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1276

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: July 30, 2018, 04:52:19 PM »

What's the best and easiest of the Mega Man games if I wanted to sample the series just once?

Mega Man 2 is the one which was made easier for the NA audience, so that would probably be a good place to begin. If you can complete Metal Man first and get the Metal Blades, it makes most of the game trivial. Another bit of advice is that you'll probably want Item 2 before you play Heat Man's stage.

Mega Man 3 is probably one of the tougher games in the series due to the haywire difficulty of the later stages. Likely not a good start point for a newbie.

After 2, Mega Man 5 is fairly easy as well, due to how absurdly powerful is the Mega Buster's charge shot.

The original Mega Man may still be the most difficult of the bunch, in part due to the quality-of-life improvements brought by the sequels (the original has no password system, no energy reserve tanks, wonkier physics, etc). Probably not good to start with the first game even though it's the first game.

Personally, I would vouch for Mega Man 4 as a good starting MM game. It's the one I owned from the original series growing up, and it's not particularly hard. Hell, you kill the final boss by basically walking into him while holding a button.

1277

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: July 29, 2018, 11:45:24 PM »

Started playing the Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 on PS4 today. Would have gotten it on Switch, but I hate how the buttons on the Joycons feel with action games. Very hard & clicky.

The 1st X game is as perfect as it always was, and my memory of it & all its secrets is just as clear now as when I beat it every day back in my school days. My only real issue with it is one that was also a big problem at the time & no one's addressed it now: Hitting Circle to dash is carpal tunnel inducing, and it's ridiculous that you can't map dash to R2 (or to R1, with your weapons on L2 & R2). The most crucial move in the X series is the dashing jump while holding a charged buster so you can kill enemies in the air, and doing that requires one of 2 agony-inducting finger combinations:

1. Holding Square with the tip of your thumb & then using the joint on your thumb to hit X & Circle

OR

2. Holding Square with your thumb & hitting X & Circle with your index finger.

It feels like performing the Monster Hunter "claw". Yeah, I can do it, but it's needlessly painful considering the modern consoles have multiple triggers you could map the Dash to. But you can't in at least X1 because...the Super Nintendo didn't have an additional trigger, & Capcom couldn't be bothered?

I started playing X2 following X1, and it's still not a game I care much for. Something that the later games got really obsessed with is arbitrary time restrictions in order to unlock the "true ending", and that nonsense started here with the hunt for Zero's parts. After your 1st 2 bosses, you have 3 sub-bosses that jump from stage to stage, and you get one shot with each of them. If you ignore them or fail to beat them, they run away and you lose out on the true ending.

Sorry, but the entire fun of the Mega Man franchise is playing "your way", and stuff like this forces you to play through the game in a set order with arbitrary restrictions. It's just not fun, and it's not the last time the X series would pull this nonsense, either.

1278

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last TV show you've seen

« on: July 29, 2018, 05:56:49 PM »

Well, I've finished Gravity Falls and...eh, it was good, I guess. I don't see where all the hype is coming from. The first season is just so formulaic and so focused on the tedious would-be love lives of the 2 main characters, which I couldn't possibly give any less of a **** about. The second season strongly focuses the show on the core mystery & features much sharper writing (and the ending is fantastic), but for me it just can't make up for how long it took the show to get to an interesting point.

It was consistently pleasant, but that's about as much praise as I feel it deserves.

1279

Movies & TV / Re: Disney bought Fox: Comcast Formally Concedes Fox Assets to Disney

« on: July 24, 2018, 11:42:19 PM »

And to think people mocked my calling Disney an entertainment monopoly. 

1280

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last TV show you've seen

« on: July 24, 2018, 11:40:55 PM »

Gravity Falls released on BluRay today, so I thought I'd finally check the show out. Heard a lot about it, but never saw it before.

Watched the first 5 episodes so far, and I can't say I'm blown away but the show seems enjoyable enough. I'm intrigued enough by some of the teases they've dropped so far, and I dig the Twin Peaks-esque tone. It's a pity that Disney produced this show, though, as you can see the invisible hands of Disney pulling the production back from doing anything particularly dark (so far).

Shout Factory's BluRay transfer, though, is fantastic. So far on my big 1080p TV, I'm not seeing any noticeable compression artifacts & very little (if any) grain. Hell, I'm pretty sure the grain I have seen so far is intentional texture work. Coming off my recent Avatar: TLA BluRay rewatch, the show just looks astounding by comparison.

1281

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: July 24, 2018, 09:29:52 PM »

Ready Player One came out on BluRay today, so I finally got around to seeing it.

Yeah, that'll do. I haven't read the book (though I have an unlistened-to copy on Audible), but this feels like it does an excellent job of salvaging a heavily-criticized book. I really enjoyed it. It felt like it had just the right blend of Spielberg sentimentality & dumb fun.

Just one thing that bugged me, though: they heavily used "Take on Me" in the trailers, and it's not in the movie at all. SMH...

1282

TalkBack / Re: NBA Playgrounds 2 To Be Published By 2K, Releasing In Fall

« on: July 24, 2018, 03:58:06 PM »

So that's why my PS4 preorder was cancelled. Probably not going to buy it now that 2K's gotten their greedy micro transaction paws on it.

Seriously, **** 2K, ESPECIALLY when it comes to their basketball games.

1283

Movies & TV / Re: Hey! DC's got stuff too... (Official Thread for the DCU of Movies and TV)

« on: July 23, 2018, 06:44:06 PM »

Batman: The Animated Series' BluRay collection is finally up for pre-order on Amazon. Includes the complete series, Mask of the Phantasm, Subzero, and what looks like a hefty booklet & lithographs.
Oh, and it also includes some really crappy-looking bobbleheads that belong in the trash.

https://www.amazon.com/Batman-Complete-Animated-BD-Blu-ray/dp/B07FPRXFJ1
Warner's been very tight-lipped on whether this collection is a true from-the-film restoral or whether it's more of an upscale. Given that Nickelodeon took a decade to release a really crappy Avatar: TLA BluRay upscale, I have my doubts about this but I have to believe that WB cares more about Batman than Nickelodeon cares about anything.
It's coming out in October, and I'm totally getting it.

1284

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: July 21, 2018, 04:05:40 PM »

Well, Dissidia NT's Story Mode goes in a really weird direction as it goes on. The story fractures into 4 separate paths early on, and when you reach near the end of each respective path, you need to fight one of Final Fantasy's summons (or in the case of Lightning's path, 4 of them) in a 3-on-1 duel.

And oh boy...are these fights NOTHING like the rest of the game. Dissidia NT as a whole is a wacky, cartoony, button-mashy battle royale where 6 character run around hitting each other until they can REALLY hit each other. But these Summon Boss fights? Oh no...they're not Battle Royales at all. You see, Team Ninja made this game, and Team Ninja decided that what the story mode really needed are boss fights with heavy pattern recognition, multiple phases, a totally different damage mechanic, & the bosses able to essentially one-hit kill you on a whim.

Yes, what's essentially a light-hearted Smash-style affair suddenly turns into Dark Souls in these encounters. What. The. ****? Each Summon presents their own delightful little problems, but easily the worst of these I've encountered was Ramuh.

The dude can hit anywhere on the field on a whim, and in his second phase he can easily kill you in seconds when he winds up Judgement Bolt or his big full-stage slam move.

I've managed to take down 5 of the Summons, and Ramuh was easily the worst. Ifrit & Odin look intimidating, but if you pick the available spellcaster you can hit them from mid-range without too much problem. Alexander was tricky, but once you get his patterns down he's not too hard.

Unfortunately, the remaining 3 have to be taken down with melee characters, and I can't imagine a worse way to play these battles. I only took down Bahamut because Noctis' Warp ability lets him essentially hold at mid-range & bamph in when there's an opening & then out again. I have to take down Shiva with Leviathan with pure melee characters, though. That's going to be...fun. -_-

Edit: Shiva & Leviathan down. Turns out that Shiva is really weak to Cloud's aerial attacks, and even with her 2nd phase leading to another Shiva joining the fight it wasn't too bad. Leviathan was more annoying, but thankfully at this point I had my AI characters leveled-up pretty decently so they were able to keep him distracted long enough for me to do some decent damage.

That just leaves the Final Boss of Story Mode: Shinryu.

1285

Movies & TV / Re: IT'S MAHVEL BAYBEE!! [OT] for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Movies & TV)

« on: July 21, 2018, 01:21:07 PM »

I don't know anything about what "Nameless" is or what bloodborne is either. unless it was that female vampire game from the Playstation 1/2 days.

That's Bloodreign. Bloodborne is a PS4 horror action game from the Dark Souls team that can be thought of as thematically similar to Castlevania: gothic architecture, killing beasts with swords & whips, etc.

1286

Movies & TV / Re: Hey! DC's got stuff too... (Official Thread for the DCU of Movies and TV)

« on: July 21, 2018, 01:04:05 PM »

So...has DC said anything about those Batman: The Animated Series BluRays they announced at the start of the year? It seems they've gone completely radio silent on those, outside of releasing some of the middling B:TAS movies on Bluray.

And yes, Titans looks awful. It's always looked awful. DC's had no idea what to do with the Titans since the early 2000s Teen Titans ended.

1287

Movies & TV / Re: IT'S MAHVEL BAYBEE!! [OT] for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Movies & TV)

« on: July 21, 2018, 01:01:34 PM »

Welp. James Gunn's career is officially derailed, at least temporarily

https://screenrant.com/sony-james-gunn-movie-sdcc-2018/
He had teased a surprise announcement a week ago.
it was a Sony movie, that for now will not be announced.


looks like the movie was "Nameless"
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/imagecomics/images/7/7b/Nameless_Vol_1_6.png/revision/latest?cb=20151221162835

https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/1019267661631352833

A Bloodborne movie? Really? I could see that turned into another terrible Milla Jovavich Resident Evil schlock-fest, but I can't see how that could work & still retain the spirit of the game.

1288

Movies & TV / Re: IT'S MAHVEL BAYBEE!! [OT] for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Movies & TV)

« on: July 21, 2018, 12:50:09 PM »

Assuming that Gunn is not brought back later, I can only see this as a good thing for Guardians 3 considering how profoundly disappointing I found Guardians 2. Guardians 2 was a film that had no idea what it was. It wanted to be a "day in the life of" story of the guardians...AND a story about a god trying to remake the universe, so the Guardians had to stop him...AND a story about estranged family relationships.

Perhaps if Guardians 2 had focused on 2 of those, it would have been fine, but it went for the kitchen sink approach and came off rather mediocre (especially since it seemed to outright ignore major plot points of the previous film, such as Drax's dead family). Maybe some new blood can bring back the fun of the 1st fun. Maybe not. I gave up on Marvel after Guardians 2, Civil War, & Dr. Strange.

1289

TalkBack / Re: Hand of Fate 2 (Switch) Review

« on: July 19, 2018, 11:27:29 PM »

This game always looks cool when I see it online, then I realize it's a card game...

It's not really a card game. It's basically Dungeons & Dragons with Batman Arkham combat. The "board" just happens to take the form of scenario cards that you build into a deck (along with challenge-specific encounter cards the Dealer shuffles in himself). The items you can buy & find in those scenarios? Again, cards you or the dealer place into the deck.

Scenarios will also reward you with new scenarios or items if you "beat" them with certain criteria, earning the card's token.

1290

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: July 19, 2018, 12:19:47 AM »

Been bouncing off a lot of stuff lately since E3. Outside of a recent replay of the Devil May Cry reboot's Definitive Edition, nothing's really stuck with me between Octopath, Captain Toad, SW Battlefront 2, etc.

On a whim, I decided to finally try that copy of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT that I picked up months ago and never touched, and I'm surprised at the simple fun I'm having with it. You jump into a match, you dash at a chosen opponent, and you wail away at them with either an attack that lowers their defense and raises your attack but does no actual damage or an attack that does pure HP damage relative to those previous 2 stats but leaves you wide open for a counterattack. It's quick, simple fun I find pretty addicting. There are even little in-jokes like Tidus's line if you summon Ramuh ("Show them how hard it is to dodge lightning!").


The story mode's entertaining in its absurdity (just seeing the characters bounce off each other is amusing), but in a head-tilting decision Square Enix decided that you could only unlock story mode sequences by grinding first for a special currency in online matches or offline gauntlet runs. It's really terrible.

I also wish the matches had more stages. Final Fantasies 1-14 & Tactics are all represented here in large, gorgeous stages evocative of their respective games, but oddly neither FF 15 nor Type 0 have stages despite them each having a character in the roster.

On a side note, there's a special place in Hell for the person at Square Enix that decided that every treasure, unlock, etc. also be accompanied by a Moogle voice actor going "KUPO" or "KUPOKUP!" When you have 5-10 unlocks every gauntlet run & you HAVE to page through them all, you WILL want to throw your Dualshock. 

1291

General Chat / Re: The NBA Thread: Congrats to the Warriors on winning the 2018-19 NBA Finals

« on: July 18, 2018, 06:31:54 PM »

Bit disappointed in the Jazz this off-season. They basically resigned almost everyone from last year except a few 3rd-stringers they've already replaced with Summer League players. They resigned Favors, so that's great. But we basically didn't get any better during the off-season aside from drafting a promising new point guard.
I wonder if we'll see them more active on the Trading Circuit as the season goes on.

1292

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

« on: July 16, 2018, 06:11:39 PM »

I've been sinking some serious time into Hand of Fate 2 for my review over on another site.

This game is pretty much the combination of everything I love and hate about card games and board games and the role-playing genre. It's methodical, it's stressful, it's high stakes, and its so damn fun. It might be one of the most unique combinations of mechanics I've seen in a video game in a long time, and the even more incredible thing is that the game has twenty-two unique chapters with vastly different twists on its core gameplay. That's just so cool.

I'll be tweeting out my review as I don't want to get railed for self-promotion, but this game is an extremely impressive independent title that has a substantial amount of content at half the price of most modern titles. Don't miss it.

As I mentioned on the NFR Game of the Year 2018 show, I'm quite fond of Hand of Fate 2. If only the transitions between the board & the combat arenas wasn't so janky. That transition goes on for about 30 seconds in the PS4 version, and from what I've heard the Switch transitions are even longer.

1293

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

« on: July 15, 2018, 12:34:35 PM »

-Oh I forgot one more most minor of gripes. The credits on this are like 15 minutes long, it's like they listed every single person who works anywhere for Ubisoft. Not a big deal or anything but at some point I was beginning to wonder if all these people even know they're being credited.

Well, never play an Assassin's Creed game, then, because those credits are routinely over 30 minutes long. Hell, they even have checkpoints. So long as you can skip the credits, I don't care how long they are.

1294

TalkBack / Re: Figment (Switch) Review

« on: July 13, 2018, 11:00:57 AM »

No reference to "One Little Spark"? Cmon..it was RIGHT THERE!

1295

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: July 13, 2018, 10:59:47 AM »

My friend gave me a Resident Evil Revelaitons 2 code for Switch. I bought a 128 GB micro SD card because I only had 14 GB of internal storage left. The download took almost three hours.

I feel weird complaining about a free game. RER2 appears to be lower budget compared to the first game though it’s been a while since I played it. Claire’s design is off. She looks like someone cosplaying as Claire.

I didn’t get very far. The load times are atrocious. I timed loading from the last checkpoint, and it look over a minute. That’s pretty much all I need to know about this game.

I can't speak for the Switch version, but I remember the Vita version being a bad port, too.

Meanwhile, I loved the PS4 version & didn't see the technical issues you saw there so... *shrug* ?

1296

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: July 10, 2018, 12:51:53 AM »

I've been playing Unravel 2 off & on since it released at E3. I just finished it, and it's...OK, I guess? It's certainly pleasant, gorgeous to look at, and a MUCH faster game than the first Unravel. It also feels like it features a lot more swinging on hooks Bionic Commando-style & less physics-based stuff than the 1st game did.

Where I feel like the game falls flat on its face is the story. It makes no goddamn sense. Something about kids escaping an orphanage & taking down an evil logging company, which results in a forest fire? Hell if I know. The story's so spectacularly vague, it could be a lost Captain Planet episode. That's especially weird because Yarny was a metaphor in the 1st game for the threads that bind us to others over our lives, and we followed a family over the course of their lives. But Unravel 2? I have no idea what this game wants to say, because the text pop up that appears before the credits seems to have nothing to do with what I saw & did over the course of the game.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Unravel 2, but despite it being a better "game" this time it feels like it lost a lot of what made the 1st game memorable.

1297

Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last TV show you've seen

« on: July 08, 2018, 11:24:32 PM »

Haven't watched a new Gundam series in about a decade, not since Seed Destiny really soured me on the franchise & 00 wasn't looking particularly great.

However, playing a really terrible Gundam game lately (Gundam Vs.) did manage to get me in the mood to watch something from that series again, so I decided to try out Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans - Season 1.

Having finished the season, I'm really digging this one. Gundam is a franchise that relishes its tropes, and this one seems to be going out of its way to not hit as many of them as usual (and openly mock others). Honestly, with its focus on a lot of gritty tank & ship warfare and relatively little mobile suit combat, it actually gives me a very 8th MS Team-esque feel. The Gundams are relics from a 300-year old war, so they're few & far between.


The story surrounds a team of child soldiers who have been implanted with devices that allow them to interface with mecha through their spine & brain, without extensive training & knowledge. After getting screwed-over by their adult overlords, they stage a coup & basically end up starting their own private military organization. Their goal? To escort the leader of a local resistance movement from Mars to Earth to argue for Mars' independence.

The show follows this group's journey from Mars to Earth & beyond as they try to fight off pirates, the Earth military, and constant political machinations from both their allies & their enemies. In fact, I think what looks like the villain of season 2 is one of the best the series has ever done, perfectly puppet-mastering all the pieces on the board into moving himself into power without making it look like a last-second "gotcha" (which Seed Destiny was guilty of, IIRC).

There's a sense of sheer brutality to this show that really clicks with me. Beam weaponry doesn't exist, and resources are relatively scarce so battles often revolve around trickery & the use of several different groups of fighters (mobile suits, ships, footsoldiers, etc). The combat usually comes down to tanks blowing each other up while the mobile suits try to bash each other to death with glorified clubs & spears. Characters seem to die fairly regularly so far, something Gundam usually reserves for the end of the show.

Season 2 comes out on BluRay next month, and I'm looking forward to seeing where this story goes. I hear the ultimate ending is outstanding.

1298

General Chat / Re: No Freetime Radio E3 2018 Special

« on: July 08, 2018, 04:21:16 PM »

FYI, due to pending hospitalization & surgery with one of our hosts, the next episode of NFR is postponed indefinitely. We're hoping to resume in August.

1299

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: July 03, 2018, 12:05:10 AM »

Been playing a fair amount of Switch stuff lately, but I already talked about Splatoon 2 & its DLC in the official thread.

One thing I didn't expect to get really into was the Mario + Rabbids DK DLC. I kind of bailed on the main game towards the end of the 2nd world just due to all the other stuff there was to play, but I got the season pass back when the game came out so I figured...sure, why not try the DK DLC since I own it anyway and it's standalone.

It's interesting. It addresses some core issues I had with the main game (the multi-battle gauntlets & the really stupid upgrade system) while creating new ones (i.e. the game railroading you down a series of battles with the occasional puzzle & no optional challenges until you beat the game). I feel like focusing on 3 characters leads to maps being better-designed to make you really learn the characters. It's also way easier than the main game is, IMO.

I'm towards the middle of the 4th & final chapter of the DLC, but it's well-made. Some of the Perfect requirements in that chapter are really insane, though.

On the PS4, I was always curious about Gundam Versus as a casual fan of Gundam (i.e. 8th MS Team, 0083, Gundam Wing, & Gundam Seed), but I'd heard that it was nowhere near worth full price. Well, the game went on sale today at GS for $20, so I figured I'd give it a try.

Wow, this game is bare-bones: challenge stages, horde mode, & online. That's it. They also spent a whole $5 on the localization, as all the dialogue is in Japanese with NO subtitles outside of your helper character (who just spouts the same 5 lines regardless of the situation). I'm surprised the menus are even in English, Bandai gave so few ****s. There is a tutorial mode that pretty much involves just scrolling through pages of text and then destroying a 1 HP enemy when you want to move on. The in-game UI has no button prompts telling you what icons on your screen represent which buttons.

One thing I was not prepared for is that the game still has to do an install after it does the main PS4 install. Oh, but don't worry, the game will throw you in a combat arena to beat up on a couple of AI opponents while it takes 10 minutes to do the second install...while the same 30 second loop of the terrible original 70s Gundam theme song blares in the background. On top of that, the game doesn't even try to teach you have to play the game. You just hammer buttons & eventually figure out how the controls work.
Oh, but I hope you don't take that 10 minutes of required play as an example of how all the mobile suits play...because while the RX-79 you play in the install period has a pretty basic move set, it's also the only suit I've seen that plays like that. If you like a particular suit from a particular series, be prepared to spend a lot of time learning how to play it. I assumed that 8th MS Team's RX-79 Custom would play like the RX-79 original, but no. It doesn't. It's a range-oriented build where you swap between equipment in your backpack to switch between mid-range & long range attacks. You only have a token charge attack with your beam saber. Seed's Strike Gundam has 3 different modes you switch between for aerial combat, melee combat, & ranged combat. Etc.


Combat is pretty basic: drop into a combat arena, the enemy drops into the arena, and then you attack the other suits until they're dead. It's quick & arcade-y, and there's charm in that. For $20, you could do worse.
Oh, but I hope that you're not a G Gundam fan, because both of its suits in the game are DLC. Because.

1300

TalkBack / Re: Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy (Switch) Review

« on: July 02, 2018, 08:52:50 PM »

I played the collection on PS4, and while the remake is visually lovely, I found the level design just absolutely cruel. Just couldn't get into it, though supposedly it got better by the 3rd game.