, 09:18:01 PM »

I, too, am playing Sekiro (PC).

I dragged myself through Dark Souls back in the day, and while there's obviously something compelling in there, I mostly found it be a joyless slog and was relieved when it was over. I hadn't intended to play another one of these From games, but it sounded like Sekiro stripped out a lot of the obtuse bullshit and sadistic punishment, and I'm glad I relented.

I like this game much more than Dark Souls. Just on a moment to moment basis it feels much better to play, and the grappling hook makes it fun and easy to get around the game world and avoid and escape fights as you please (often including bosses). And boy is it a relief not to have to worry about fiddly loot and builds and potentially screwing yourself over.

As for the difficulty, I initially found it overwhelming, and got destroyed by the early ogre miniboss. I put it down for a few weeks, and when I came back I dusted that goober on my second try. After that I was pretty much gliding through the game, though I tended to bolt from boss encounters and keep digging through to new areas. I finally hit a wall, though, at the bridge knight, because I hadn't actually learned the parry system and was relying on juking and jumping around, which did not work at all here. After like two hours at this chokepoint (and turning the settings down to make it snappier), I finally had a handle on the core mechanics, and realized this boss was not hard at all.

After that, I returned to the flashback estate, and killed the drunk guy on my first try. Shortly after was the apparently infamous butterfly woman, who I beat in 15 minutes. After more hours of dinking around and finding most of the health gourds, I went back to the castle and hit Genchiro, the biggest difficulty jump so far. This gave me some trouble, but after an hour I became numb to the intimidation of his final phase, and just rode the motherfucker and busted him in like 40 seconds.

I'm sure some true horrors await further in the game, but I'm feeling pretty chuffed about how I'm riding the curve. I have not hit a point as in Dark Souls with the gargoyles or Smough and Orstein where I gave myself another couple tries before I just gave up on the game entirely because it was making me miserable.

55

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: April 03, 2019, 08:35:36 PM »

Ha, I meant for the time, after five go-rounds. But they pivoted to making Shantae-style games for the next two, which I don't think quite works.

And then Ecclesia did take-backies with that "end game".

56

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: April 02, 2019, 08:10:58 PM »

Hmm... not sure what to say about Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS).

It's a great game from a technical standpoint, but I don't really like the small, distinct areas that you explore and jump between. This structure reminds my of Portrait of Ruin in some ways, and wasn't something I enjoyed in that game either.

Difficulty seems relative high, which I'm ok most of the time. But sometimes I hitting a tough spot and wonder if my approach to the game is wrong. Am I supposed to go out and grind instead of consistently pushing forward? Did I miss one (or more) glyphs that I'm supposed to have for this point of the game? Right now there is a boss that I'm dying at... checking online said he was "easy" but the recommended strategies were all things that aren't even possible for my character, so maybe I'm not supposed to be in this area yet? It's not really clear...

I like the game and enjoy playing, but so far it's not my favorite Castlevania.

Yeah, I've said before, it was time to retire the SOTN clone approach, but the Portrait of Ruin style is weirdly unsatisfying. I don't get the raves for Ecclesia, particularly. A good chunk of the game is mirrored content.

57

General Gaming / Re: Google Stadia

« on: March 25, 2019, 07:04:58 PM »

People who say it's not gonna work because of poor infrastructure and data caps are hilarious.

How many hours did you spend today watching Netflix, Youtube and/or Twitch? Maybe not many if you have data restrictions but there are people who can easily hit 10 hours of streaming daily. Your infrastructure may be poor but both Netflix and Twitch prove that there are millions and millions and millions of people who are not encumbered by it at all. More importantly -- paying people.

Netflix, Youtube, etc. are not only passive media, but media that's easily compressible. They use far less data than something like streaming gaming and can allow for more latency. The estimates right now is that there would be 20 GB used per hour for 1 person to use Stradia.  I guarantee you that the strain on the infrastructure and resulting cost increase from the ISPs would be exponential if Stradia achieved even a serviceable user base.

That sounds about right. I put about 50 hours (shudder) into AC: Odyssey over two months, and both times got warned I was close to the 1 TB data cap.

58

General Gaming / Re: Google Stadia

« on: March 23, 2019, 08:44:55 PM »

So based on my Project Stream beta, I think the data caps are going to be a real issue.

I had no idea I even had one until the two times I got this weird janky pop-up from my ISP warning me about it. I was freaked out that I had a virus at first, but it turns out the Stadia tech gobbles data. I don't really understand why, as I had assumed it was basically equivalent to an HD movie stream. I don't understand how button inputs can push the bandwidth use so high.

59

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: March 14, 2019, 09:56:00 PM »

Huh. I mean, in truth I had no idea about any of that story stuff, it just really felt like it did not need another layer of cryptic **** to "complete" on top of the palace thing. As another example, I played Environmental Station Alpha last year, and was liking it a good bit, but there was so much try-hard stuff layered on to it after release that I couldn't really tell what beating the game even meant and wasn't going to chase down the super-silly stuff that got put in for people with uh, certain cognitive perspectives.


Unrelatedly:

Super Mario Odyssey (Switch):

This was the game that I was most excited about getting a Switch for. I'm a Mario die hard, and hold 3D World in very high regard, as well as the Galaxy games, and also think Sunshine is the best of its generation despite its flaws.

With Odyssey, it's a little weird. I feel like I'm being torn three ways at all times because I just want to feverishly dig out the challenges. This vaporizes time for me in a way that a game hasn't for years. I feel freed from the labor that so many AAA western games entail at this point.

But at the same time, I have some inchoate reservations about it. The levels are surprisingly small so far, and while the density is very satisfying in some ways, it ifeels like a more free-form spin on Mario 64 with less platforming skill involved. And I'm not sure if I'm totally sold on that as an approach. I've got like 1/8th of the moons, however, so I imagine my reception will evolve for better or worse.

My impression so far, though, is that, unlike any 3D Mario game, I think they might have missed the fundamental mark. The cap possession stuff is a clever evolution of power-up gameplay, but the deployment is very segmented, and seems to cry out for a more genuinely open design philosophy. I'm thinking of a better version of Banjo Kazooie, when in reality it seems more like a somewhat ungainly mish-mash of Mario 64, Galaxy, and 3D World. I suppose I was expecting a new paradigm, and I'm not feeling it so far.

60

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Switch Discussion Thread (Year 2: Joy-Con Boogaloo)

« on: March 14, 2019, 09:30:20 PM »

So two things that are starting to bug the **** out of me, but are in truth very minor:

-Why the hell can't I turn this console off. I want to just power off from the damn UI. You can instantly jump back to the home screen, but you can only put it into sleep mode. I rarely want the console asleep instead of just being off. Maybe there's not that big of difference or something, but I really don't like leaving it running, and feel like I shouldn't have to go over to the stand and hold the button for 30 seconds to get the option to turn it off. Am I just missing something?

-While the Gamecube controller integration is great, it's very annoying that I can't get back to the Home menu from Smash Brothers (or Odyssey). I really wish they had included a "close software" main menu option in these games, or did some silly button press hack to humor GC controller diehards.

61

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: March 02, 2019, 07:57:22 PM »

Y'all are crazy, Hollow Knight is one of the only Metroidvanias that gets into the same league as the best Metroid games. It has actual open progression/exploration and feels transformatively different as your skill set expands and you approach space differently. It's tough at points, but it's not Souls-level stuff, and it has great "game feel". Mapping system is good, it put some skill back into it after the genre got overly hand-holdy. I mainly agree with the geo thing; I could have done without that trend infecting the game, but it also didn't affect me much. Don't use that bank, though!

But here's a caveat: I played the game on release and got whatever the "true" ending was at that time. I remember thinking that the game is already huge and extremely well-designed, and did not need a bunch of DLC jammed in willy nilly. But it sounds like that's exactly what happened with that boss gauntlet nonsense. Interesting in terms of preservation. Can you even opt in to a DLC-less release on any platform?

I believe they fucked Toki Tori 2 up as well and you can't get the OG version anymore.

62

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Switch Discussion Thread (Year 2: Joy-Con Boogaloo)

« on: March 01, 2019, 07:19:27 AM »

So I took my Switch on the road for the first time this weekend. I had two five-hour train rides, and knew I wouldn't be able to read the whole time. I got about 1.5 hours of Rabbids Kingdom Battle in each way. Worked great, looked good!

I'm going to be a rare user of this function, but it's still a really pleasing option to have. Very happy with the console.

Awesome! Do you mean actually using the kickstand and in "table" mode using your seatback tray? When I do that I feel simultaneously cool and really, really conspicuous, haha. But just like you, I don't really have many opportunities for that. Mostly I just use it pure handheld mode for twenty or so minutes while standing in the subway cars... I need to take more train rides in my life.

Ha, I had honestly forgot about the kickstand, never used it. I already felt like the coolest guy on the branch line.

63

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Switch Discussion Thread (Year 2: Joy-Con Boogaloo)

« on: February 27, 2019, 07:16:32 PM »

So I took my Switch on the road for the first time this weekend. I had two five-hour train rides, and knew I wouldn't be able to read the whole time. I got about 1.5 hours of Rabbids Kingdom Battle in each way. Worked great, looked good!

I'm going to be a rare user of this function, but it's still a really pleasing option to have. Very happy with the console.

64

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Big N rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: February 27, 2019, 07:12:28 PM »

Nintendo's not going anywhere as a company, but I think it's fair to say that diluting their hardware strategy in favor of streaming is not likely to be in their best interests anytime soon.

I'd say that they've been keenly aware of the issue with identical game boxes for a while, as they've never veered back after bailing on the arms race with the Wii. For all that the Switch is loaded with ancillary gimmicks, I'd bet that most of it's usage is as a low-powered static home console, which I would imagine gives them the willies.

65

General Gaming / Re: Resident Evil... 2... Remake!

« on: February 26, 2019, 08:17:06 PM »

Wow, I didn't even remember that Claire had an electro gun in the original game.

And yeah, the A/B stuff is kind of bizarre. Obviously there were budget constraints on this game that prevented more fleshed out alternate scenarios, but at the same time they decided to drop a bunch of resources into the expanded sewer that I doubt anyone considered a highlight. And even with that, like, just have the helicopter already moved when Claire gets to the station. Don't have the window break in the interrogation room during the second run instead of the first. Have the police van smashed into the wall in the parking garage, blocking off the jail block. Have the catwalk already partially collapsed for the first Birkin fight. Have the B run have to call back the train from the lab. Have the B run find an alternate route to the basement because the medallions are already in place.

66

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Big N rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: February 26, 2019, 08:03:29 PM »

I'm skeptical this is actually going to play out like the maximalist rumoring, but I've been saying for awhile that the enemy boxes don't really make sense anymore. I mean, it does still for Nintendo because they're much smaller than Sony or Microsoft and they actually make money on hardware, but in general walking back from the game theory disarmament stalemate would be better for everyone. I wonder if the anti-Xbox faction at Microsoft was pacified by the long-term road-map toward this.

Still, though, it's hard to imagine Sony taking a similar step, and I basically unthinkable that Nintendo would reciprocate. I suppose if this next-gen streaming stuff really take off, however, the rules of the market could get majorly re-written.

67

General Gaming / Re: Resident Evil... 2... Remake!

« on: February 25, 2019, 08:16:54 PM »

So despite what I said before, out of boredom, I did the second run with Claire, and finished the game again in about 4 hours.

Firstly, I was kind of impressed with how they remixed the police station despite not having much genuinely new content. The non-nonchalant early Mr. X drop was especially cool, and overall I felt much more scrambly and pressured, rushing through ****, leaning on defense items, giving up on routes (who needs the machine gun, anyway), and just trying to stay viable through an ad hoc "optimized run". I think I enjoyed this sequence the most of any part of the two runs.

But then the second half of the game happens. The Sherry bit is definitely more conceptually interesting than the dumb Ada Prime sequence from Leon's run, but it's very short, and plunks you back into the shitty sewer, which plays out mostly the same. As does the lab. Both felt like especial slogs the second time around. The train elevator Birkin fight was better than the Mr. X fight for Leon, but the "true ending" train bit was super brief and lame, which maybe it was in the first place, but I found it very anti-climactic this time around.

If I were in charge, I would have either had completely different paths to the lab for Leon and Claire, or axed the sewer altogether and made the lab a more in-depth second location (more like the Arctic in Code Veronica) that could've had a much better remixed B run.

-It's super dumb that they recycle the Mr. X lifts up the helicopter thing in the second run. Like, how much budget would it have taken to do a different bit?

-Maybe the spark shot is good in some context, but it sucks to use and takes some of the fun out of the late stage Claire run.

-I was happy not to do the jail block stuff again, but the Claire run is really missing some similarly tense equivalent.

-Overall I'd put this above the Revelations games, 0, 5, 6, and 7, but don't think it quite makes it over the line in the way it initially seems to promise. A 3make doesn't seem like a particularly interesting prospect.
 

68

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

« on: February 16, 2019, 08:30:00 PM »

I probably wouldn't have the patience to play through Alan Wake today, but I did have a go at American Nightmare a while back and thought it was pretty good. Tightens up the gameplay from the original, and has a novel structure. The way the narrative is weaved into the game is also enjoyable, and almost certainly a better use of live action actors than Quantum Break.

69

General Gaming / Re: Resident Evil... 2... Remake!

« on: February 16, 2019, 08:25:21 PM »

So I finished the game last night, and overall feel strangely cold about it.

I thought it took a big quality dip when you hit the lower levels of the police station, but then it bounced back again when you return to the main floors and have to deal with Mr. X. The first 45 minutes or so of that was pretty heart pounding, especially as I had left zombies and lickers all over the place.

But then you hit the sewers, which feels like an unnecessary reprisal of the game design before the game design is repeated yet again in the final lab area. I would much rather they cut down the length of the game and focused more on making the two characters have differentiated runs (from what I've read, it isn't really worth it doing the second scenario if you're not in love with the game).

But yeah, this is an issue with all of these games to an extent, but by the time I got to the last third all the tension was gone and it felt like I was going through the motions. The game looks good, but most of the post-station environments are kind of dialed down and unremarkable. I still thinkjthe Birkin stuff doesn't really jibe with the how the game first unspools, and I feel like there needed to be some more developed hook to the gameplay keep the tension up in the face of the third person perspective and precise shooting (and the Mr. X element, while initially cool,  becomes sort of trivial once you figure out how restricted he is). By the end, it kind of feels like an amalgam of old school RE, RE 4-6, and the revelations games, but not nailing it like RE1 Remake nailed the old style or RE4 nailed the more action-oriented games. Put another way, it kind of feels like a Revelations game with a much better budget and less linearity.

70

General Gaming / Re: Resident Evil... 2... Remake!

« on: February 06, 2019, 09:47:00 PM »

I think I'm about four hours in (got stupidly stumped for awhile because I didn't turn the page on the escape sketch), and while I really liked the game at first, I'm kind of souring rapidly.

The initial stretch through the police station I thought was the best combination of "modern" third-person shooting and OG Resident Evil yet. I very much liked the focus on the physicality of the zombies and how space works, and how lickers are genuine fucking problems. It makes me wish they'd taken it further with some kind of micro-parkour system that would let you scramble over desks and counters to get away from zombies. Similarly, I'm fine with the zombies being spongey, but they should be more destructible, with shots taking chunks out of them and debilitating them until the brain goes.

But anyway, I got out of the main police station, and they just drop the Birkin fight on you with no lead-up, and it's instantly goofy RE hulk with mutant eyeball weakpoint number XX chasing you around steam pipes, and Leon makes wisecracks. Really blows up the careful construction and atmosphere of the beginning hours. And then shortly after Mr. X does his preview in the jail block, which is similarly kind of goofy and out of nowhere.

I disagree about the gratuitous gore, though, it's great, and a return to the horror shock elements of the earlier games that got totally lost in Post-4 gooberdom.

71

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Switch Discussion Thread (Year 2: Joy-Con Boogaloo)

« on: January 08, 2019, 02:35:42 AM »

Funnily enough I saw that Lego game for $75 new at Gamestop today.

But I'm chiming in to say that, due to a new job milestone I've been holding out on, I finally picked myself up a switch.

First of all, I was shocked at how small the thing is. I knew it wouldn't be big, but damn, it's not much bigger than one of the jumbo Android phones you see around.

Secondly, I'm actually impressed at how slick the whole enterprise is. I set it up in a few minutes, it updated itself and the controllers in a few minutes (while Smash Bros. apparently updated in the background without my having to do anything), and in general all of the menus and and UI action are super snappy. Granted, I'm coming from having a 5-year-old phone and a WiiU as my last console, but this is an impressively put together interface. And, although I probably won't use the feature much, the whole pulling the Switch in and out of the dock thing is very smooth.

The Joy Cons, while also being tinier than I expect, feel pleasant to use and fit surprisingly well into my large hands. I didn't buy a pro controller pending breaking out the console, but I see no reason why I won't be able to just stick with these. I was reminded very quickly of how much I liked the split controller configuration of the Wii. We did play a round of Smash with the split Joy Cons, which is funny that it's even possible, but I can't see anyone other than a little kid being able to really use the controllers this way for a traditional game.

On another note, we had to drive 30 miles to a Fry's that had 3rd party Gamecube adapters in stock, and then discovered upon returning to town that not a single place had used or new official Gamecube controllers. The Gamestop clerk said that they don't even sell them in their stores anymore, and immediately process them for online sales. On Amazon it looks like they're going for $45 used. Which is insane. I gave up and bought some third party knock-offs that appear to have licensed the mold ($16 a piece), and they seem completely fine.

72

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Any good Wii games to play over the holidays?

« on: December 20, 2018, 02:22:55 AM »

The RE "light gun" games are the best light gun games.

That would be Dead Space: Extraction, which is not Christmas-y in the least, but a must-play in my book.

More on topic, I gave Cursed Mountain a real shot, and while I liked the atmosphere and Tibetan horror concept, I found it too clunky to keep going at about the halfway point. Having to wave the remote around for every enemy just wore me down.

Shattered Memories is fantastic, though, and most of the game is borderline walking sim, so it's not too stressful.

For unmentioned titles, I'd go way back on Wii and recommend Elebits, which has kind of a cozy elfin vibe to it.

Finally, Little King's Story is Nutcracker themed, and one of my favorite games (best Pikmin), but it's pretty involved and difficult.

73

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

« on: December 01, 2018, 03:43:17 PM »

Mega Man 11 (PC):

Just beat this one an hour ago, clocking in a whopping 3.5 hours. I'm frankly pretty surprised this game got such a glowing reception. It's a significant step down from Mega Man 9 in the design and "gamefeel" departments. There's two or three levels that have a cool motif that shapes the gameplay (Torch Man, Blast Man) but for the most part things are pretty dull/overextended. The boss bots are mostly rehashes of previous boss bots. Mega Man feels sluggish, and the 3D approach keeps things from feeling as snappy and precise as they should. The game is also trivially easy until the first Wily stage; I didn't even figure out half of the boss weaknesses until the final rush because I beat them on my first shot with the buster. The gear system feels like an afterthought and I went long stretches where I forgot about it. There are no secrets to find in the levels (fine for a 9-style game, but this one really needed more meat on its bones). There's only two real Wily levels, and Wily himself is a joke, beat him on my first try.   

There are a few decent ideas kicking around. Having multiple forms to the boss bots is a good concept, but deployed haphazardly. Being able to knock shielded enemies out of their defense with a charged shot is a good addition, relieves a standard annoyance of these games. While the 3D models/backgrounds are hit or miss, the energy effects look good.

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

« on: November 27, 2018, 10:44:31 PM »

Yeah, I've commented about this before, but I hit the glitch and could never solve it after hours of trying every posted work-around at the time. It was a huge bummer, as I actually liked the game quite a bit despite its issues and really wanted to beat it. This is what 3D Castlevania should have been like!

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Prediction Challenge!

« on: November 01, 2018, 10:46:45 AM »

That was a good laugh with finishing up the roster right away with Ken and the new Pokemon. I figured there was probably another surprise character for the end, and there was, and it was a piranha plant.

So I believe with the five DLC characters that brings the final total to 80? I guess I was right about being skeptical they could go higher than that . . .