dium

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by dium


  1. Quote

    using specials is usually a waste of time and you're better off using online fast A-attacks and smashing as soon as the percentage is high enough


    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").


  2. 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

    Spoiler

    TLoZ Dungeon Theme. But tbh I actually DO think that's the most identifiable element of that track.

     


  3. 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.


  4. 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.


  5. 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.


  6. 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.


  7. 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.


  8. 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.


  9. 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.


  10. 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.


  11. I had taken somewhat of a break from video games for the first two months of this year. Then my dog died and I impulse bought a Switch as a diversion.

     

    Feb 08: Civ 6 Rise & Fall (¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I was never not gonna buy this, but I haven't really played it. Like I said, at the time I wasn't gaming much.)
    Feb 28: Mario Odyssey (I'm at ~450 moons and still having a good time, but I'm likely to consider this "done" at ~600 moons)
    Feb 28: Overcooked (Barely touched. Bought it to co-op with my girlfriend, but it's more stressful of an experience than either of us is generally in the mood for)
    Mar 02: Golf Story (Completed! I liked it!)
    Mar 10: Into The Breach (I haven't played this as much as I'd like, and it's entirely because it's PC-only. As soon as I can load this up on my macOS work laptop I'm likely to play the shit out of it)
    Mar 28: Thimbleweed Park (My first double-dip for a Switch version of a game I already own; probably not the last. I played this on PC when it came out and got reasonably far, but never went back when I got stuck... they've since added the hint hotline so I don't think I'll have a problem this time around.)


  12. 10 hours ago, Gormongous said:

    When I feel like having an argument, I tell people that Porco Rosso is my favorite Miyazaki movie.

     

    I think I've already stated that I do the exact same thing. But also, I don't know what my "actual" favorite is (there are several contenders) so it might as well be true.


  13. Curse of Monkey Island is, arguably, why I play PC games. That, and the first two MI games that came bundled with it.

     

    Separately: I don't think I've ever obsessed over a game before release as much as I did for Escape from Monkey Island. I was 10, and probably too young to be as disappointed as I think most people were.


  14. I don't know if it's a pointless distinction (leaving aside how "hard scifi" and "soft scifi" may be incorrect terms). I know for me there's a hard distinction between scifi movies about ideas/high-concepts and scifi movies that are more about storytelling/low-concepts**. If I'm in the mood for one, I generally do not want the other (technical plausibility basically never factors into it).

     

    **does anyone actually use the term "low concept"? I suspect not.


  15. The best thing about the Smash Switch announcement is how many people I now know who are suddenly interested in owning a switch, or at least in hanging out with me to play mine.

     

    It's gonna be a game I end up owning even though my personal interest is currently only moderate, because anyone who sees I own a Switch is likely going to ask if we can play Smash and I wanna be ready with an "of course".


  16. On 2/28/2018 at 7:36 AM, Roderick said:

     

      Reveal hidden contents

    Was it me, or did Andy Serkis' character really lose his mind in between movies? In Week of Ultron (refuse to call it Age) he was basically a sane resource robber in a stranded oil tanker, now he's giggling and doing a cool Joker thing.

     

     

    I had no idea that character was in any other movie until just now.

     

    I also didn't know Martin Freeman's character was in any other movie until a week after I saw BP.

     

    TBH, I think my ignorance of both those points helped me enjoy the movie more.