Thrik

It doesn't quite play out like that. The fact that he's gay is made known earlier and you basically disguise yourself as his lover to get around the base. Unfortunately you bump into him and after a quick fondle he realises what's up. I wouldn't say any kind of statement was being made nor was there any huge deal made about it, it's just one of many slightly awkward things that happen in the MGS games. As I say, I think Kojima just enjoys weirding people out and making them uncomfortable, which is kind of odd but I guess it adds to whatever it is that makes MGS so enduringly well-loved — and not just by guys.

I agree with TP's point. I don't think MGS is sexist as such, I think it's more a case of Kojima loving to fuck with people. There's plenty of stuff in there to make guys feel uncomfortable too; for every 'Eva has her cleavage sticking out' there's a 'villain turns out to be gay and literally grabs the balls of the main character'. It's all fun and games, really.

When you think about it, a lot of Japanese games are sexist. Just look at the state of Bayonetta, and even Mario is pushing it a bit with the recurring theme for the past 25 years being rescuing a hapless, blonde bimbo. It's probably fair to say that as a rule of thumb Japanese game developers are intolerant dudes who love to generalise.

You big girl's blouses. You need to man up and stop bitching about this series' casual sexism.

Relevant

The first thing I did when I played was go exploring the world. I was pretty disappointed as it's more or less a ghost landscape, and felt pointless in the same way a lot of LA Noire's city did. So I doubt the other Colossussusses are around until their cue, as I'm sure I'd have spotted at least one and many of the areas seemed orientated towards offering a big battleground.

I remember being put off this game because it took so long to get through the introductory bollocks and then the first colossus was extremely underwhelming. It does seem clear that the later ones get more interesting though, based on my reckless viewing of spoiler videos.

OK I'm over this game now. Christ, it's so frustratingly difficult. The originals weren't exactly easy, but there was a sense of discovery and wonder that compensated for it that I'm just not feeling this time around. I'm enjoying the nostalgic music and gameplay throwbacks, but it requires so much effort to get through I'm losing the will to live. I just want to spin up the originals instead and get my fix that way. Having had more time to get over my original excitement, I agree that it seems like Retro just didn't get the point of many of the things Rare did with DKC. Those games had a very specific and unique atmosphere that I'd say they nailed with the first two iterations, but unfortunately lost somewhat in DKC3 — probably because by that point development had ramped up for N64 games and they knew the SNES was essentially done, so less heart was put into it. One the key things is simply the style. I loved how dark and foreboding the original two games felt at times, about as far detached from Mario's cutesy world as you can imagine. Conversely, Returns doesn't feel very far away from Mario at all with its deluge of cutesy enemies, cartoony graphics, and comedic sound effects. Rare made a real effort to ground everything in a stylised reality: things looked like they'd look, behave, and sound in real life. Retro haven't even tried to do this, really. That's not to say the games were realistic, but they felt more like some actual world somewhere than many platform games have managed. Rare put an immense amount of attention to detail into them, along with huge amounts of self-referencing (epitomised by Cranky's Monkey Museum). All of that is absent in Returns, apart from the obviously reused music. And even then, the reused music has been made more upbeat and friendly — the dark tone implied in the originals has been drained away. Then you've got Cranky, who seems to be more like a friendly old man now. The clue's in the name, surely? So yeah, delight has turned to disappointment. It's a quality platformer for sure, I'm sure many newcomers to the series will love it and it'll probably get sequels. But it was very much targeted at us big DKC fans and it gets too many things wrong to ever be more than a one-time curiosity. Its issues are exactly the kind of things you'd expect to happen when one creator takes on another creator's work: things get misunderstood, missed, or simply changed. It's a good game (if you can handle its bone-crushing difficulty), but it's not DKC.

To me it feels like a lot of people forgot all about the Wii after about 2009, including Nintendo. The fact that essentially nothing was added to it via firmware updates during years where the 360 has literally transformed itself multiple times only emphasis this. Even the PS3 has been improved, whereas with the Wii the same jankiness to the entire UI has remained there since launch. Personally, I was very hyped for it initially because at that time I was used to SD games and didn't even have a proper HD television at the time. Getting another SD console didn't seem like such a big deal, but in this case Microsoft and Sony bet on the right horse because now the Wii looks so horrendously antiquated when spun up on a HD television despite its design not actually being so bad — you just can't get around the fact that SD looks blurry and shitty on a big TV, and this feeds into all the games and dirties the otherwise perfect sheen that games like Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword have. The pointing technology in the Wii is also mediocre at best. Compared to the near-perfect implementation that Sony managed with Move, the Wii's pointer is hideously inaccurate and has serious sensitivity/signal issues in larger rooms. Even on the maximum sensitivity I was finding my cursor jumping around. I avoided using it at any cost and it just annoyed me when a game tried to be imaginative and incorporate it into the experience. In fact, that goes for all the Wii's gyro and aiming shit — I just didn't welcome it, preferring buttons in almost every case. I feel that while nobody can deny Nintendo accomplished their goal of creating a console that truly appeals to casual gamers and kids, those of us who even just wanted robust first-party games were left out in the cold due to shitty technical limitations that were only made worse as Microsoft and Sony continued to rub salt in the wounds. In many ways the Wii U is the console we all wanted back when the Wii came out, and now that fucker is too late too because everything I just said is most likely going to happen all over again, except with different technical limitations leading the way. All that said, I had a great time with what I played of Twilight Princess; Mario Galaxy was sublime and I'm currently loving its sequel; and it remains an excellent all-in-one nostalgia device for experiencing legacy titles in a somewhat authentic way without all the extra hardware. It was far from a pointless console, but most definitely one that had so much more potential.

In other news, I just updated my Wii firmware for the first time in like four years and it's pretty much exactly the same. I hope Nintendo actually makes use of its updating mechanism this time around to fix things like the HDMI not using the full colour gamut and other annoyances.

Whoever was responsible for Mario Galaxy should be put in charge of any and all first-party games. For me that fucker manages to balance out all the first-party mediocrity on the Wii by itself.

Very late to this party but finally got this game. Holy shit, it's great! I was initially expecting another OK but nothing-like-DKC Donkey Kong game, but this really is a proper sequel and tribute to the old games at the same time. It's definitely got its own flavour imparted by Retro, but the heavy use of the old games' soundtracks combined with surprisingly authentic gameplay is really speaking to me — this is nostalgic in a way normally only Mario manages. Having Kremlings too would be the icing on the cake, but I guess not being constrained by the enemy types/abilities of old makes it easier to craft imaginative gameplay. A lot of old mechanics and set-ups return, but they're infused with enough innovation to bring back that long-lost experience of discovering a new DKC game. Also the art in this game is absolutely gorgeous, second only to Mario Galaxy as far as the Wii goes I reckon. And as you guys noted, this game is damned hard. The old games got impossibly difficult at times too though, so this is appropriate. God knows how I managed to find all the bonus stages in the originals though, I must have had a lot of time as a child. I'm finding hardly any in this one although I know they're there. Oh, and Cranky's return was a very welcome surprise! So yeah. Fan of DKC? Get this fucking game, you twat.

Wow I forgot all about this game. Now I think about it, isn't Last of Us kind of looking like everything this game hoped to be?

CUROSITY. WAT IS IN KOOB.

Beyond the post I just made on Mojo, I think the only thing I can really add is: wow. I highly approve of this action.

Yeah I mean in some ways the robustness of the compatibility is great, but on the other hand it does feel like Nintendo has a goldmine of older releases that people are pretty much dying to fork out for if only it were actually available. Things like MGS: Twin Snakes will most likely never make it outside of the GameCube's level of fidelity despite the fact that they'd look at least as good as the recent MGS HD re-releases with as little as a higher resolution and anti-aliasing. I'm sure thorough testing of each game would be required to ensure nothing has gone awry, but I really hope Nintendo at some point comes up with a way of getting these older games running in HD and AA. That or re-release them as is popular with the 360 and PS3 these days. But part of me suspects Nintendo will do neither, and that's really sad.

I'm a bit bummed in the gob that they've seemingly removed the whole Donkey Kong Country series from the Wii virtual console. I'm guessing it's so they can re-release them on the incoming Wii U virtual console, but as with all Nintendo consoles things seem to move at a ludicrously slow rate at first and there's nothing on the release schedule about them. I'm also disappointed that Nintendo missed a huge opportunity by not implementing better compatibility with Wii games. It'd be so trivial for them to flip a switch that makes games run at a higher resolution just like Dolphin does, even if it does introduce a slight softness to sprites and such. I'd rather have that than jaggies all over the place, which when upscaled to large HDTV size look just as bad as they did on the Wii. I've seen games like Mario Galaxy and DKC: Returns running in actual 720p and they look great. Even if they didn't do that, at the very least some simple anti-aliasing would make the upscaling look tremendously better. This particularly irritates me because there're numerous Wii games I want to try — especially DKC: Returns which seems to be a great nostalgia trip for series fans — but it just feels so weak having to put up with these jaggies in otherwise beautiful games. I can only hope Nintendo either re-release these to run in HD or improve the virtual console, but I'm not holding my breath for either to be honest.

Far Cry was completely detached from what FC2 was like. Crytek had a very different kind of game in mind and in many ways Crysis is the spiritual successor. Crysis is better and much prettier than both FC1 and FC3 though so it's worth a try. The main difference between FC1/Crysis and FC2/FC3 is that the former games aren't open world. The world is huge and exactly the same 'scope out, plan, attack' mechanic is the core, but it's not completely open world — you essentially go through a series of very large sandbox areas with a distinct entry and exit point (eg: enter from mountain pass, exit via caves). Crysis is great, though. The game Crytek were shooting for with FC1, whereas FC2 and FC3 are another developer's similar but markedly different interpretation. All the hallmarks are there (wildlife, camps to clear, tagging, loose objectives, massive dynamic areas), but I think as the originators of all this Crytek simply do it better.

It's beginning to look a lot like Holidays around here! Merry Holidays, everyone.

I guess it's just one of things you love or hate. It wasn't so bad with the DS version because the speakers were relatively low-fidelity, but on the big screen it just sounds really bad IMO. Also I think it sounds kind of retarded in general. I want a Wii U but it does seem NSMB is just about the only game worth bothering with, apart from the entertainment Nintendo Land may bring. I'd so love to play DKC Returns and the Mario Galaxys if they were ported in HD though. So god damn much.

Ah man, those fucking sharks in Crysis. They just did not give a SHIT.

BTW does anyone actually have a Wii U and happen to be in the UK? If so, are the DKC games in the store?

It's just one of those things where you have to wonder what they were thinking. Does anyone think it's cute/funny/whatever? Maybe it's some internationalisation quirk and the Japanese love it. Whatever the case, it really grinds my gears and literally ruins the soundtrack for me. After the majesty of Mario Galaxy's soundtrack it's so disappointing, doubly so after the revelation that the Galaxy composer was involved with the new New Super Mario Bros.

Who knows. Length never disclosed, potentially infinite. I don't know if anyone's a really bothered seeing if the deeper levels have had less cubelets as a real-life giant floating cube would.

I've been pretty indifferent about the Wii U thus far, knowing that it's destined to go down the same route as its predecessor in terms of third-party support. Then I went into GAME yesterday and saw New Super Mario Bros U on a demo machine. For fucks sake. I was immediately bitten by that Nintendo bug many of us must be familiar with by now. Being the first time I've ever seen a Mario game running in proper honest-to-god HD, I was pretty much floored by how crisp and beautiful it looks. The texture to the world and the sheer craziness of everything took me back to how Yoshi's Island amazed me in similar ways. Some bits literally look like moving paintings, and it's only now it's in HD that the art style of New Mario Bros really gets to shine — I always thought it looked a little sterile and boring in its earlier incarnations, apparently due to a lack of fidelity. Shitting hell man, this game is great. I'm not sure why this one impresses me so much in comparison to the Wii iteration. Maybe it's because it'd been relatively little time since I'd finished the DS one and so the Wii one felt like too much of a good thing in the same way Ass Creed's 'sequels' have done, or maybe it's because the leap is bigger this time and it feels genuinely fresh over its DS predecessor. Whatever the case, I want this right now and am pretty much prepared to buy a Wii U for the privilege. The fact that they've brought back a Mario World-esque overworld is just the icing on the cake. So, yeah. Even if the third-party support is as weak as I predict, knowing I'm going to get to indulge in some HD Mario, Zelda, and maybe even Donkey Kong is actually enough for me to sink some dosh into this thing. Shit. There is one con I'm sure some (Jake) will empathise with, though: that stupid vocal sound effect continues to permeate most of the music.