Messages

1426

TalkBack / Re: Europe, Australia Joining eShop Anniversary Party

« on: June 11, 2016, 06:34:17 AM »

Thinking of getting Earthbound and F-Zero SNES. Earthbound mainly because of its stellar reputation, but I'm not 100% sure yet of F-Zero. I've played GX and the N64 one already, not sure how much I'll enjoy this relative "downgrade." Any experts here with some insight?

I'm thinking Pullblox and Pokemon Trading Card Game.

Can vouch for PTCG being hella fun! The menus are a little clunky initially and the learning curve goes from hard to easy, but very very fun. I ran a Scyther/Hitmonchan deck that virtually broke the game, so maybe don't do that if you want some challenge to remain, but yeah great cardgame.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Luigi's Mansion vs. Wave Race: Blue Storm

« on: June 05, 2016, 08:15:33 AM »

I never played Wave Race Blue Storm or 1080 Avalanche. I just never got to them. I keep meaning to pick them up as they sound like exactly what I want: graphical updates to awesome N64 titles with little gameplay changes.

Both are pretty decent. Wave Race Blue Storm edges out Avalanche for me. It has a lot more content, more varied and graphically impressive environments despite being out 2 years earlier, more interesting physics, and there's less water racing games out there in general. Plus very cheap nowadays!


1080 Avalanche feels a little light when compared to contemporaries like SSX Tricky, SSX 3 or even Shaun Paulmer on the PS2. There's just a lot more snowboarding games out there (Dark Summit was earlier too), not to mention similarly playing skateboard games. So only adding the sparsely-used "outrun an avalanche" mechanic felt a little lacking. Still a perfectly decent game though, not a whole lot more expensive than Wave Race either.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Luigi's Mansion vs. Wave Race: Blue Storm

« on: June 04, 2016, 01:15:59 PM »

The Wave Race games usually felt like demonstrations of the hardware, mostly. The N64 one was what, the fifth game on that platform? Still plays really well, one of the better racers on that platform (and N64 had a LOT). The water physics must've been great at the time.

Likewise the GC version with its changing tides, shimmering reflections and fish visible below feels similarly show-offy. Suppose Luigi's Mansion was kinda similar with its impressive lighting effects and all the little subtleties in Luigi's animations.


Honestly the lil' Cube had a pretty good launch line-up. No Mario 64 sized blockbuster perhaps, but with these 2, Monkey Ball, Rogue Leader, the Crazy Taxi port and Tony Hawk 3 it wasn't a bad start imo.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: June is a mighty month for retail games (at least in NA)

« on: June 04, 2016, 09:03:05 AM »

Certainly getting Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. It looks absolutely bonkers with a nonsensical plot, but I'm down for a turn-based RPG, especially one which such gorgeous locales as the Shibuya section they showed off a while back.


Also mildly curious about Book of Unwritten Tales II, it has off-tv play which is great. But I read that it's apparantly a 20 hour point & click adventure game and that's just way too long for me. Much prefer my adventure games in the Beneath A Steel Sky timeframe of like 5 hours max.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Predict which Wii U games will be considered timeless classics in the future

« on: May 26, 2016, 11:57:38 AM »

Life beyond the official servers going down. There will come a time when you will no longer be able to log into Wii U and play Smash U online. That day will come. There will be unofficial servers out there via the hacking community of course but for tournaments LAN is better anyways with everyone in the same room and all.

Huh okay, thanks for explaining! Not something most players would care about surely, but nice to have for those that do. Guess this might be dumb but I figured in tournaments they would just set up a few machines and use the local multiplayer mode entirely. Kinda like you would back in the N64/GameCube days.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Predict which Wii U games will be considered timeless classics in the future

« on: May 26, 2016, 09:34:33 AM »

They put one in Pokken...

True, but can I ask what it would add for Smash 4? Genuine question, since it already supports 8 players? Plus the tournament people who wish to play with wired controllers can all bring GameCube pads and just hook up 2 of those GC adapters. What benefit of LAN am I missing that isn't already covered?

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Predict which Wii U games will be considered timeless classics in the future

« on: May 24, 2016, 08:09:09 PM »

Think Captain Toad might be he best shout here, as well as Splatoon. Especially if they manage to turn those into major franchises. Mario Maker will probably at least be fondly remembered as "remember that crazy time Nintendo let everyone make dumb levels?", or improved upon in sequels.


With the rest, I feel like a lot will be remembered as "good for its time", but not absolute classics. Things like Pikmin 3, Mario 3D World and Bayonetta 2 will be fondly remembered but they were kinda of iterating on previous successes and didn't raise the bar for their genres in ways that Mario 64 or Galaxy did.
Ditto for the RPGs on the system, they'll probably be seen as good games, but not Final Fantasy 7/Chrono Trigger-level revelations.


Likewise, Affordable Space Adventures, ZombiU, and both Star Fox games will probably at least be seen as "innovative with the controller", but I'm not sure they'll be trendsetters.


Wii U has an embarrasment of riches when it comes to sidescrolling platformers with Yoshi, DK, Kirby, New Mario/Luigi Bros, Rayman Legends, etc. but while Rayman and DK both did cool new things I'm not confident they have rewritten the playbook for all platformers to come. Rather they were just excellent executions of their genre.

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TalkBack / Re: June 2016: The Wii U's Last Retail Stand

« on: May 24, 2016, 09:55:44 AM »

Huh had never heard of that Book of Unwritten Tales 2 thing. I'll be honest and say the artstyle is rather offputting to me, but I looked at a trailer anyway and that spoofed the first Hobbit trailer in an amusing way:


https://youtu.be/c9_0TkdxT5I


Plus it's already out in Europe so at least it'll certainly release. So this seems to be a point & click adventure~ish kinda deal? Could be fun I suppose, though my June's already accounted for with Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE (June 24) - Now with ALL OF THE censorship!

« on: May 24, 2016, 09:49:45 AM »

DJ MasterSeal is a bit grating but this is actually a pretty good video for explaining the game and how exactly it works. Somewhat similar to the Xenoblade Chronicles X survival guides.

"Grating" is pretty generous haha! Yikes are these lines bad, almost purposefully so? "You know that DJ MasterSeal likes to SLAY" it's like someone's uncle trying to pose as young and hip on Snapchat or something hahaha. Maybe it's not so bad after all they're not dubbing it in English. But yeah, looks good and the combat system doesn't seem toooooo complicated from this trailer so I didn't mind suffering through that awful voiceover haha.

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General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: May 19, 2016, 12:23:41 PM »

I was really interested in GUN (GC), an awesome western GTA made by the one and only Neversoft when I first heard about it, but never picked it up (did they initially say Xbox/PS2 only? I can't remember). Got it at the swap meet recently for $3. The story starts in the wilderness, then more and more towns are opened up with lots of fun things to do, like running over bison on a horse, killing wolves, indians, and stopping bad guys from burning down the saloon. Give it a whirl if you find it for cheap. It's challenging, wickedly violent, and has some of the best voice acting ever.

Oh yeah a friend of mine had this on PS2! Pretty sure it launched on all platform right away, and also was up-ported to X-Box 360. It looked like a huge world to me at the time, I remember thinking Red Dead Redemption was a sequel to it. A quick google search tells me there was some criticism over the way it glorified the killing of Native Americans in the 1800s, Activision's apology claims it was just representative of the "harsh times."

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

« on: May 17, 2016, 07:03:53 PM »

Beat Star Fox Guard (on Wii U).





This came out alongside Star Fox Zero, but honestly I've been playing this a lot more so far. Mostly because Star Fox Zero feels much more like a co-op game, though.

If you're at all into tower defense stuff, this really feels like the ultimate version of that. By monitoring 12 security cameras at once you gotta check for drones and robots that are trying to sneak into your base.
Select a camera that has a good aim at them, and take them out with the camera-mounted gun. There's a few special cameras, like ones that shoot charged shots, ice beams, or hover above to give you a good vantage point. Would've liked more of those though, flamethrowers, or maybe spike traps to slow bots down or something
This is exactly the type of thing Wii U excels at, with 2 screens for optimal control. This should've been a launch game!

Presentation is alright, a little light on music (the last planet has some cool tunes though!) and some sound effects get pretty repetitive. But the Star Fox layer of paint on top feels convincing. The robots are charming and kinda cute, there's voice acting, cutscenes, boss fights and everything. 100 Levels too, plus theoretically endless ones created online by others.

Plot is dumb in typical Star Fox fashion, but I'm glad I've finished this before Star Fox Zero because it feels like it sets the stage for Zero pretty well by fleshing out the world a little bit.
Haven't tried many of its functions yet, like the level editor, online mode or the Amiibo functionality, but I'm already pretty pleased with this purchase.

Minor gripe: from the 5 planets only 3 end in bossfights, would've preferred if all 5 did. Also the last boss is a lot easier than the second one, which just doesn't feel right.


There's no local multiplayer, but it's surprisingly fun to play this whilst others help check the cameras for incoming robots. Very quickly devolves into frantic yelling: "little dudes on cam 4!", "wait no a big yellow one on 12!", "the shield bot is almost at the core!"  etc.


Verdict: the most interesting evolution of the tower defense genre I can think of. A polished package overall that took me 7.5 hours to finish, and there's still quite a dozen extra missions and several modes to go back to. 8/10

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE (June 24) - Now with ALL OF THE censorship!

« on: May 16, 2016, 04:04:00 AM »

The ****? I thought I wrote out a whole response to this...


Have you ever played Dragon Quest? I think those games remind me of the "pacing" of SMT-style game most closely, in contrast to Final Fantasy. Whatever RPGs you have played, I'm very interested to hear what you think of this game when it finally comes out! Like you, I'm eagerly looking forward to it because of the art direction, and also my console RPG lust (especially on Wii U). As a fan of Japanese culture (though not necessarily the J-Pop facet), and having lived and visited Japan in the past, that's a big reason for my personal appeal, but I hope to hear what aspects you end up enjoying, as well!

Oh yeah weird your reply is half there in the quote though, odd. But nope, never played any Dragon Quest either. Like, it's literally Final Fantasy 8-9, Pokémon, Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, and I never got very far in Baten Kaitos and Skies of Arcadia. Did recently buy Xenoblade X though, that really sold me on the Wii U to get back into gaming.


So far that's mostly been overwhelmingly complex, but luckily the Summer of No-tendo means plenty of time to sink in both meaty RPGs. Plus stylistically they're miles apart which is always a plus.

1438

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE (June 24) - Now with ALL OF THE censorship!

« on: May 15, 2016, 05:23:01 PM »

Mmm. Well, it seems like you're not really the target audience for this sort of thing. This game has FF-like turn-based combat if you like the first three entries, but it's vastly different from that franchise IV and onwards. If you like Sin Megami Tensei, this is more up your alley.

Never played any Persona or SMT, or any Atlus games for that matter haha. It's been a while since I gamed at all, but did play some Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem and a few of the GameCube RPGs. We'll see I guess, it'll probably be fine. Can definitely learn to overlook designs I don't care much for, especially since the rest of Tokyo Mirage looks really stylish. Knowing absolutely nothing about the whole J-pop stuff probably means it'll be extra bizarre to me, but frankly I'm excited for something kinda 'out-there'.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE (June 24) - Now with ALL OF THE censorship!

« on: May 15, 2016, 10:04:55 AM »

Reading y'all's thoughts on this is pretty interesting. Personally I prefer my games with as little over-the-top cleavage/bikini anime fanservice in it as possible, but hey if it's a download I can skip, that's a-okay with me.

Personally I'm interested because I like turn-based Final Fantasy combat, which is hard to find on Wii U, and this game looks gorgeous. But man do some of the outfits look dumb haha! Oh well, not trying to hate on anyone here so I hope whether you get the version with swimsuits or without them, it'll be a cool game for everyone.

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

« on: May 10, 2016, 11:24:24 AM »

Beat Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (on Wii U)



Kicked a few bucks to charity in the Humble Bundle, mostly to get Affordable Space Adventures. Tried this one too though and found a very competently executed 2D platformer with some Metroidvania tendencies.
 
Shantae controls very precise, music is super catchy and the visual presentation is coherently cartoony throughout. The powerups aren't very unique but they make you considerably more mobile. The story was decent enough, gameplay is varied and the dialogue is generally light-hearted and kinda funny.


Things I didn't like: all the women have stupidly skimpy costumes and the game actively contrives dumb reasons to dress them up in more ridiculous outfits. They make jokes about it, but it still feels at odds to give all these women a lot of agency and simultaneously dress them in bikinis and corsets the whole time. Just kind of a "can't have your cake and eat it too" situation, imo.


Also the final dungeon can go straight to hell with its insane spikey death traps everywhere. It felt rewarding to beat, but the difficulty absolutely skyrockets there. Lastly, concerning the ending: turns out to get the full boss battle you need to collect every bit of dark magic. But I saved in the final dungeon and I'm definitely not gonna backtrack, find all these secrets and go through it again. Watched it on YouTube though and yes it does look like a much cooler ending, but yeah no way.


Final verdict: 8/10 a very polished, fun platformer, with a few things I disliked, but overall would recommend! Kinda feel guilty only paying them a few bucks, since for most of the 12 hours it took me I was having a blast.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 474: The Day the Music Was Abandoned

« on: May 09, 2016, 08:52:26 AM »

Pretty recent listener here so haven't heard many episodes with Dr. Metts on yet, but I found myself agreeing with him. Xenoblade really is impossible to read without a decent monitor and as someone with less and less time to play games I definitely concur that games are hella long. I'd much prefer a short 1-5 hour focused experience that can be finished in one night/sitting than something massive that'll take weeks.


But I accept I'm probably in the minority there, given the popularity of massive open world & endless multiplayer games.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Star Fox: Zero Interest On This Forum

« on: April 27, 2016, 12:04:06 PM »

Picked up both the main game and Star Fox Guard. The latter is surprisingly fun so far! It's a clever little idea and there seems to be a lot of content in it.

Star Fox Zero... Well it feels really cool so far, I love the transforming from Arwing to Walker and back. But the controls are very complex. So far I keep pressing Y to reset the reticule and kinda winging it. Definitely feels like co-op will be the way to go here. I'm also finding it easier when switching the screens, but that leaves little time to look at the cool scenery haha.


Honestly so far I just feel kinda inept when playing this, but I expect to get used to it.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Releases Fiscal Year 2016 Results

« on: April 27, 2016, 11:53:53 AM »

Do we put any stock in Project Giant Robot still being listed, without even a release year attached? Is that just business-speak for "this is in limbo for now"?

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Star Fox: Zero Interest On This Forum

« on: April 22, 2016, 07:50:02 AM »

Saw elsewhere that the reviews are supposedly 'bad', but honestly I'm mainly seeing a whole bunch of 7s and 8s. Even metacritic names it mixed/average with a 72 rating. That's not even that low though right? Might be stubborn here, but my main takeaway is simply that the controls take getting used to at best, or just kinda don't work well at worst. Don't think that'll be an issue for me since I'll be playing this in co-op anyway.


Anyone here give it a go yet? Hoping to pick it up soon myself.

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General Chat / Re: "Hey I'm new!" Official Introduce Yourself to the Internet Thread

« on: April 22, 2016, 07:29:57 AM »

Hey y'all, cool to see this thread goes all the way back to '03!


Anyway, another newb reporting for duty here. Just got back into gaming in a big way with the Wii U, really glad to have Nintendo back in my life since I haven't gamed much since the GameCube days. Found this place through the RFN podcast, so yeah! Hope to see y'all around.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Star Fox: Zero Interest On This Forum

« on: April 17, 2016, 12:41:39 PM »

Oh I never even realised some people were down on the visuals. It looks great to me, very excited to pick both it and Star Fox Guard up as soon as they release. But maybe I'm not the most discerning fan here, only played Star Fox 64 which I quite enjoyed and Star Fox Adventures which - barring a few excruciating obstacles - I was really hyped on too.
Heck, Adventures' first few worlds still look gorgeous to me.

The only thing I hope will be easier in Zero than 64 is switching between paths. In 64 it was really easy to completely miss an opportunity to pursue another branch of the story, I don't think I ever even saw all the levels on the left path.

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 469: Sneaking into Danny Bivens' Room

« on: April 17, 2016, 11:51:13 AM »

Haha alright, that seems suitably odd for a game that already appears pretty bonkers. Thanks for the replies!

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Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 469: Sneaking into Danny Bivens' Room

« on: April 15, 2016, 05:44:30 PM »

Pretty new listener here. Just wondering, did anyone happen to catch whether Syrenne mentioned anything about the GamePad use in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE? I mean, I'll probably get it anyway since there's a drought of RPGs on the system, but would be cool if it did anything unusual with the GamePad.