Sno

You can still play Wii VC games on the Wii U, yeah. You have to upgrade them to the Wii U versions for all the extra features.

I just watched the Nintendo Direct: I'm not sure i actually like all the filters they seem to be plastering on Wind Waker HD, but if they finish and restore any of the content that had been cut from the game, i am definitely on board for that. The promises they're making for the other Zelda game are definitely also very interesting. A non-linear Zelda game? Multiplayer? SMTxFE is something i would have never guessed at happening and i have no goddamned idea what it will be. I'm not sure how i feel about the VC stuff. Initial reaction is negative, but Nintendo could have just as easily not even given you the option to upgrade like that, made you buy things again. I mean, and the VC games i've bought are games i really, really love, so i'll probably end up sinking the twenty bucks or so it would take to upgrade them. It sounds like the Wii U VC is at least adding some pretty substantial new features. The various MiiVerse/OS upgrades all sound nice. Also, how nice of Nintendo to just tell me flat out that i don't have to buy a Wii U for at least two more months. New Mario from the Galaxy/3D Land team is definitely worth being excited about. That Yoshi game looks adorable. Bayonetta 2 and Wonderful 101 continue to look awesome. (While clearly a completely different style of game, i think Wonderful 101 has a slight Viewtiful Joe vibe.) The Monolith game is probably the thing i'm most excited about in there, Xenoblade firmly established itself as one of my favorite recent RPG's, and i think that trailer is incredibly exciting. (It's very definitely the Xenoblade ability bar in there, and the combat looks very similar. The character at the end also looks a lot like the main character of Xenoblade. Direct sequel, maybe? There's also some rumors going around that pin the game as having a multiplayer focus.) A lot of good stuff here though, the Wii U just went from "Yeah, i guess i'll probably buy one" to being something i'm really pretty excited about.

This is the demo. It's really not very long, it doesn't show much at all. It was just enough to leave me feeling fairly convinced that the combat is built on a good foundation, but i'm not so sure about anything else. Though there are a ton of codec conversations in the demo, everybody has like four or five things to go through before they start repeating.

Sure, i understand what you're getting at. The message behind Metal Gear has always been very anti-war and anti-violence. It gets there in very roundabout and convoluted ways, but it gets there. Revengeance is kind of pitching an opposite and even more confused "murder is okay if they're dicks to you first." To that end, i already suspect that Revengeance is probably going to try to have it both ways. You'll be gleefully murdering dudes all the way through to the end of the game, then Raiden will have some big internal struggle and an epiphany about killing being bad. It will be clumsy and awful, but everybody will agree that it could have been worse. Then Raiden will cut a Metal Gear in half with his sword and credits will roll. Beyond that, there's also some very vaguely implemented stealth mechanisms in the game, such as the escape timer and the iconic alert notice. The demo was so short that it wasn't easy to tell if it's just there for stylistic consistency or what. It's something neither Konami nor Platinum have been talking about.

I'm much more of a Platinum fan than a Metal Gear fan, the series isn't really a sacred cow for me, so i don't much care that Platinum seems to be going so far over the top with it. Rather, i'm all for it. Hot blooded cyber ninjas in desperate sword fights with giant robots? Fuck yeah, bring it on. Wasn't MGS4 kind of going in that direction anyways, a much more heightened and ridiculous tone?

Okay, so it has you do a running jump to grab the hand holds on the rectangular block, and then you shuffle along those handholds to the other side. Once you reach the side facing the large circular stone platform, you're expected to charge jump from the handholds over to a ledge just off of the large circular platform and the camera swings around automatically to try and give you a clear view of that. (While you're charging the jump, you can hold the left analog stick to affect the direction that jump will execute in.) That's the sequence we're talking about here, and i just did it in one go and didn't notice the camera doing anything problematic, so... I don't know. So how about that third colossus. (The one with the duck face.)

I think i know what part you're talking about, and i think you might have done it wrong. The way the camera orients itself is trying to tell you to hang off the edge and push off with a charged jump. (While holding the analog stick away from the wall so Wander leans out for a horizontal leap.) It should work on the first try without fail.

I feel it's worth pointing out that many retail chains refused to sell the PSP Go because of its digital only nature. Which, admittedly, is kind of ridiculous when you consider that many of those same stores now sell tablets and smart phones.

Did anybody actually bother to try out that Metal Gear Rising demo? I just got around to it, it's very short, but i like the feel of the mechanics it's teasing. Platinum definitely knows how to make a good character action game. The demo doesn't really adequately explain anything, so i played through it a second time and started mashing buttons to try and figure a few things out. So a few pointers from me intuiting what the controls would probably be based on experiences with similar games: Tap twice in a direction and hit heavy attack to dash attack. Tap twice in a direction and hit the light attack to launch an enemy. (Light attacks in the air to juggle, heavy attack to smash them back to the ground.) Tap once in a direction together with the light attack to parry, you can hold the attack to draw out the window, it's fairly generous. Press the right trigger upon hitting the ground to quickly recover from knockback. That's probably enough for the demo. There's definitely some combos in there too, mixing up light and heavy attacks and such.

Colossus #3! Go!

Stooop maaakiiing meee feeeel ooolllddd.

I think 3D Land makes a great case for stereoscopy too, not just the gimmicky puzzles, but the depth perception being actually valuable for judging the distances of jumps. I mean, when you're playing 3D Mario games, when you want to judge jumps you're not sure about, how do you look at it? You fiddle with the camera a bit to get a few different angles on the jump so you can figure out what the exact distance and direction your jump needs to be. In this one, the camera is fixed, but you can rely on the depth perception offered by the 3DS's autostereoscopic screen instead. I don't know about you guys, but when i played that game, i noticed myself screaming through stages very quickly when i had the 3DS's autostereoscopy enabled, and found that i was missing jumps and dying a lot when it was disabled. Beyond that, it helps that it's also just genuinely one of the best Mario games in years, it's fantastic. I did!

Well, given that the ESRB was only formed in 1994, that last bit wouldn't apply to many Virtual Console games. I don't believe films are regulated in this fashion within the US, nor is any other medium. This would very much be singling out video games.

Nintendo has actually already, completely voluntarily, been submitting old games to the ESRB for new ratings when they go up for sale on Virtual Console. (It is my understanding that the costs associated with the ESRB rating process are actually a big part of why those Virtual Console games cost so damn much. Seriously.)

Just take a running jump at your horse from the side and use the grab command to mount it. That's all it is, it's an easier way to get on your horse when you're in the middle of a colossus battle, since the normal way of doing it, by just pressing jump, requires that your horse be still and you be in just the right position next to it. I always thought it was kind of intuitive, you're using the grab on your horse like you would on anything else.

If you need a new 360 controller anyways, there's no reason not to find one with the revised d-pad. It's a significant improvement over the original 360 d-pad.

If even just a few of the rumors pan out, GDC is going to be unrestricted insanity this year.

The revised 360 pad has the "transforming" d-pad. By default, it's a disc like the old style of Microsoft d-pads, but you can twist it and cause the corners to sink away, making it feels like a proper cross pad. It's also generally just much more responsive and comfortable to use. I still couldn't imagine playing a fighting game with it, it's still too mushy for input demands that precise, but i think it works pretty well with mostly everything else. I don't feel like it's an impediment when i use it to play scrolling shooters and 2d platformers, which i couldn't say about the original d-pad. It still falls short of the DualShock and Nintendo d-pads though. Here it is.

I don't know that it was really all that similar to the Nintendo d-pad, but the Gravis Gamepad was a phenomenal little controller. I still keep mine around for nostalgia's sake, i never even lost/broke the little screw-on joystick like most people.

The whole d-pad thing is another weird issue. Nintendo has a patent on their d-pad, and it's led to everybody else having to come up with alternate solutions. The Sony d-pad i find really uncomfortable and mushy, but it's functional. The Microsoft d-pads are just the absolute bottom of the barrel though, they are completely useless for the things you need to use a d-pad for. (I think their revised d-pad on the newer 360 pads was a big step in the right direction, though.)

My first game console was a Gameboy in 1989. I played games on some manner of Apple II prior to that. I feel old.

Alright, so we're totally just discussing the end of the game here. Move along folks, nothing to see. Maybe check back in few months, interesting things are being said. (I'm so sorry.) Holy shit, spoilers!:

We might be getting way ahead of ourselves with this line of conversation, but... Yeah, you know what? Those of you who have not already finished the game either in the past or now should absolutely not read that above spoiler. I'm serious, don't. I didn't want to ignore the topic, but i don't want to influence how other people interpret the story while playing the game for the first time. (I'm breaking my own rules, what an asshole i am.) That's a good observation, i hadn't made that connection. Reading about the game recently, it also looks like quite a few colossi had been cut from the game as well. I am amused by this, would it be okay if i stuck this in the original post as a logo for this whole thing?

I think the bigger issue here is really just the old "why the fuck don't console games let people remap the controls" problem. If you don't want to have something important mapped to the stick buttons, you shouldn't have to. I don't think those buttons should go away though, because they offer some fairly important functionality. (Specifically about the click-to-zoom, Halo 4 has a control scheme that maps zoom to the left trigger like many other shooters do, something that i think feels bizarre and wrong in Halo, and you still end up with various other functions on the stick buttons instead.)

I just popped in my Twilight Princess disc to see whether or not that game controls as badly as i remember, or if i have just grown more open to dodgy motion controls. It took about five minutes for me to reaffirm my opinion that Twilight Princess is kind of fucked. I've also just realized that developers must have learned somewhere along the way to never trust the nunchuk, because i don't think I've played a Wii game in years that asks you to do specific gestures with that thing like Twilight Princess did. (Unless as part of a duo with the Wii remote, where the game is really only recognizing the Wii remote.)