dium

I feel dumb for only recently re-discovering that Shmorky still exists. A real treasure of the internet.

This was a really slow video game year for me, mostly for financial reasons. The majority of new video games I've played this year have been in the last couple months (since I have a new job now) and have been on Nintendo systems (which is kinda weird). So my GOTY list is less like a best-of and more like a comprehensive list of games I've played at all. Top GOTY: Smash 4 Maybe I'm in some sort of starry-eyed honeymoon period with Smash 4. Will I think so fondly of this game in a few months? Hard to tell. But whatever is happening between me and this game right now, it's glorious. I think about it constantly. Actually, it might be a problem. Runner up: Hearthstone I don't play this anymore, and I don't really intend to pick it back up. But I can't deny how much I played this game over the first half of this year. It approached Civ levels of time monopolizing. Linear, Narrative-Driven Game OTY: Broken Age Pt. 1 It is also, full disclosure, the only linear narrative-driven game released this year that I remember playing. Phone Distraction OTY: Desert Golfing You know what this bullshit is. Little League Style Participation Trophy Award : Crypt of the Necrodancer This probably wouldn't make my list if I'd played many more new games this year. It's very stylish, it sounds great, and I had fun with it. But really it's on here because it was the only new game I played in July/August/September. Games that I haven't spent enough time with to rate include: Pokemon ORAS (which is just more Pokemon XY and probably wouldn't end up on the list anyway) and Shantae & The Pirate's Curse (which I've enjoyed so far, but I'm only three levels in). This year had loads of games that I'm still interested in playing, and look forward to buying at a discount over the course of next year: Transistor, The Banner Saga, Jazzpunk, Monument Valley, Shadow of Mordor, 80 Days, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Divinity: Original Sin, DK: Tropical Freeze, Captain Toad, Mario Kart 8, probably others. ...If I intend to play all of those, I may not have time for next year's new games, huh?

If Dedede (who I will hereby refer to by his dopey smash community abbreviative nickname, D3) had a decent approach option, or if his Gordo projectiles didn't bounce back when struck, then he would be perfect. He would be a perfect penguin king. As he is, he's probably still my fav. Link is really good in this game, which is notable only because (as far as I can tell) he's never been good in an official Smash game until now. I prefer him over Toon Link, which surprised me. He feels so much nimbler, and less helpless when your opponent manages to get past your barrage of projectiles.

I bought this! It was good! Then, unfortunately for it, Pokemon and Smash happened at the same time. (and the Wii U I bought for Smash came with 3D World, which I've also been playing) I'll get back to it.

Until recently I've been trying to main Zelda, since I really like her playstyle and she's stronger in this game than in any previous games (teleport KOs do not get old). Unfortunately, despite her buffs, she's still low bottom-tier, and I'm just getting good enough where that lack of relative power is acutely felt. :/ I'll keep playing her, I still think her moveset is cool, but I'm also looking for a main that doesn't feel like such an uphill battle to win with. Palutena has a similar playstyle and is much more competitive, apparently, but I feel no connection to the character. King Dedede is growing on me. Every hit of that hammer feels great. Also, my candidate for best taunt in the game is actually Dedede's crouch:

That sucks. Like I said above, I've been playing the Wii U version and have had about as little lag as I could've hoped. Which is to say, almost none. Too bad mine is not the universal experience. To be clear, I only play online 1-on-1 For Glory. From what I hear, items increase lag significantly. I imagine more characters would too.

New Smash is a hit for me. It's gorgeous, and frankly I'd have been happy with a remake of Brawl that looked this good. But nobody worry, it's certainly much more than that. The game is faster and less floaty than Brawl. But it's still not as fast as Melee or Project M. Hardcore competitive smashers might disagree, but I'm really happy with the middle ground. Unlike Melee, Smash 4 feels like a game that I have some chance of developing proficiency with: I can actually follow competitive matches on a move-by-move basis (for characters I'm familiar with). I could only do that with Melee with footage slowed-down, really. Maybe that makes the new game a baby game, I don't know; I might be a baby. On the other hand, Smash 4 is quick and technical enough that I actually want to develop proficiency. I liked Brawl, but I never had much fun without items. The speed of that game was perfect for reacting to four-player items-on wacky-stage-hazard madness. But with items and hazards off, even I could understand why some pro players were disappointed. Personally, I find Smash 4 in competitive-mode *much* more exciting. ...which makes net play more important to me, so I'm thrilled that this game's online mode feels really good! (so far!) The 3DS version had some really deeply frustrating lag sometimes, especially around launch, but so far I've felt none of that on the Wii U. I might just be lucky. But I'm optimistic. If online play remains this good, Smash 4 might become the first fighting game I've ever tried to "get good" at competitively. The single player stuff (that I've tried) is at least as good as it's ever been, but with several improvements. Most significant is the ability to play pretty much anything 2-player local co-op. This is huge. It's making classic and all-star modes, historically pretty bland and repetitive, an actual blast. Event mode was a favorite of mine from Melee, so I'm glad to see it back (although I haven't done many of them yet). I haven't tried the board game thing yet... I'm dubious, but I'll try it with an open mind when I find the chance. Finally, I find all the new characters cool and interesting (Stupid Dark Pit notwithstanding). So yeah. I'm really happy with it. It's hard not to think about it constantly. I haven't had a chance to play with more than 2 players locally, but I'm hoping to remedy that over the Thanksgiving weekend. Tree is a weird move. It's three moves, really: details here on the smash wiki. Summary of the three practical uses (that I'm aware of): 1) when the tree sprouts it damages/knocks-back characters above it, 2) when a tree is planted Villager has an axe which is a decently strong attack on its own, 3) Villager can chop down the tree, falling trees do massive damage/knock-back. I really like Villager. He's a weirdo, but very satisfying to play.

I can buy that. Not that we can ever know the reason for sure. I was thinking of doing a screenshot lets play of my planned nuzlocke run, for some reason. It would've been, probably, the dorkiest thing I've done in my entire adult life. But there's no way I'm gonna do it with photos of the screen.

This is the ONLY game I have ANY interest in taking screenshots of and it's disabled? Why... why is Nintendo like this? Why let me take screenshots, but disallow them on certain titles where I actually have a reason to take screenshots?

How is the psychic omnipresence of Prof. Oak allowing this?!? EDIT: Stolen from Reddit response to this very image:

Unfortunately, yeah.

I understand and agree, in spirit, with the reductionist argument that all an adventure game needs is a catch-all "use" verb. But I can't help but miss the illusion of agency that verb choices present. I think three verbs (a la Full Throttle's "verb coin") was the sweet spot for me.

I'm always pleasantly surprised when somebody new to Pokemon tries it and likes it. Pokemon has a unique place in the set of things that I like, in that I can't (to any satisfying degree) explain why I like it as much as I do. It's a game of rock-paper-scissors made complicated in dozens of different ways, many of which are obfuscated or even invisible, but which ultimately are irrelevant to 90% of players since the main campaign is designed to be beatable by small children. The story and writing in these games, where existent, is "simplistic" if you're being charitable ("brain dead" if you aren't). It's set in a world where kids are obligated to make their pet animals fight each other the moment eye contact is made, no exceptions, but some time is allowed before the battle to make small talk about (among other things) the practicality of wardrobe choices or why *insert character-defining hobby* is the best and most interesting character-defining hobby. But I always, ALWAYS have fun with Pokemon games. I can't explain why, since anything I ever say about them comes out sounding like a criticism. X/Y is what got me to buy a 3DS; I burned through that game like a fiend and I have no regrets.

Is this a weirdly common thing to do, keep an Anime list like this? I do this (well, used to). I think it was to remind myself that there's been anime that I really liked and to keep trying new stuff, since most of the time I try to watch new anime I get depressed and retroactively decide all anime is hot garbage.

Episodes where Danielle and Jake talk about Nintendo shit are MY FAVORITE EPISODES. This is, therefore, my favorite episode.

Miyazaki is masterful, but never in particularly new or interesting ways. That sums up my opinion of him. I don't dislike any of his movies (that I've seen), and there are a couple that I adore (Mononoke Hime and Porco Rosso). But I have friends who think he's absolute garbage and I can't really argue with their reasoning at all.

Experience with the Wii U has been positive so far. As a game playing device it's really solid: I like the gamepad a lot, it feels surprisingly good and the ability to play when the TV is being used for something else has already proven useful. Super Mario 3D World is pretty good... it's cutesier than I expected, which is dumb, because I dunno what else I should've expected from a game with cartoon men in catsuits. But I don't mind cutesy! I'm not the hugest fan of the music, though, which is charming at first but reminds me of Japanese supermarket music and gets old way fast. I wish there was a bundle with the new DK Country game; I think I'd enjoy that one more based on music alone. The not-game-playing parts of the system are a bit disappointing, but it's OK since I wasn't betting on using the Wii U for any of its non-game features. For example, the Netflix app is frustratingly bad. I was half hoping to start using my Wii U for all my streaming services, and I guess technically I can, but I'm likely to continue to use the PS3 Netflix app (which also isn't great, but at least supports separate profiles). And after thinking about it, this is no real loss anyway: I'm now more likely to use my Wii U for games on the pad screen while my girlfriend watches Netflix on the PS3 (or vice versa). I ended up disabling miiverse from parental controls because I found random notes from people annoying rather than charming. I might turn it back on later and give it another chance.

I own a Wii U now. Mario 3D world bundle. First (and so far likely only) current gen console!

You're probably right. If it's a video game thing, I don't visit very many other video game related places of discussion. And the initial joke is funny, and objectivegamereviews is funny, I'm just easily annoyed and a grump.

It's already the console with the largest number of interesting-looking games that I can't play on my PC. It's so weird to me how that last point doesn't seem to matter, sales wise. I guess it's probably a good thing for consumers that "Exclusives" don't matter anymore, but it's still weird that they genuinely don't seem to matter anymore.

Nice to see this is happening! Extreme CMI vibes, from the background art especially. That's a good thing. It's a bummer that there's likely no VO, but at least there's no chance of bad VO (which is worse than no VO).

My love for Majora's Mask is at a nostalgia-fueled, unconditional fanboy level at this point. So I am psychologically unable to respond to criticisms about the game: for example, I'm sure it's valid to think some of the mask collecting is cryptic and tedious and dumb, but I loved that shit. Collecting the masks and fairies and ESPECIALLY doing the sidequests are all my favorite parts of that game, and are the elements that I'm saddest not to see in other titles. It can absolutely get tedious for some of the masks, but I can forgive some tedium because to me, the trade-off for the time mechanics and intricate NPC schedules is worth it. I am somewhat irked that people think it's the hipster choice of Zelda, and that people like because it's oh-so-obscure or something. I don't suspect the new 3D release is going to change the landscape of public opinion about MM at all. People who've always expressed their love for MM will continue to love it for its kooky-dark atmosphere, willingness to experiment, and overall air of mystery that Zelda games benefit so much from having. People who like the game less (for legitimate reasons, I'm sure) aren't going to change their minds. And new players are probably going to fall into one of those two categories themselves. Also I might be done with this forum's ironic use of "objectively" and "fact" when stating opinion, I'm going to have to install a cloud-to-butt style word filter or something.

I said this in another thread but I'll say it here too because Majoras Mask is the best: I would've bought a 3DS just for a Majoras Mask remake. That's a thing I would've done. I'm so happy that I already own a 3DS so I don't have to do that, but not because I wouldn't have done it.

So glad this is happening after I finally own a 3ds. I would've felt really silly buying new hardware for a remake. And I would've done it.

The vehicle sections are pretty bad. I always forget about those when I'm recalling the game.