Messages

151

Nintendo Gaming / Re: E3 2017: REGGIE GOES BIG

« on: June 13, 2017, 01:46:33 PM »

Well I caught up last night on the general E3 announcements, and then watched the Nintendo Spotlight just now. Really a pretty underwhelming show overall, not a looker among the third parties or Sony/Microsoft that I saw.

Nintendo was okay. Metroid Prime 4 apparently not being developed by Retro, is, uh. The Metroid II remake from Mercury Steam looks like an awful 2D Other M. Yoshi's 2.5D Woolly World looks good, I'm assuming this is Good Feel? Better be. The Rabbids game actually looks pretty good, might be okay! Don't give a **** about eSports, but Nintendo going all in on cross-platform play is obviously a good idea.

That Mario Odyssey trailer fucking rekt though, looks like an all-timer in the making.

152

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch/Wii U Indie Game Review/First Impressions Thread

« on: June 08, 2017, 03:52:41 AM »

Super Meat Boy 2, sounds good to me, especially after the endless Isaac iterations that I could not give a **** about.

153

TalkBack / Re: Details Announced For Nintendo Online Service

« on: June 01, 2017, 10:35:09 PM »

Damn, they rolled this out same day as the voice chat tangle uproar. Planned PR strategy or surprisingly fast and effective triage?

154

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch headset chat is typical Nintendo LOL-Fail™

« on: June 01, 2017, 12:32:00 PM »

I find pretty much nothing lamer than these headsets in the first place, though that's basically an extension of my dislike for online multiplayer. But while I'll never use it and this doesn't affect me, it's definitely a bad enough case where I'm cringing vicariously.

Is it possible this is just for the portable mode? How would this even work while docked?

155

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

« on: May 14, 2017, 01:15:20 PM »

I don't know why this Switch VR idea keeps coming up. The unit is isn't nearly strong/hi-res enough to render any VR stuff on par with competitors, plus the tablet is way too big to slot into a head mounted display. It's not going to happen with the current system. And that's okay!

In general, the VR market seems to be under-performing, and investment is drawing off: http://about.crunchbase.com/news/despite-hype-vr-investment-fades-q1-2017/

156

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: April 17, 2017, 02:33:43 AM »

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC):

Got this for like $1.50 on a GOG sale at some point, and finally booted it up. I'd consistently heard that this is one of the best Bioware-style RPGs; I really liked Mass Effect 2 while hating 3 and thinking the new one looks terrible, so I'd been hopeful about KOTOR as a pre-lapsarian sci-fi treat.

But man, this really feels like a relic of when a "PC" game was partially a genre description. It's ugly as hell in that weird bad early PC 3D game way, incredibly clunky to control, and utterly festooned with annoying systems, a billion stats, and endless micromanagement, with stupid dice role combat (hitting a mutant dog with a lightsaber point-blank, "miss" "miss"). I get now why this would be appealing to people into this level of role playing, and you seem to have an interesting level of control over your character's alignment (I enjoyed successfully lying to the Jedi council about my intentions to become a Sith mass murderer), but damn this thing is a headache to actually play. I impressed myself by getting through the opening world, but now I'm on Dantooine and looking at another hub full of annoying monster enemies that take too many resources to avoid taking damage from during combat or else healing from combat. And a lot of the more seemingly fun stuff, like hacking solutions and such, takes an obnoxious amount of resources to mess with. I guess I could be playing it wrong or something by auto-leveling, but it's too niche/archaic for my threshold. Similar to System Shock 2 in that respect. So that's probably it for me. 

Yooka-Laylee (PC):

And my current jam. I did not have any particular hopes for this one and find the naked nostalgia pandering kind of distasteful, but as a platformer fiend I figured it would be a time sink at least. At about 5 hours in it is that, and I will probably at least clear the minimum page collection threshold to get my money's worth. But boy, this is kind of depressing/cringey. Something about it feels like watching people re-enact a Monty Python sketch. Plus it does not feel good to play a lot of the time just on a visceral level, and the actual act of collecting stuff is weirdly lacking that good old dopamine punch. There's a large variety of activities to do, but few of them are particularly fun. The worlds so far evoke that mildly nauseating Banjo-Tooie feeling of being lost among a big scramble of ****. Like, oh here's some locked gim-gam I can't get yet, and will have to come back for, except I will never remember where this is. On top of that there's an unpleasant gummy feel to the whole enterprise, with its shitty camera, clumsy non-platforming-activity controls, annoying save system, inability to skip through cutscenes and certain (random?) dialogues, inability to resent mini-games after fucking them up off the bat, etc. Regardless of where you come down on the value of a slavish recreation of a collect-a-thon, there's just a ton of **** this game could and should be doing better that wouldn't diminish any Banjo-clone authenticity.

157

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

« on: April 17, 2017, 01:55:19 AM »

I've been remiss in passing along my objectively correct assessments of games lately, but I'll work some of the rust out.

Hollow Knight (PC):

While some of you suckers were wasting time with Zelda on your fancy new consoles, I was plowing 30 hours in yet another indie Metroidvania. Except that this is one of the very few that gets anywhere near real Metroid games, and either ties or exceeds Shadow Complex. I kind of don't want to say too much about it, but I think it does two things that really set it apart in a genre stuffed with also-rans.

(1.) It has a genuine sense of exploration, and allows you to get lost, confused, and overwhelmed by daunting but not impossible scenarios. Many genre entrants clumsily stitch together levels with some perfunctory backtracking, but this game does it right.

(2.) Ability progression, while somewhat staid in terms of content (wall-jumps, damage upgrades, e.g.), gradually and extremely satisfyingly changes how you understand and engage with the geography of the world and its inhabitants. There's some late game "lock and key" stuff that's a bit par for the course and disappointing, but your first hours in the game feel radically different from your last hours.

Also it's fucking massive and manages to squeeze a lot of mileage out of its aesthetic in a way that I think stuff like Ori and the Bling Forest failed to do. I could probably do without the Dark Souls-iness around the edges, but I do appreciate that it's challenging.

Snake Pass (PC):

Caught wind of this one shortly before release and pulled the trigger based on the sheer novelty of the concept. It was . . . okay I guess? It's kind of a cognitive experiment to see if you can program yourself to figure out the controls, and it was a specific kind of satisfying to breeze through the last levels as I achieved reflexive mastery. But aside from that there's not a hell of a lot to the game. I feel like it needed a greater variety of mechanics to make it a full-fledged experience. The stuff that gets introduced as it goes along feels mostly aesthetic, or just annoying. Ultimately there's a sense that once you've climbed one bamboo pole array you've climbed them all.

158

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

« on: April 11, 2017, 01:24:36 AM »

Yeah, I really liked Runner 1, easily the best of the Bit Trip games, but 2, while still good, didn't really have enough new ideas to sustain an expanded stand-alone title. And the aggressively ugly 3D graphics actively interfered with readability.

159

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Switch Discussion Thread (The early days)

« on: March 26, 2017, 09:47:28 PM »

That 20 million number seems a tad optimistic, though I certainly think it's possible that Switch beats WiiU lifetime within a year on the market.

My baseline assumption is that the Switch will come in between the 64 and the 3DS (~30 million and ~60 million). I'm thinking more on the conservative side of that spread with 40 million, though I'm unsure of how the likelihood of ambiguous quasi-generations will muddle the picture.

160

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch/Wii U) Out now!

« on: March 05, 2017, 02:12:20 AM »

This is probably going to be my least liked 3D Zelda game since Twilght sadly. Just like TP, this game's image quailty is horrendus as everything has this weird washed out look about it. There's clearly an amazing colour pallette there, but whatever funky workings they've got going on in this is presenting it as a mess.

As for the game...

Like a lot of open world games, this feels bloated and the majority of exploration just a meaningless time sink that not only offers little to actually do, but little reason to do it. I'd take a smaller more content filled world in any game than a pointless bloated one.

The controls aren't quite up to Nintendo's past works and the new additions are just okay. The puzzle like elements for the additions are pretty good mind. The story is okay, but it might just be me, but I'm not a fan of VA in Zelda. It just doesn't feel right.

I'd give this a 6/10 so far.

Bloated empty open world, horrendus [sic] image quality, the Switch's honeymoon period (from the other thread), why, you've got most of the talking points down! You got anything about garbage motion controls or dogshit OS or anything like that?

161

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch/Wii U Indie Game Review/First Impressions Thread

« on: February 28, 2017, 03:23:24 AM »

I mean, to some extant I think I am having the problem of having played too many games at this point to enjoy stuff I find unexceptional. Unlike movies or TV shows that can be processed on the side or otherwise take less time or attention, I am definitely losing patience with mediocre video games.

As a big fan of the Metroid titles I have played quite a few Indie wannabe Metroidvania games and at this point I'm no longer really satiated just by the attempt at the structure. I would put both Axiom Verge and Guacamelee at the "nice try" level, better than, say, Ori and the Blind Forest or Incredibly Twisted Shadow Planet, but not on the same level as Metroid games. I think this design mold is really tricky to pull off well because it potentially involves so much repetition.

I've said it before, but I'd pretty much only rate Shadow Complex as a truly excellent attempt at the genre. It got kind of poo-pooed on rerelease for whatever reason, possibly because it's kind of the opposite of Guacamelee: presentation is somewhat bland but the actual level design and play feel is top-notch. 

162

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch/Wii U Indie Game Review/First Impressions Thread

« on: February 28, 2017, 01:26:50 AM »

You know, I wasn't really that thrilled by Guacamelee. Indie Metroidvanias always feel like exactly that- an unrefined developer tackling one of the most difficult-to-design genres in video gaming. Or, at least, a very difficult genre to execute with finesse. I wasn't too pleased with how the endgame became energy-shield-based, and how the final area was a bunch of gimmicky kill-rooms. I also didn't really think much of the bosses- they just weren't memorable or even difficult to a point where fighting them felt memorable.

I definitely liked the art style, and I think the idea of a brawler-Metroidvania is cool, but it didn't all come together in the end, for me. Still, for fans of the genre, I would give it a recommendation because of its interesting aesthetic and some cool ideas, but I wouldn't place it in the upper echelons of Metroidvanias.

Yeah, I'd second this. Decent hook for a Metroidy game with the movement and fighting upgrades being tied together, but the actual progression and world design was pretty perfunctory. And as said, it leans way too heavily on the kill rooms.

163

Nintendo Gaming / Re: 1-2-Switch = Nintendo's EPD = SPD + EAD

« on: February 18, 2017, 03:53:55 AM »

A brilliant juncture for Azeke chime in. I had a really negative view of this game based on the reveal and subsequent poo-pooing. I certainly hadn't thought about who made it or watched any coverage of it.

So one of the most frequent comments about this game relates to its price, which I couldn't fathom being justified from how it was initially presented. But as Azeke says, if you enjoy the Rhythm Heaven/Wario Ware style of presentation and interaction, this actually looks pretty clutch. Certainly it's more of a pure local multiplayer game, but you can see it excelling as such in that video.

And you can certainly see the budget; it looks like a karaoke Japanese game show.

164

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Switch Discussion (March 3, 2017 Release) -Updated OP-

« on: February 18, 2017, 01:44:57 AM »

As for the account kvetching, I've never really understood the intense feelings about it. Like, do people want to be able to log into their friends' consoles to download their games and play them there? Is that how it works on PS4/Xbone? I don't really get how that would work, or why a company would let you do that without de-linking the original licenses first. Plus it would take a long time to actually download and play a full game in a social setting.

Is it to have your games on two different systems that you own? I can see that being a more legitimate use case, but again, you could just give the other console to a friend or whatever and they would get the software for free.

The main hangup seems to be that you have to **** around calling Nintendo customer service if you want to transfer your account/library to a new system for whatever reason, which is not something most people are going to do at any point.

A real sore point, having to repurchase eShop/VC titles over again, is purely a policy problem.

As for Evan_B's perspective, I mean, I guess I feel ya? The industry is only getting shittier, and Nintendo is slowly but surely bending to that gravity with cell phone games, season passes, paid online and whathaveyou. They put up a good fight, but the world is what it is. The Switch is arguably overdesigned, but I'm viewing it primarily as the home for Nintendo games for the next 4-5 years, nothing more, nothing less. (Although maybe less, depending on how far down the slippery monetization slope they slide.) Nintendo is practically an endangered genre preserve at this point. Having pretty much played every older game I'm interested in, if independent-platform Nintendo flames out, I'm probably done with the hobby outside of the odd PC release.

165

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

« on: February 17, 2017, 02:39:21 AM »

Yeah, that's a variety of impressive. The game is certainly set up to get you itching to clear all those hexagons, and I felt the call, but I just kind of flamed out on the game about 3/4s of the way through the main story. The mechs are fun to fly around in but I also found they made combat fairly dull and added another layer of equipment micromanagement that I really didn't want at that point of the game. I would have probably kept going to play out the affinity missions, but it's such a pain in the ass to manually assemble different teams in the city that I gave up on that too. 

166

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Switch Discussion (March 3, 2017 Release) -Updated OP-

« on: February 13, 2017, 04:12:26 PM »

It's possible to make smaller scale games. That doesn't mean they have to look bad. Look at the very best indy output that is on xbox one or ps4. That is what you should expect from Nintendo. We'll get more games, but not all will be Zelda BOTW sized.

I don't expect games like New Super Mario Bros, or Mario 3d land style games to disappear. Unless Nintendo just makes those games on phones. Which would defeat the point of consolidating.

I'm thinking more specifically 3D games, which ain't exactly indies' forte just yet. Again, looking at Kid Icarus Uprising, I kinda doubt that game would've flown as a WiiU title. Making that at full resolution by itself would significantly up the budget for asset creation, I would think, and change the spec of the game. I'm mainly just curious to see how the dev teams adapt their design priorities, or if there'll be a bifurcation between physical releases and eShop releases, how pricing will be affected, etc. Like, is a Pokemon Stars 3DS up-port going to sit at $50 next to a $60 Mario release? Is a $40 A Link Between Worlds 2 going to sit next to $60 Breath of the Wild?

Nintendo's gotta finesse consumer expectations on this one, part of the challenge and opportunity of the hybrid platform. Folks like us on a message board know how to parse this stuff, but if they want to break out of the 15-30 million consumer base that they've been stuck with outside of the Wii and handheld lines, they've gotta communicate simply and coherently to Average Target Shopper. I guess you could look at Japanese output split between PS4/PS4/Vita, but I imagine Nintendo isn't eager to associate itself with the weird AA Otaku ecosystem.

167

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Switch Discussion (March 3, 2017 Release) -Updated OP-

« on: February 13, 2017, 03:32:12 AM »

One of the things I'm curious about is how Nintendo is going to position the wave of Switch games that would have otherwise been "3DS sized". They can't lean on low-resolutions to present "premium" handheld experiences with lesser assets, so they're going to have to figure out how to present lower-budget titles alongside titles like Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild. I feel like like lower-priced WiiU titles such as Kirby's Magic Rainbow Ride or Captain Toad isn't quite the same thing, as those were concept games.

So a sub-brand spur? Budget line? New approach to art styles for "full" games like Kid Icarus? The rumored Pokemon Stars will be an interesting test case.

168

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Not a hater but... (future prediction)

« on: February 07, 2017, 11:28:19 PM »

Well-stated examination of the current state of video games vis a vis criticism

I agree with everything you've written. From one perspective, you could argue that this is all part of the growing pains of any new medium, and that it took decades to develop the technique and language surrounding motion pictures, for instance, which started off as hand-cranked novelty exhibitions.

But with video games as a modern phenomenon, it really seems like the consumers, producers, and commentators are locked in an unhealthy hermetic ecosystem. I've heard anecdotally from friends in academia that critical studies of video games were starting to pick up steam, but got kneecapped by the Gamergate "movement".

At the same time, the product is becoming more and more overdetermined by multiplayer and online  considerations (including streamers) on the one hand, in which it's hard to describe something like Overwatch or Destiny as "art" (are sports art? are board games?), and on the other hand by semi-interactive theme park attraction games that are perversely trying to focus on narrative and eschew the actual foundational and unique elements of the medium. As you say, I think Nintendo is one of the few major producers still doing it right (at least part of the time).

169

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Not a hater but... (future prediction)

« on: February 07, 2017, 04:04:51 PM »

That's an interesting point, you'd think any professional video game website would try to gin up as much interest in everything as possible. And yet that's not what usually happens. There really are some bizarre cultural affectations in the video game world that run deep enough to seemingly counter business logic. Too many folks took schoolyard "kiddy" taunts deep, and were also the kind of people to become "professional game journalists".

170

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Thoughts on Nintendo Switch After Attending the Toronto Preview Event

« on: February 07, 2017, 05:09:44 AM »

I'll add my thanks for the write-up.

I guess I'm most curious about the Joycon grip at this point, but it doesn't sound like it made much of an impression. It frankly looks kind of awful, but Nintendo hasn't made an awkward controller since the N64. Although now we're in combined handheld, territory, so . . . But anyway, I found the Wiimote + Nunchuk an extremely comfortable way to play games, so I'm hoping I can just ignore the grip (no way I'm shelling out for a pro controller unless Switch is in deep discount by the time I break down and buy one).

My impression of Arms from the reveal is also very blah, and your impressions don't change that. It just . . . looks like a bonus mode in another game or something. Granted I'm not the biggest fighting game fan outside of Smash, but Arms seems like a weird middle ground between an arcadey party game and an actual 1v1 fighting game.

171

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

« on: February 05, 2017, 12:08:13 AM »

Resident Evil 7 (PC):

Spoilers!

Well, I finished this up quicker than I expected at a hair over eight hours, as it turns out I was halfway done when I wrote up my impressions.

And the game did not get any better from there; in fact, it got worse! The two final areas, a derelict ship and a derelict mine, are extremely bland, making the ho-hum house complex seem creative by comparison. And the mine is just a big monster closet, stuffed full of the same creatures (and slight variants) you've been fighting the whole game, which aren't good in the first place. Plus, as I learned early on, you can quite easily run past almost all enemies.

I was actually surprised when the end came, as the final boss is extremely underwhelming and easy (although the whole game is, really). I had a grenade launcher and magnum that I never actually used because I was saving them for when things got tight, but they were never remotely necessary. And the game is so scripted that I have zero interest in playing again on a decently challenging mode.

Overall, I'm kind of baffled at how positive a reception this is getting. I guess it's not as bankrupt as 5, but I am strapped to think of anything positive to say about it. I'd give it a 5/10 for being functional.

172

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: February 01, 2017, 03:38:15 AM »

I hope too! Red Dead Redemption is still the only open world game I look back on fondly, and it would be difficult to establish just why that is. Certainly Zelda will be very different, but I hope the team has that game in mind to some extant. They managed to make riding a horse for tens of hours fun.

But now for my own entry!

Resident Evil 7 (PC) (spoilers?):

I haven't played a major studio game in a long time, and I am a big RE fan up til 5  (which I disliked so much I never even tried the maligned 6 out of curiosity), so I pulled the trigger on this and was delighted to find it ran well at medium settings on my untested laptop. Loads super fast off the SSD too!

I think I'm about a third of the way through at about 4 hours (two sessions). I kind of fucking hate it! It's technically competent (and again is surprisingly well optimized, which is rare), but it's pissing me off in a weird way.

The first chunk of the game feels like the VR analog of watching a bad 3D movie on a 2D screen, with **** being thrust in your face, extended bits where you lose control or have very limited control while animations and "story" moments play out. It does open up at a point and has a structure a bit more like a traditional Resident Evil game.

But it's really not working so far. The setting is bland (and has noticeable repeating assets), an uninspired combo of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and older RE games (I've yet to see anything I thought was strikingly done or original).

It's small on purpose, but by insisting on old-style RE progression design (within pretty narrow ranges) it makes it feels oddly absurd and on rails. I think it might be the first-person apparatus, it really highlights the sillyness of special keys and puzzle objects and magical item boxes. The circuitous routes become annoying and repetitive in a way that they don't in the classic games.  It certainly doesn't help that the evil family is extremely cartoonish, and that you are dousing yourself in magical healing juice and having body parts slapped back on.

The combat feels pretty shitty, retains some sluggishness from the older games but applied to a first-person perspective and focused on aggravating enemies who sway around the reticle (coughRevelationsGooMonstercough). And it's often unclear what the rules are surrounding monsters, so resource management feels haphazard. For instance, I suddenly hit a sequence that threw enemies at me like a classic game, and I burned all my ammo blundering through it. Instead of reloading the save, I just kept blundering, had to run past enemies, ended up in a silly ass boss fight I blundered through, found the enemies gone afterward. So how long do they stick around? Do I have to kill anything other than family members in clunky, partially scripted boss fights? I don't know.

So far I'd describe it as an unpalatable mixture of Condemned, Outlast, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and one of the Revelations games.

173

General Gaming / Re: What are you playing?

« on: January 31, 2017, 08:37:18 PM »

Yo, I'm about 80% through Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and I honestly don't know how much longer I can go on.

The action in this game is so boring, the plot, so bland. On one hand, sailing around the sea in my unstoppable god-killing machine, The Jackdaw, is fun, if only because nothing except legendary ships can stand in my way (and some of those are cheap as hell. Seriously, armor everywhere except on the back? That's ridiculous!), and collecting things certainly is... time consuming, but the fact that very few collectible items contribute to tangible upgrades and the world-building is so unnecessarily dense, the reason I've been playing this game for the better part of a year and a half in between much more exciting releases is because it wears me out so much. Yet the completionist, obsessive-compulsive part of me wants to stop at every sliver of beach to pick up stupid treasure chests and Animus fragments.

Also, the controls are wonky.

This game was something of a "watershed" for me. For the first two-thirds or so I greatly enjoyed the sailing, whaling, fort attacks, treasure dives, large scale ship battles, etc., and paid little mind to the lousy but kind of ancillary main mission line. But I made the terrible mistake of 100%ing it, and by the time I swam to my last sand bar to open a pointless chest it burnt me out on this type of game forever, or at least playing this type of game with OCD. I managed to finish The Witcher 3 and AC: Unity, but found the sprawl of those games at time sickening, and those were the last two open worlds I've bothered with. I'm actually a bit worried about Breath of the Wild as a result . . . 

174

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Not a hater but... (future prediction)

« on: January 28, 2017, 02:33:03 AM »

I'm glad Ian is posting again 👆

Metroid Prime 3, while probably not as good as 1 overall, did a lot well, used the Wii tech correctly, and has some of the best areas/sequences of the series. But besides that, Prime essentially invented a genre of game that has not been replicated to my knowledge, and I think there's plenty of room to kick out the walls on the basic formula and articulate and expand the kinds of interaction that are possible, environmental interaction being a hallmark of the series. And that's where the better level of tech on the Switch can come in; Prime 4 can build additional layers of immersion through better graphical fidelity, technologically facilitated gameplay elements (cutting-edge physics, expanded scope, materially constructed objects and obstacles), and plain old design innovation in a persistent 3D space-type that only has three games to its name.

175

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo Switch/Wii U Indie Game Review Thread

« on: January 27, 2017, 04:28:38 PM »

Show, don't tell. That should be the motto for Toki Tori 2. This open world puzzle game challenges players to observe the environment and use their wits to figure out (a) the goal of the game, (b) how to identify where the puzzles are, and most importantly (c) how to solve the puzzles littered across the game world.

Not everyone will enjoy this game. It's not something you can play casually or without thought, and it's not big on hand holding. But Toki Tori 2 is extremely well made and very rewarding as you progress deeper into the game.

Very highly recommended. One of the best experience I've had on Wii U - bar none.


Perhaps this is a good time to mention that all Two Tribes games are on sale right now in North America?

Yup, I forgot to mention this somehow, but this is one of the best puzzle games ever made in my book. Just an astonishing level of design skill on display here, essentially constructing a Metroid where the skills you acquire are made of your own thinking.

I also believe the WiiU version might be the best, as I think they updated the game when porting it to include text and hints and stuff, which sounds to me like blasphemy.