Thrik

Nintendo is basically the gaming equivalent of Disney in this regard. It just doesn't reduce its prices because it realises that a great game is still great and worth good money even after the increasingly short release window that publishers, press, and gamers have become increasingly obsessed with — especially considering that so many people are perpetually behind with games. Yeah, this is a big factor in what made the work so well too. I guess it's a bit like how so much of the charm and atmosphere of a game like Monkey Island (2+) or Grim Fandango would be sapped out without their soundtracks — they add more than is typical for most games because they're just so intrinsically perfect for the environments they accompany, going beyond merely complementing them. Such a wise move (ha ha) for them to dump the weak-ish remix approach of DKC: Returns and get the original composer back in for Tropical Freeze.

When I played Grim Fandango on my living room TV, I realised exactly what Schafer was striving for. The game looks absolutely gorgeous with no UI distractions, also I found that the backgrounds looked much nicer than on my computer due to a combination of the distance and TVs typically having better upscaling technology. It's really sad that the game never got to be on a platform where its control scheme actually made sense the first time around.

Oh, Tropical Freeze will build up your platforming skills all right. I think it's the best platform game I've played since Banjo-Kazooie, but holy shit it's difficult in the later worlds — just like its predecessors, I guess. Fortunately the endlessly gorgeous soundtrack and level settings (I'm in a juicy fruit sunset world now!) keeps me going.

Moody/haunting electronica ahoy:

Eh... I quite enjoyed that metagame. Distinguished the pros.

I did actually prefer Galaxy 1, because Nintendo put a lot of work into the set-up that led to a fucking fantastic intro and overworld. Galaxy 2 was still great, but more refined as red-hot gameplay with even less exposition and out-of-level content than usual. I would say that it's better to start with #1 as the sequel expands on many things and part of the fun is things going in surprising new ways compared to what you might expect. But still, it's no biggie.

I can't see why they'd remove the character-relative controls, unless you've heard that's the case? It's definitely the best way of playing the original in my opinion. I think point-and-click will be excellent for computer players, of course.

Ugh. What do the Galaxy games even do that requires this? The Wii U Gamepad seems like it could completely stand in for the Wiimote and Nunchuck. A finger could approximate the pointing.

Jesus Nintendo, just release the Mario Galaxy games in HD resolution will you?

I've been enjoying (re-discovering) Nneka's interesting blend of rap, reggae, and rock. There's a lot of variety throughout her tracks, so if the description appeals to you I'd just grab 'Soul is Heavy' and 'To and Fro' off of Spotify (or whatever).

I couldn't take it any more. God damned hair.

With the shit UK Kotaku I just go to the footer and choose Kotaku International/US. Somehow doing it that way makes it not shoot off to the US site.

I've been reading Kotaku for the best part of a decade now, and I definitely think that there's been a marked increase in quality during the last year or so after what was a pretty long spell of mediocrity and mysterious viral headlines leading to uninspiring material. I've seen the odd post here and there about how they've intentionally shifted their focus away from upcoming shit and more on what's already available, which seems good for me seeing as like many people I'm perpetually quite behind the curve and appreciate content that's a bit more timeless. I know that a lot of TV sites and such assign writers to show-specific 'beats' for ongoing in-depth analysis, and there seems to be something similar going on at Kotaku. Whatever it is, I'm finding more of Kotaku's stuff enjoyable to read. There definitely seems to be less news and more random cool shit to read, which as pointed out above I can imagine does largely come from other sources like reddit. But frankly, I don't have the time to trawl the billion sub-reddits I might have an interest in, so it suits me fine to have sites curating that place and adding some fun narration on top.

Damn it, my Wii U pad ran out of juice. So I thought I'd post a few more of those fine, fine DKC:TF levels: Incidentally, this game looks outstanding on a big screen at 60 FPS. I'm on my iPad so maybe it's a compression thing, but these videos definitely don't do how wonderfully crisp and vibrant this game looks on a big TV justice. I honestly think it looks as good if not better compare to the original games' pre-rendered visuals in many cases (pretending they were high-res). Anyway, MUSIC.

Ah man, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. This fucking game's soundtrack, you guys! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJHQkuqRAAc I just got done with this level, which contrary to to whoever recorded this video took me about 10,000 tries. But holy shit, I just had to call out the way the music dynamically changes throughout, and culminates with a segment that surely tugs at the nostalgia strings of any DKC1 fan. It's about a minute in that things get hot. That's another thing I like, actually: unlike the comparatively sledgehammer approach of Returns which just remixed everything, the Tropical Freeze soundtrack works in countless musical references to the old games while primarily focusing on an individual and beautiful new assortment of themes and styles that easily matches the quality of the originals. It feels like a true successor to the original soundtracks rather than a cheap fan remix project. Here's another level with outstanding musical progression, although more of a Monkey Island iMuse approach than the previous level's shifting between different tracks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OgaRcYwKtg I'm probably going to have to do a proper list of this game's best levels in terms of musicality once I finish the game, because so far I'm just over halfway through and the music is impressing me with its beauty and perfect integration into levels at every turn. It's almost crazy how much high-quality music this game has; there's virtually no reuse of music between levels, with each being a unique standalone piece that in many cases you don't even hear the entirety of.

Ah man, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. This fucking game, you guys! I'm now into the fourth world, and I can say without hesitation that this stands alongside the original trilogy as a classic. I was waiting for the initial delight to wear off as it quickly did with Returns, but it just isn't happening here. Everything is so immaculately and lovingly put together — the enemy designs, the gameplay, the music, the effects, the set pieces — that I just keep coming away from it with a huge smile. I enjoy that one 'killer feature' of Retro's take on the series seems to be insane-ass environments that seem impossible to craft platforming gameplay out of. For example, one takes place inside a tornado with all kinds of huge debris forming the level. Another is within some gigantic ancient underwater semi-functional spaceship thing. They use the semi-3D perspective to do so much cool stuff, I love it. I also wrote a load of stuff here about this game's outstanding soundtrack, but I thought it'd be better suited to the video game music thread so I shifted it there: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9007-the-official-video-game-music-corner/page-6#entry334818

Just got back from a weekend away at a forest lodge with my family, which provided a lot of great photo opportunities. I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into sorting them out over Christmas as it's been ages since I've gotten to have a good play, but I did find a little time to Lightroom the shit out of this one tonight (click for the 4K monster): I think I went a bit overboard with the grading and something about the framing bothers me, so I'll be revisiting this one when I do the full batch. But I'll tell you what, editing photos on a 5K screen is god damned excellent. I can't wait until every monitor ever is like this. It's also weird because to edit photos how they look at 100% on a normal monitor you have to use 200%. It's going to take me a while to get used to the implications viewing images this way has on sharpening — I hope I didn't get it too wrong here.

I was only really throwing in the London example to try to illustrate how incomes and spending power varies. To use another example, if I were to work in the US I'd be earning far less after conversion to GBP compared to what I'd earn over here. Essentially, it doesn't really matter what the price of something is in some other country. To answer your question though, I would imagine that games and such specifically are equivalently priced across the UK, but an awful lot of things aren't — with day-to-day groceries, clothes, and such being an obvious example.

The complaining is almost always unwarranted. There's the big EU/US tax difference Dewar mentions, but also people earn totally different money depending on the country they live in. Heck, I could go from the middle of England to London and get an immediate £20k raise — but everything else would cost more too. Comparing the same item in different regions and expecting parity is pretty daft.

Different tax systems, greater buying power (i.e. people earn relative to what things cost), etc?

While I'd hate for this game to be banned no matter how distasteful I find it due to the free speech implications, I do think that retailers have a right to decide what kind of entertainment they're willing to stock. Games are now reaching the point where certain kinds of them can justifiably be treated like porn. What we have here seems to be a terrorism/public massacre simulator. Seeing as the western world bizarrely finds violence a lot more palatable than sexuality, would anyone be remotely surprised to find that vendors such as Valve and the wider public don't particularly approve of the rape simulator games that are out there? We're only going to see more of these things coming along, and at a certain point we have to stop seeing decisions to not distribute such material as censorship, and instead as the gaming equivalent of Netflix not wishing to stream hardcore porn. Handling these editorial decisions will undoubtedly be challenging, but as more simulators come along catering to violent and sexual fantasies — and let's make no mistake about it, things like Oculus Rift are going to unleash an avalanche of these things — it's something that has to be done. I hate using terms like 'murder simulator' because I feel like I'm somehow channeling the ridiculousness of Jack Thompson, but we're no longer in an age where every game is acceptable for mainstream consumption and should be available in every store. Some of the stuff out there now is no Leisure Suit Larry or Grand Theft Auto, but it should always be available via the vendors that are OK with providing it.

Still pretty pricey at £43 on Amazon UK, although it was going for a whopping £55(!!!!!) the other day in the UK's main game shop chain, GAME. If it were down to like even £30 anywhere I'd probably snap it up.

So with this game having had time to sink in and presumably get some bug fixes, is it worth playing? I've been kind of craving something like this to sink my time into over Christmas, as I'll have finished the excellent (holy shit so excellent) The Last of Us by then. I did hear of a performance patch hitting all platforms tomorrow which I guess is why it occurred to me to not just pretend this game never came out. How does the gameplay compare to Ass Creed 2, which I guess is the closest sibling in terms of environment? Has it kept all the things that made that game cool, including the highly pointless yet satisfying home base customisation? I did see a video of someone playing the game with French vocals, and everything else (UI and subtitles) in English. That seemed to work really well, and any issues with the lip sync as pointed out by someone in this thread probably don't matter seeing as you'll be reading the subtitles.

I was just catching up on a recent Google tech event and:

Looks and sounds great. It's so nice that people will be able to (re-)discover such a faithful remaster. There's an entire generation of people who have most likely never played it. I hope the PS4 release draws them in. I'm a little disappointed that the backgrounds appear to be the original sizes upscaled, but I'm guessing there are technical obstacles to that because Double Fine would surely render out higher-resolution versions if they could. I know that places like Rubacava were one ginormous 3D environment, so there could be any number of things making it difficult to get faithful re-renders of everything, ranging from positioning the camera perfectly to one-off tweaks artists might have made but never saved when doing the original renders. I did play Grim Fandango on my TV recently though, and it actually looked excellent with anti-aliasing enabled. The backgrounds are still 480p which is DVD quality, and if Double Fine has at least got uncompressed versions of them they should look pretty good.