eRonin

Sydney is going to have its first really big Smash Bros tournament on the 11-12th July (Sydney time), with around 200 people in attendance playing Melee, Smash 4, Project M and Smash 64. I'll be competing in just Smash 4 since I'm awful at Melee and haven't touched Smash 64 in years, and I'm super excited to be a part of something that big in Sydney. I doubt we can match the hype that the Melbourne major had in May, since that one had high-profile international players competing like Mango and Leffen, but this way I think it'll be a better showcase of who really is the best in Australia. There will likely be a stream, but Sydney time would probabably make it difficult for most people here to tune in.

The reaction to how Batman looks in the Arkham games has always struck me as odd. Is it because everyone has a specific idea of what Batman looks like in their head, which is based on how he is portrayed in the movies, rather than the comics? He has always been shown to be that large, if not larger in the comics, with exceptions like the aforementioned David Mazzucchelli portrayal. However, in that portrayal, Batman is in his first year on the job, and is therefore much younger and at that point did not have to fight supernatural enemies. Later in his career, he becomes a man who can supposedly bench-press 1000 pounds, so his size is well-justified. The image of Batman on his Wikipedia page, by Jim Lee clearly shows a Batman with biceps much larger than his head, and is very much in line with his Arkham games depiction. vs

Just pick out whatever looks good to you! As a rule, each clothing has a number of stars between 1 and 3. Every piece of clothing has an ability that it is tied to (always the same), and for each star, one more ability slot that is randomised.

Well it's official. I'll be picking up Ryu as soon as possible but the veterans don't excite me. I'll probably only get them for completion's sake if they need to be played on my console for a tournament. I'm somewhat decent (terrible, actually) at Street Fighter so I'm looking forward to playing Ryu with his SF inputs.

Nintendo knocked it out of the park last year, and I'm super keen to see what they bring this time around. I love the Treehouse people and their love for the games they showcase is clearly evident.

I lent out my Wii U to my friend yesterday since I am going to be overseas for 3 weeks, and I am already feeling the effects of not having any Splatoon to play. Pls send help. I've been getting my fix on streamers but there are very few quality streamers out there. Found an A- ranked player who is quite nice, but there are so many streamers who just trash-talk their own team and it really sucks to watch. Danielle's girlfriend Patricia is actually also pretty good, though she doesn't play a lot of ranked.

That's a lot of good advice Sno! However, I think you can talk to Judd once per rotation map rotation, not once per day, since your hotness rating resets when the maps reset. I am a big fan of the echolocator special. In this game, stealth is actually a surprisingly large aspect, so something that negates this is very powerful. Additionally, since time-to-kill is so short, any enemy caught in echolocator that is nearby is as good as dead. In general, I think that all specials are much more powerful in splatzones compared to turf war. The strength of specials (including echolocator and bubble shield) is temporarily controlling a small area, so in turf war the effect is relatively small. But in splatzones, the points of contention are much more centralised, effectively reducing the overall map size and increasing the proportion of the map that is affected by the special. Moreover, in splatzones, players tend to specialise in different roles and often you will see the same type of player in one place consistently (e.g. a sniper will often have a favourite perch). This makes it even easier to effectively use certain specials like Inkzooka, Killer Wail and Inkstrike. Anyway, so most of my post was about the splatzones in ranked mode, since I feel there is more I have to say about that. I am currently B- like N1njaSquirrel (high five!) and to answer your question, yes, you can go down in ranks. Whenever you move up and down between ranks, it seems like they put you at +-30 points from the changeover point. So if you drop from B- to C+, you will drop to C+ with 70 points.

You make zero points if you lose via knockout (i.e. their team timer goes down to 0). If the global timer hits 0, then 300 points are split up proportionally according to who held the zones longer, and a large bonus (~1500 points) is awarded to the winner. Edit: sorry, it's not always 300 points; that just happened to be my most recent game's point split. The points are based on how many seconds you held it, multiplied by 5 I think.

I hated the charger...until I got the Splatterscope. And then this destruction happened in Ranked: Somehow their level 20 player with aerospray did terribly. Also their sniper kept getting countersniped by me, so we shut them down pretty hard.

Ranked play is intense, and it could either be over really quickly (less than 2 minutes), or be drawn out even longer than a regular turf war (5 minutes or more, with overtime). You should familiarise yourself with how the timer works and what constitutes zone control. If I understand correctly, covering a certain % of the rectangular zone automatically gives you 100% of it, but if your opponent manages to cover 50% of the zone, your timer will stop counting down. One of the teams will then have to contest the zone again to get to that % that gives them control. When control changes hands, the team that previously held the zone will receive a penalty and have time added to their countdown. Ultimately the game ends when one team manages to deplete their countdown to 0, in which case they will receive all the points and their opponent receives NOTHING. OR the global game timer will hit 0 and whoever controlled the zone for a longer period of time will win. In the latter scenario, both teams will receive some points, with a large bonus being given to the winner. Overall, on average you will receive many more points than turf wars (1800 points to every winning member of a team for a cleansweep), but getting 0 points for a loss really stings.

I jumped in a few matches with you before uni this morning! Matching school uniform outfits yay! I still haven't finished the single player yet though so I can't get all the amiibo outfits (plus I only bought the girl amiibo). Does anyone know if one amiibo can unlock content on multiple Wii U consoles?

A new map and a new weapon (the NES Zapper!) has just been announced to be released later today! Along with this, ranked play will be made available. Also I finally got the Inkling Girl amiibo today. I was not expecting how shiny the hair would be compared to my other amiibo, which have had kind of a matte finish. Anyway, I should really do those single player challenges now (but ranked play!!!)

Skatepark sucked for me, until I got a sniper I felt comfortable with, and now I'm wrecking everything from the the top of the tower. If I had someone with a shorter range weapon covering the base of the tower, we would be near untouchable, save for some specials. I feel like this map heavily favours rollers, who can quickly cover the wide area, and chargers who can control the space from the tower (and from the tower, you can even see all the way to the enemy spawn point). Anyway, good idea making this thread; the Wii U thread got way too overpopulated with Splatoon talk. Edit: also, Teg I jumped in a few matches with you last night, you did pretty good!

I was aware that teams were randomised between matches and you're not guaranteed to be with a friend. I am completely fine with that, for the same reasons as you. I know partying up with 4 people will be added later though. I've noticed a little meter of flags that show your current rating within the 4 hour map rotation blocks (which you can redeem for a lot of coins to Judd in the plaza if the rating goes quite high), which might be used to make teams more balanced between matches. I have yet to complete the single player challenges; I've only played until the first boss. It didn't feel nearly as fun to me as the multiplayer, so most of yesterday I was just aiming to get myself to level 10. My splatoon amiibo that I preordered from a store hasn't arrived yet. I probably should have just bought one in-store when I was buying my copy of the game yesterday. Not a fan of how the squid amiibo armoured costume looks, since it's really out of place. I think I'm one of those people who care about the fashion more than the stat boosts (I still pay attention to these though). Right now I am definitely enjoying the 0.52 gal weapon the most. Since each shot has such high damage, it rewards someone who carefully lines up their shots rather than going out guns blazing. A charger would be similar, but I haven't had much success with that class of weapons yet. As far as maps go, my favourite is definitely Saltspray Rig, though the others are growing on me too. The smaller, more narrow maps (Walleye Warehouse and Arowana Mall) felt too much like a simple game of tug-of-war to me, but eventually I learned how to utilise all the side paths to perform sneak attacks. Saltspray Rig has so many different paths to it that it feels almost like a Lords Management map; there are basically three different lanes to it. I thought maybe this map would be better suited to 6v6, but there's still a good amount of time for 4v4 to have a good back and forth.

I think we got a few matches in there! You're really good with that splattershot, I think you were the highest scorer both times I saw your name. I hit level 10, so hopefully that ranked battle mode comes soon!

The stage swap occurs exactly every 4 hours. The game doesn't do a good job of telling you things in-game, but I imagine it would say so in the manual. Also, Griddlelol, I keep trying to join your matches, but every time I get put into a game from the join friends option, you're nowhere to be seen =(

Just picked this game up! Will play a few single player missions before I hop online. Regarding voice chat: whenever my friends and I play any game, we usually just resort to skype for voice chat, so I'm not fussed about the lack of voice chat in this game. Would have liked more than two chat messages on the dpad (I mean, you can easily accommodate four), but yeah I'm fine with it as is.

Gotta wait until tomorrow to play, I hope to see some of you guys online! I'm putting aside Mario 3D World for now (I have about 180 green stars) and gonna focus on Splatoon as much as I can before I go overseas in a week.

I'm eRonin! I'll add everyone so we can get Splatoon games going also Smash Bros and Mario Kart too. edit: omg I put in the wrong name. I've been switching between eRonin and superhiero for different games/services and got confused.

Oh man Splatoon is in the wild? I assume there is still an embargo on non-demo content, though! But oh man I would love to play with everyone on here when it comes out. We should add each others' NNID so we can play (I think it's randomly assigned teams until August but we can still play with friends)! I'm superhiero

Animal Crossing: Sweet Day is among my favourite multiplayer game experiences of all time. The best part is you can be playing with anyone and they will have a blast, no matter how familiar they are with video games. It's super simple but my more "hardcore" friends can get really competitive about it. I've barely touched my copy of Nintendoland besides the 4v1 games though. Those just always dominate all the time we play together.

This is why I stopped playing Pikmin 2 and couldn't bring myself to buy Pikmin 3. Somehow I am okay playing StarCraft 2 where hundreds of my Zerglings die at my command, but Pikmin is too stressful for me.

Makin' it rain in Mario 3D World With a bonus 8-bit Luigi thingo. Still not sure what those guys are for.

Splatoon demo happening right now! Get in here!

The only regret I have about buying my Wii U is how late I bought it. Here I am playing games from 2013 (Mario 3D World and Mario Kart, granted I am playing the 200cc DLC which came out only recently) while I put off others like Bayonetta and Captain Toad. I am enjoying the Captain Toad levels in 3D World, and I think a game full of those is a brilliant idea. Not sure if I'll get around to buying it since this year I want to get Splatoon and Xenoblade X, the latter of which will probably consume me.