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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR
« Last post by Luigi Dude on October 12, 2025, 02:35:57 PM »
Earlier this week I finished Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling.  I'm going to count this since some of the enemies you fight are spiders and spiders are an icon of Halloween.  There's also some Jake O Lantern enemies in the game along with Zombie Insects as well.  One of the major sections of the game is also a Fall setting with the tree's being red and brown and leaves falling so it fits the season in several ways

Anyway, for anyone that doesn't know, this game is a Paper Mario clone that plays like the first two games in the series.  The only real difference is this game gives you three characters to control in battle at a time instead of two like in Paper Mario.  Of course those three characters you have are the only characters you'll have in the entire game, which kind of surprised me since one of the things Paper Mario fans would always praise about the first two games is all the different unique partner characters Mario gets in those two games.  So here's a Paper Mario clone made by fans of the series and it only has 3 total party members that you use the entire game.  Just make me have a chuckle when one the the biggest complaints about Sticker Star and Color Splash is the lack of unique party members and here's a Paper Mario clone aimed at the fans of the first two games, and it has a lack of unique party members.

Anyway the game is actually pretty good.  The world is alive and full of charming NPC characters, and I felt it does a good job of matching the humor of Paper Mario games.  I also love how the game gives you a medal at the beginning that activates a Hard Mode when you equip it.  This actually made the beginning of the game better than the beginning of the first two Paper Mario games since you get a decent challenge at first.  Of course the irony is by the second half, it becomes really easy to get badges that just break the game.  Even though it was what the game considered Hard Mode, I still found the second half easier than actual Paper Mario games.

So this is a game that starts stronger then actual Paper Mario games, with having 3 characters in battle at a time and a higher difficulty to choose from, but kind of peaks early on and never reaches the highs of an Paper Mario.  A good example would be how the boss fights in Paper Mario have some unique gimmick to each one that make it so you can't just use the same strategy in each one.  In this game on the other hand, I was basically doing the same strategy for every boss fight and none of them really do anything to break that like actual Paper Mario bosses do to make each fight unique.  This combined with the game having you use the same three characters throughout the entire game feel repetitive by the end.

Overall it's still a good game and I'd recommend it to anyone that's a fan of Paper Mario games, especially the first two.  The world, story, and characters still remain good throughout the whole game, but the combat and puzzles kind of hit their peak in the first half of the game, with the second half feeling repetitive at times.
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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR
« Last post by broodwars on October 12, 2025, 01:23:26 PM »
Dana Gould is also probably his most annoying in the entire series in this entry.

I only know Dana Gould from writing on the Simpsons. I haven't actually seen his stand up or know his voice that well. Is it a case of bad writing, bad performance, or both?

It's the Bubsy problem, a typical issue with platformers of the day. He just never shuts up. As for the performance, I find it hit or miss in all the games.
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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Shares Short Film - Close to You
« Last post by Khushrenada on October 12, 2025, 12:33:33 PM »
The other rumor is that the baby is Rosalina and this is related to the next Mario movie. Personally, the animation style looks just like Illumination to me.

He may be late to the party but he's got some good theories!
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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR
« Last post by M.K.Ultra on October 12, 2025, 11:35:25 AM »
Dana Gould is also probably his most annoying in the entire series in this entry.

I only know Dana Gould from writing on the Simpsons. I haven't actually seen his stand up or know his voice that well. Is it a case of bad writing, bad performance, or both?
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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Shares Short Film - Close to You
« Last post by M.K.Ultra on October 12, 2025, 11:32:58 AM »
The other rumor is that the baby is Rosalina and this is related to the next Mario movie. Personally, the animation style looks just like Illumination to me.
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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR
« Last post by broodwars on October 12, 2025, 10:21:19 AM »
Well, I completed Gex; Gex: Enter the Gecko; and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko from the Gex Trilogy release, and after some consideration I decided to count them as Shocktober games. For one, a huge chunk of all 3 games are taken up by the Horror Channel (or horror-adjacent 3's Egypt and ghost cowboy-filled Western Channels), probably at least 1/5 the content if not 1/3. For another, in Gex 2 and 3 Gex is wearing costumes themed to the channel, so it's in the Halloween spirit.

I never played Gex 1 before now, and it fucking sucks. It's an absolutely wretched experience, between the gotcha deaths; slippery controls; the long, labyrinthine levels (with no indication of where to go, naturally); and the hidden bonus stages you HAVE to perfectly complete in order to unlock the final world. This game is basically unplayble without save states and rewind, which this collection has. It is kinda neat that Gex can stick to walls and ceilings both in the foreground and back, but it's just not enough to make this game remotely enjoyable to play. Dana Gould is also probably his most annoying in the entire series in this entry. How? How in the world did this spawn a franchise?

Gex 2 was a game I played a ton of back on the N64, and it's still a pretty enjoyable game now. By far the game's biggest issues are a stubborn camera (typical of the era) and repetition. There are 6 themes spread out across 13 levels, each level having up to 5 remotes to find (3 of which will send you out of the level), and that's not counting the bonus levels. You just see way too much similar content, but what is here is still fun.

And no, this release is based on the PS version, so you don't get the N64-exclusive levels, though they are present in the collection in video form so they weren't forgotten.

I never played Gex 3 back in the day, and playing it now I'm torn on whether I like it more than Gex 2, as it does some things better and some worse. On the bright side, there are 11 levels, and they're each a unique theme. No theme gets re-used, outside of the bonus stages. The game also adopts a bit of the Banjo-Kazooie hub world structure, with levels accessed from themed areas instead of just generic TVs in a generic hub.

On the downside, the levels are surprisingly long for what they are, and while hidden remotes are gone this time the collectible remotes have gotten more annoying than they should be. You could just blast through levels in Gex 2 if you knew where you were going, but Gex 3 is a very plodding game by comparison. Instead of collecting just a set number of collectables (but not all of them) for a remote, there are 100 fly coins in each level and you have to find them all. This includes coins dropped by enemies, and there is no wiggle room. They're basically the notes from Banjo now, because everyone loved collecting those. -_-

If you're going for all the remotes, it just makes the game a slog. I ended up just giving up at one point after the particularly awful Mythology level (which is different than the N64 version that came later) and just skipping the final 4 levels, going straight to the final boss.

Overall, Gex 2 and 3 aren't the most amazing games, but I had a decent enough time with them.

Currently playing through Silent Hill f, which is...different. I'm not sure yet whether I like it.
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Had a lot of family stuff going on lately so haven't had the energy to play much since finishing Xenoblade 2 earlier this week. Figured i might as well go on and continue with Stranger Things: Season 3.

...Really? THIS is the season of the show that's universally hated? THIS one, the one where **** actually happens; everyone actually contributes to the story; there are actual consequences to the things the characters do; and Eleven isn't just an instant win button for once? Really?  :o

Yeah, I thought this season was pretty alright. Granted, it had a bit of a slow start with teenage love bullshit and you have to accept some really stupid plot contrivances (i.e. everything about the Russians, *redacted* not getting dissolved into meat several times throughout the season when so many others were; etc.), but in general i thought it was well-paced. Refreshingly, while characters would act recklessly, they weren't generally weren't acting STUPIDLY like they were in Season 2. Yeah, the nostalgia key jangling was a bit excessive both at the start of the season and the end, but in general I thought that was a decent watch. I'm not sure why people hate this season so much.
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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR
« Last post by M.K.Ultra on October 09, 2025, 04:47:38 PM »
A couple of days ago I kicked off Shocktober by beating the story mode in The House of the Dead: Overkill on Wii. It had been a while since I got to use the Wii zapper and honestly it was not as accurate as I remember. I think it works better with a smaller TV and with non-rechargeable batteries, both things that have changed since I last fired one of these off.
The game itself is quite short, with the story mode only having about 7 chapters and lasting less than 4 hours. The game is gratuitous in more ways than one and reminded me of the Robert Rodriguez film Planet Terror. I am now seeing that according to the the Wikipedia article for the game, the film was an inspiration for the developers. There is a nice upgrade system and during the campaign I was able to fully upgrade the default weapon as well as acquire one more. The Director's Cut is now unlocked and there are some in-game achievements/unlockables that will make this one I can revisit for a long time.
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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR
« Last post by M.K.Ultra on October 09, 2025, 04:33:59 PM »
Oh wait, while I'm typing this and checking things I have ZombiU on my Wii U backlog, so I'll go with that.
I feel like that was a past Shocktober game for me...yep, last game of the month in Shocktober 4 back when I was still able to export proper screenshot from Wii U. Definitely a fun game and perfect for this forum topic.
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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR
« Last post by M.K.Ultra on October 09, 2025, 04:29:58 PM »
Probably not much from me this month.I am picking up Tormented Souls 2 later this month, but that comes out on the 23rd so it's possible I might not be done with that game by the end of the month.

Might be a good time to play that port of Fear Effect that came out a month or so ago, or to do a proper replay of RE6.
I am also not going to finish many games this month so I might do a lot of first impressions instead.

One on my list is RE7!
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