Badfinger

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Posts posted by Badfinger

  1. Posted

    What if Skyrim on the Switch is actually brilliant, because Zelda has exposed an entirely new group of game players to the realm of open world online systemic jank?

     

    I was having this half-serious conversation yesterday, mixed with Nintendo having gone Full Blizzard on Zelda by taking a multitude of disparate good ideas and jumbling them around until the pieces all fit together and then shining it up reeeeeal nice. From a systems perspective it's probably the most polished open world game ever, but it's not actually the most expansive or deepest. I don't think Nintendo has the reach to stifle one of the biggest, broadest genres in gaming by making everyone strive for something they can never achieve ala World of Warcraft. It can very literally never have the reach of Minecraft The Biggest Game Ever tm. But maybe it has the ability to expose (Age of Conan joke here) that world to a bunch of people who are Zelda and Nintendo fans and found out they like it.

     

    I still don't think Skyrim is actually a good idea on the Switch, but having that talk has upgraded my expectations from Poor Idea, Unlikely Success to Poor Idea, Possible Success at least where sales are concerned.

  3. Posted

    Starting to feel concerned about the game. If the multiplayer is good that's a salve, but I would definitely like the game for the single player. No one has posted impressions without reservation. I watched some of the GB live playthrough, and man those facial animations (or lack thereof) is just weird and unnerving. I can get past the John Walker gripe of "There is fetch quest still", but it's not just him grumping. Coming off Horizon, where the conversation is fluid and Aloy and I have said the same thing out loud dozens of times at the same time (without it being from a dialogue wheel), Mass Effect feels old and kinda creaky? It feels older than Dragon Age in some ways.

     

    Interested for someone who's playing early to chime in and give their impressions.

  5. Posted

    13 hours ago, itsamoose said:

    I'm only 10 or so hours into Horizon, so I haven't seen all the various societies but just about everything so far is pretty horrifying.  The Native american thing seems to be getting a lot of play for the medium article, but the structure and practices of these societies is pretty universally bad.  Let's just take Nora for example-- this is a society where only women who have children can rise to leadership positions, women who are responsible for multiple generations are held in higher esteem and actually outrank childless women, and these same individuals can seemingly make anyone an outcast for just about any perceived slight.  That's not to mention the fascistic treatment of the members of the society all the way down to who they are allowed to speak to, and the legally required shunning of people who have angered the society's power brokers.  I get that people tend to like this society because it is lead by women, but just about every aspect of it is a controlling, abusive relationship writ large.

     

    On the gameplay front, the Create Job feature might be the best idea I've seen in a game in a while.  It really makes the exploration and crafting way more enjoyable when I don't have to keep popping open an inventory to see what other animal parts I need to make something.

     

    I find that stuff to be fascinating. My take is it's not supposed to be something that's good so much as it's just what their society is. The heirarchy explicitly being women with the most generations of children is amazing in an through the looking glass sort of way. I have no grounding on the less societal and more thematic elements (ie takes on Native Americans), so I can't comment on that part. If someone raises criticism as they've done, it's important for me to see what's being said and go from there.

     

    I don't have any war bows yet, so I'm running with two blue sharpshot bows (one modded for damage, one for tear), the slingshot, and the ropecaster. I was running the tripcaster but I've been fighting birds most recently and birds don't trip over stuff very much.

  6. Posted

    29 minutes ago, Zeusthecat said:

     

    Out of curiosity, I've been checking Amazon over the last few weeks to see if there would be any WiiU price drops... and $250 for a used/refurbished WiiU is the best I've seen. It's the strangest goddamn thing considering how often those $250 PS4 w/ game deals keep coming up.

    I've been obsessively trawling Ebay since the switch released. Almost every auction of a fully functioning unit is in the ~$250 range.

     

    Fun fact, you can get a Nintendo certified refurb with a 1 year warranty for $200 straight from them. So that's my benchmark for buying straight from another person. $200 is still really steep for a Zelda machine, though.

     

    Wii Us don't exist on store shelves anymore. That shit is gone, man. If you search for Wii U on best buy's website it redirects you to the Switch.

  8. Posted

    I loved Shadow of Mordor, this is exciting news! I felt a little unease watching the gameplay thing, partly because the combat seemed a little disjointed non-finished, partly because i didn't see the stuff I liked which was just smashing an entire outpost and dueling with a tougher guy, and partly because I saw a LOT of numbers. I love numbers but I saw Level 190 in there and that gives me pause. I'm probably in, but I want to see more.

     

    The name is bad they should fix it. They had so many ways to crush it and they fucked it up.

  11. Posted

    5 hours ago, supasheep said:

    A friend of mine often insisted on using a scale from -10 to 10 for rating things so that a 'normal' or average experience would be a 0, and everything was rated relative to that. I guess you end up with the same difficulties, instead it's about what a 0 is on that scale.

     

    That kinda gives me a chill. 0 feels like some sort of void to me.

  12. Posted

    1 hour ago, pabosher said:

    Could you tell me why Crypt of the Necrodancer is good/notable? I heard people talking about it and want to know if I should grab it - thanks! :)

     

    It's a turn-based roguelike where the enemy only moves where you do, but you get bonuses for moving on the beats of the level music and penalties for missing. Enemies all move on a musical pattern you need to learn to deal with them. Danny Baranowsky did the music for the game (Super Meatboy, Binding of Isaac), and there are gameplay mechanics based on the type of music in every level.

     

    it's fucking awesome and has the best NPC in video games. It's the only video game soundtrack I've ever purchased.

  15. Posted

    11 hours ago, Kolzig said:

    I hope this trend continues and they work on delivering more excellent 1st and 2nd party games with good scheduling so there are no sluggish empty periods in the years when nothing new comes out. The 3rd party will come then for sure with the flow to the system, the indies have already and the bigger companies will come crawling back. I just really hope From Software delivers on the Dark Souls trilogy and gets it released. Nick Breckon has some streaming to do then to start the DS games from the beginning on Switch.

    What, why?

     

     

    Did more 1st party stuff get announced? Over the weekend it looked like the same dire slate as pre-launch. It's a hint of promise to see some indie darlings on the slate for this year, but filling out the slate of the last 4-5 years of already existing games everyone owns 2 or 3 times and dumps keys on in humble bundles isn't super inspiring. If they're getting day and date parity by the end of the year for indie stuff (and to be fair, it appears stuff like Rime, Mr. Twitchy, Steamworld (as an sclusie) are doing that) then that's when credit is due.

  18. Posted

    7 hours ago, dartmonkey said:

    I got a Steam Link for £16 and, predictably, my current set-up can't really handle it over wireless. PC issues aside, does anyone have any experience with those powerline Ethernet adaptors? I'd be using 3 (my router, TV and PC are all separated) and I wouldn't mind making one of them a wireless extender too (wifi is patchy on some devices in the living room.) I was eyeing up these. Any advice/recommendations?

    I literally bought some 500 mbps powerline adapters specifically for the steam link and it works really well.

     

    We upgraded our router to not be a butt, but powerline is good.

  19. Posted

    The joke about Hamilton and recommendation of a play in NYC made me think of the show Perfect Crime. It's been running since 1987, the lead actress has done over 12,000 performances, and it's widely reviewed as the worst show in New York. That'd be something to see while you're in the city for sure. There was a really nice in depth interview with Catherine Russell about it that I don't think I found in cursory googling.

     

    e: looks like I heard about this through the Reply All podcast. That's linked in one of these articles.

     

    https://digg.com/2016/perfect-crime-broadway-reply-all

     

    http://thebroadwayblog.com/2016/05/23/14721-perfect-crime

     

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/theater/reviews/still-kicking-after-18-years-of-homicide.html?_r=0

  22. Posted

    On 3/3/2017 at 2:32 AM, Lork said:

     

    Nick's comments about the proportion of time "you" spend fighting bosses vs exploring was especially perplexing.  If Dark Souls was a level by level action game it would make sense, but like any other (semi) open world RPG, it allows players to set their own pace.  Nick for his part chooses to avoid exploration (and the rewards associated with it) at all costs, prolonging the time spent fighting bosses by as much as possible.  As people are quick to point out, there's no wrong way to play a game, but Nick's very idiosyncratic playstyle is definitely not representative of a universally relatable experience.

     

    To be precise, it's not necessarily prolonging the time spent fighting bosses, it's increasing the percentage of boss time vs other activities. This method may make the game take longer overall, but doesn't mean it has to. After listening to the podcast, Nick sounds like he has a point to me. If it's just work, especially work that's not in other similar games, that's not very fun.

     

    As another chemistry-deficient person, I totally understood what you meant when you were describing how the Periodic Table was arranged. it's set up so elements with similar properties are grouped up. The only ones I can remember are the Noble Gasses and Alkali(ne)?? metals.