rohlfinator

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Posts posted by rohlfinator


  1.  

    On 10/28/2017 at 11:52 AM, Simon said:

    I got this on Friday (bundled with my Switch), and no surprise that a flagship Mario game is enormous, absorbing fun...but I never knew how much I missed the freewheeling exploration of Sunshine. I think Galaxy was and is fantastic, but its clarity and focus came at the expense of something. It's wonderfully relaxing and rewarding just poking around a kingdom, invariably finding something new to unravel or just admiring the scenery - I love that Snapshot Mode. It's almost impossible to catch the game in a moment that isn't either beautiful or joyously silly, or both.

     

    Yeah, this game does a really impressive job of splitting the difference between the exploration of 64/Sunshine and the more linear design of the later 3D Marios. If you want a more directed experience, you can kind of just beeline through the "story" missions and do that, but there's tons of opportunity to veer off and explore at your leisure.

     

    And I love how unlike Sunshine, which mostly rewarded exploration with trash blue coins, Odyssey usually gives you a mini platforming challenge, or at least a few purple coins which can be spent on some cool clothes.


  2. Yeah, I hear you on the space issue. The NT Mini custom firmware allowed for dumping/loading ROMs, so that would be ideal if they could do that on the Super NT.

     

    To me, the most intriguing thing about this is the idea of it being a perfect clone with theoretically no lag or inaccuracies. I know there's been ways to do digital output in the past with hardware scalers and such, but this is a much more attractive package. I'm pretty fascinated by the idea of FPGA-based clones -- it's a cool solution to that problem.


  3. Anyone else excited for the Super NT?

     

    I never saw myself getting into the "luxury retro console" thing, but the SNES is one of my favorite consoles and this thing manages to hit a pretty appealing price. Plus there's the rumor of it getting custom firmware (like the original NT) that would enable support for other consoles.


  4. After watching Jeff Gerstmann run Cheat Engine on this game, I might have to eventually pick it up and cheat my way through the back half of the game if it gets too grindy. It could be a lot of fun (albeit totally game-breaking) to essentially roll your own orcs and pit them against each other.


  5. I'm starting to develop a morbid curiosity about this game. The new nemesis system sounds pretty great, but just about everything around it seems mediocre to awful.

     

    I really wonder how it would work with a new/different IP -- it seems like the LOTR mythos is an awkward fit for what they're trying to do.


  6. On 10/4/2017 at 9:43 AM, YoThatLimp said:

    Does anyone have any recommendations on local co-op for my niece and I? She's 5 and a half, but pretty smart for her age. We were playing Snipperclips but some of the more dexterous puzzle solutions were a bit hard for her. I have Minecraft, but I need to get a second set of Joycons or a pro-controller to play local co-op. Ideally we would just be able to use a single Joycon as that fits in her hand perfectly, the two of them together are a little large. She loved Mario Kart but she really wanted to play together vs against each other. 

     

    I'm thinking maybe Stardew Valley would be awesome for her as she seemed very keen on Minecraft but I don't think it has a co-op component yet. 

     

    Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is excellent for local co-op, and from what I've played of it, the Switch port is pretty solid. It might be a little complicated, but there's an easy mode and you can kind of set your own pace if things get too hectic.


  7. I picked this up on sale and started digging into the single player the other day. Still pretty early on, but so far I'm pleasantly surprised. I like the idea of a slightly more chill Mass Effect story, rather than the "race against time" aspect of 2 and 3 which felt at odds with doing side content. The vibe feels very different from the original trilogy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.


  8. I'm really impressed with how natural the environment design feels. I've been taking my time exploring, and it feels like there are quite a few big areas you can visit before the story takes you there. There are plenty of sections that are gated off until you get the appropriate MacGuffin, but in this corporate science lab setting it feels pretty believable (as opposed to the BioShocks where the forced detours often felt scripted or arbitrary). And being able to spacewalk outside makes the whole thing feel connected in a cool way.

     

    Definitely a "greater than the sum of its parts" game, for me. There are a lot of familiar components, but the whole thing is executed really dang well.


  9. I generally agree with the overall gist of the article, but yeah, telling your readers that they're all puppets of the Gabe meme cult is probably not the best way to make that argument.

     

    The "we provide free marketing for Steam Sales" point feels a couple of years too late -- I feel like in 2017 I'm just as likely to see complaints about the sales as excitement.


  10. Yeah, they have a small enough crew that I'd be surprised if Abby does only production stuff. Though she might handle more of it early on, just to give Vinny a well-earned break from being the sole production guy.

     

    Ben is fitting in well so far, although from a purely selfish standpoint I'm hoping the DOTA/fighting game talk is kept to a minimum. :P


  11. After all the hullabaloo about Andromeda, I got the itch to replay Mass Effect (and hopefully play through the rest of the trilogy this time).

     

    For being nearly a decade old, I was impressed at how well it holds up, particularly the PC version which smooths over a lot of the technical problems (I remember the framerate being pretty bad on the Xbox 360 version). The voice acting is generally great, and the character animation is solid (especially in light of some of Andromeda's problems).

     

    Its combat is often disparaged, but I think it's more weird than bad -- it doesn't control like other third-person shooters, but once I got over that, it was fine. My bigger gripe is with the checkpointing, which can be pretty terrible and sometimes forces you to redo lengthy conversations if you fail an encounter. The other weak spot is the sidequests, which can be pretty repetitive, although I kind of appreciate the way the Mako sections make the galaxy feel big and unexplored.

     

    The real winner is the story -- it does a great job of setting up its universe, and the story even surprised me in places with twists that I had forgotten since playing it in 2007. Despite the game doing the "ancient precursor race" trope which has gotten pretty cliche at this point, I really enjoy stuff like the Citadel and the mass relays and how they've shaped the way these different alien races interact. I liked most all the crewmates, both as characters and as vectors for learning more about how these races relate to each other. It's maybe a bit too convenient how many times Shepard stumbles onto the answer to an unsolved galactic mystery, but I guess a little of that is expected in this kind of story.

     

    All in all, a good time. I think a remaster with slightly updated combat mechanics would be an easy hit for Bioware.


  12. That GI video is a fun listen. Jake's world scaling theory he brought up on Thumbs (that the environment is scaled to make it look more distant than it really is) still has me intrigued. I'm really curious if that's what's going on, or just clever use of fog/DOF combined with a relatively fast movement speed.

     

    I'm kind of excited to read the inevitable Gamasutra blog posts breaking down the design tricks this game uses, it's such a treasure trove of that stuff.


  13. Really impressed with this game's tutorialization... there are a bunch of spots in the opening area where the game just presents you with a designed setup and invites you to poke at it until it teaches you a new mechanic. One that comes to mind is a couple of precariously-placed boulders that are basically guaranteed to roll into a ravine and crush some bokoblins. You can tell they really took the criticisms of the last few games' opening tutorials to heart.


  14. 4 hours ago, dartmonkey said:

    Had to be done. What day one accessories are people getting? Screen protector only for me - anything else would require selling an organ.

     

    Same. Not interested in paying the early adopter tax on the other stuff.

     

    My local Gamestop already has 6-8 people camping for the launch tonight. I wonder if I'll have any chance of being able to walk in and pick one up.


  15. Rad, that's one of my favorite features of the current gen consoles. Almost makes me prefer my PS4 to the PC, since it's so effortless to get back into a game.

     

    A few previews have mentioned that the startup time and menu navigation is also really snappy, which is good to hear after the sluggishness on the Wii U (and to a lesser extent the 3DS).


  16. I'm also having the "this just makes me want to check out a real Fire Emblem" response. Which i guess is probably one of Nintendo's big goals for this thing.

     

    The battle system is more interesting than other gachas I've played, but the systems surrounding it haven't really hooked me.