dium

This is hard to internalize, because the simple-compared-to-most-fighting-games control scheme makes it just as easy to do the big flashy move as it is to do the quick jab, so you instinctively want to do the big flashy move as much as possible. I feel like I have to re-teach myself this every time I get back into Smash. It also helps, when you're learning a character, to go over every move and try to determine what situation each special move is for, and train yourself only to consider that move when those situations occur. For a lot of B-moves, those situations are only occasional. But some characters—especially ranged-focused characters like Samus or the Belmonts—are all about using their ranged B-moves all the dang time. You're so right about the lack of decent help on how to play for this game. Everything online is either extremely low-level (like what the buttons do, or "what is recovery") or very high-level (how to execute specific combo-strings, various confusing usages of the term "neutral").

I just wanna say that I *love* the concept of this quiz. Also, there's no way in hell I could even guess at any of them. EDIT: I take it back, #9 is clearly

Yeah, the faux-apologies might as well be them doubling-down. I can no longer imagine this isn't intentional; they can't find someone "better" to run their twitter accounts because they're getting the reaction they want from the people they care about. I'm a shameless consumer slut, so there's a way I might overlook all this (and all the horrible labor practices that I really shouldn't be overlooking) and still play this game. And that's if, by some surprising twist, the release version has extensive positive trans representation. But this is a fantastical hypothetical situation that will never happen: for one, we'd have seen at least some evidence of it in the preview footage by now. And even a little positive trans rep would piss off rightist lifestyle-gamers royally, and it's pretty obvious that's the group CDP cares about the very most.

I was being willingly naive about it because I really like The Witcher games (all of them), and I really wanted to fall in love with a cyberpunk game. But the marketing and PR departments of CD Projekt companies have made it impossible to ignore that they're a really quite regressive group.

A while back I posted in the quittin' thread that I was abandoning Hollow Knight after getting the easy, clearly-false ending. Well, a few weeks after that a friend was playing the game and it made me want to get back into it, and I've now defeated the GD Radiance and finally feel like I've actually "beat the game". It took me an embarrassingly long time to beat that boss, though! Several hours spread across multiple weeks. IDK if everyone else considers that one boss a such a significant difficulty spike or if it's just me. I have 95% out of a possible 112% completion (those 12 extra percentage points from DLC, I assume). I already know of a few challenges that I have no interest in ever doing (e.g. the delicate flower run) so my fleeting bout of completionism might as well stop here. I haven't touched the Godsmaster stuff, so that's there whenever I feel the urge to revisit the game.

Ugh, this game looks embarrassing. It also looks, in a lot of ways, good, and what I want out of an expensive RPG. Ughhhh.

WHAT I actually like that movie more now.

So, I "beat" Hollow Knight a while ago. But you can tell by the thread I'm posting in (and the scare-quotes I have to put around the word "beat") how that's not really true; I merely got the easy ending. Purely in terms of required-tasks-remaining, I think I'm actually pretty close to the "real" ending: I (probably) only need to beat one more dream boss, and then I have to do the white palace, and then finally the super-final boss. Thing is, each of those steps is gonna take (at least!) a full evening of concentrated effort, and none of it sounds particularly fun—even though I've enjoyed every moment of the 50 hours I've spent playing the game up until this point. It sucks to enjoy a game this much just to burn out on it right before the end. I absolutely will miss the sense of satisfaction gained from completion. I'd hoped that getting the easy ending would provide a little bit of that, but, frankly, it mostly just felt like a taunt. I might come back and give this another go when the final DLC comes out.

Hollow Knight is certainly my favorite Metroidvania too. I actually haven't played very many Metroidvanias, so maybe that's not the biggest commendation. But I love the game. I've already encountered/attempted a few challenges that I deemed too much for me at the moment, and one boss that I almost gave up on before somehow squeezing in a win. So I'm prepared, emotionally, to accept that I might not have it in me to see the "true ending" of this video game. For a while I've had the option of fighting what I'm assuming is the final boss for the easy ending (a "false ending"?), so I should probably go do that to get at least some sense of completion.

The voice of Toad in Captain Toad (and in almost every new Mario game I think?) is Samantha Kelly, but I 100% get what you mean by "Charles Martinetting"... that's exactly what Samantha is doing. The best Toad in my opinion was Isaac Marshall in Mario Kart 64. Yes, I acknowledge that's probably due entirely to nostalgia.

I know Hollow Knight has been out on PC since early last year, but the Switch version is easily my GOTFHOTY, easily.

Man, if only we lived in a world where the SE version of Monkey Island didn't bother with the modern graphics mode and instead let you swap between the CGA, EGA, and VGA versions of the game.

I reject the premise that the way to fight bigotry is by warmly engaging strangers expressing bigoted ideas (politely ignoring them is even worse). It's not that I think those people are innately evil, or doomed to their beliefs forever or whatever, but I just don't think it's pragmatic. The purpose of calling out hate and bigotry isn't to change bigoted minds, it's to establish social norms: if something is unacceptable it needs to be treated as unacceptable. If someone in a socially vulnerable position is being harmed by someone's words or (especially) actions, the response needs to be to shut it down hard. I don't think (publicly) coddling people who express toxic beliefs is likely to change their mind—it might, but I don't think it's likely—but it WILL work towards softening the greater social attitude towards those toxic beliefs, ultimately making life harder for people who are already vulnerable. That's not to say I think saving a bigoted soul, so to speak, is a bad thing to want to do. If you know someone and they have or are forming beliefs you think are evil, it's admirable to try to reverse that. But that's not the responsibility of society as a whole: society needs to react in disgust to things that are disgusting.

He does seem to be entering an every-role-is-inherently-a-'cameo' phase.

Gonna do some salesmanship for Golf Story, which I think is a kinda-average game that I happened to really love. Golf Story pefectly fits a niche for the Switch that, now that I've finished the game, I'm clamoring to fill again: a light-hearted and low-stakes (yet engaging) game that's perfectly playable and enjoyable in time increments as small as 30 seconds. I suppose any turn-based (or not-real-time) RPG would fit that bill, mostly, except turn-based RPG combat systems are a hard sell for me and I'm easily bored by the ultra-high-stakes fantasy/sci-fi plots in those games. The writing in Golf Story is often entertaining, but the actual golf story is mercifully simplistic. Anyway, the Switch (and handhelds in general) are where these sorts of games thrive. The ability to play a single hole of golf or chat up a few NPCs while, for example, I'm waiting for bread to toast, is invaluable. I'm very excited for the Switch port of West of Loathing as I suspect it will be the ideal replacement game to fill this niche. Addendum: If you ever played and enjoyed the Camelot Mario sports games for Game Boy, just get Golf Story already. IDK if those Camelot games hold up, but Golf Story is like your rose-tinted memory of them.