Now, when it comes to peripherals, they've already closed shop. They also fired large numbers of people from the physical distribution team. Those two things are true, but here's the yet unconfirmed rumor (but rather highly corroborated with recent leaks). The rumor is they're going multiplatform, porting all their exclusives from Gears of War to Sea of Thieves to PS5. They've already been porting their games to PC, and not just in their own exclusive Microsoft Store but on Steam as well. Not all of their XBox One/Series exclusives are there yet, but they're getting closer year by year. Combine that with recent leaks about the Switch 2 that say that MS has dev kits for the next Nintendo system, there's a good possibility they intend to do the same there too. They've already ported a handful of their former exclusives to the Switch 1.
If they go this route... well it would mean that MS has been buying up all these companies to become a games development house bigger than EA. It would also mean that what I currently have sitting on my shelf is a relic. I mean, MOST of my consoles are relics yes, but this would be a relic like the Dreamcast, the last hurrah.
Interesting to think about. There's positives and negatives to this of course, namely that Sony gets just THAT much more control over the console market, but what it could ALSO mean is that MS is going to make hardware more like the "Steambox", just a PC in a box that runs a normal version of Windows and just... plays whatever PC game you want to stick on it.
Posted by: etoven - 3rd February 2024, 7:07 PM - Forum: Ramble City
- No Replies
But it's got a plot hole in the beginning that is almost two stupid and obvious to believe.
Okay so son and grandpa get attacked by this assailant. Typical finding a better life.. Did the war, made enemies bla bla bla story...
Now this holy night attacks in the first scene making it very clear he's there to kill them both, because they possibly grow up to challenge their king.
So we kill the grandad, obviously it was a killing blow, but the child is up and tending grandad. The grandad asks are you okay, he says yes, it will take way more than that to kill me.
And the assailant is like the child is done for (I assume) because he just walks away. I'm like aaaah what... LOL.
He literally just said he is okay.
I mean did he forget why he was there? Is he really that stupid..
It's basically how the how whole story is allowed to be.
I mean the rest of the story is great. Good homage to the fans of the original. But I'm like.. WTF..
GENTLEMEN, allow me a sliver of your time to go on a Rolfean rant about this turd.
I put this game on my list a few weeks ago when I remembered that it existed and is probably available on the newer consoles. Never played it, have seen it praised as having a good soundtrack, seemed to be a generally-agreed-upon classic, yadda yadda.
Alright, I fire it up, not bad, pretty solid Castlevania. First craw-stucking was when I died and the game said GAME OVER LOL, back ye to the title screen Beanjo! Eh, okay? I guess this is what they were doing back in the day. Pretty annoying to have to wait for this game to slowly and deliberately load, as though it were some meaningful ritual and not a waste of my time and child-like impatience.
But it got even more annoying when I realized that my items, exp points, and map progress were all wiped. Well, that's annoying! Save points aren't exactly plentiful, so even if you stop at each one, there's a pretty good chance that something like 15 minutes of progress will be thrown down the toilet*.
But what REALLY bites my nuts is that after the third time or so this happened and left me incensed, I realized that a big part of the problem is that there's no fucking way to get health between save points. I got a turkey... once...? in the two and a half hours that I've played. 20% of which was from wasted progress on an outdated saving system, from cavemen that didn't have the robust imagination that with the powerful technology of PS1 and save cards, it's trivial to move beyond NES limitations and record a bit more information beyond a snapshot in time. We're not confined to passwords anymore here, people!
Not only do turkeys and hot dogs or whatever Alucard eats not drop, you can't even fucking buy them. ??? what ??? You could even do that in Castlevania 64, and that game was hot garbage gobbled down by gremlins and shat into Mordor. But respect to the librarian shyster, 'cause it was pretty funny to watch him say "why gosh Alucard I could NEVER betray the master!" and quietly rub together his thumb and forefinger under the table to tell Alucard to cough up his gold that, for yet-unspecified reasons, is hidden inside candles.
Oh, and by the way, what the bloody flying fuck does Quick Save do? I thought "ooh, here we go, maybe this will smooth things out," but nah it still erases your progress. Not sure how much exactly but enough to make it pointless. I got in a few good rooms but the progress still disappeared, this time immediately, instead of having the courtesy to wait for me to die. BACK YE TO THE TITLE SCREEN. **
Anyway, this game sucks shit but I'll probably suffer it a bit longer because it's maybe just fun enough play.
BUT LET IT BE KNOWN BY THE AUTHORITY GRANTED TO ME BY ME AS A WHINY LITTLE CRUMB-BUM THAT I AM NOT IMPRESSED
* that's how you guys poop right? No flushy, just hurl the feces into the bowl in the hopes that it hits its target and makes its way down the pipes
** Okay after a bit of googling (done through duckduckgo because google is hot steamed sausage links out my ass) it seems that you can use this in the marble rooms as a make shift save spot, otherwise it's kinda pointless. And it's still irritating to disrupt gameplay and, for reasons beyond my limited comprehension of cavemen culture, go back to the title screen any time you have to do this. Verdict is, this game's save system still sucks my smegma.
Yep... I knew it was coming. I literally predicted that a giant acquisition was going to lead to massive layoffs, and so it has happened. These mergers are steadily monopolizing the whole industry, and this is the result, inexorably, inevitably.
Posted by: Dark Jaguar - 11th January 2024, 11:37 AM - Forum: Tendo City
- No Replies
Well, in a couple months the Pokemon Bank's online component is going to die, killing off the ability to trade 'mons between every one of the 3DS pokemon games (including virtual console emulations of the gen 1 and 2 games). I said back then I hated that Nintendo went and made the bank program require an online component instead of having a local save storage option, and here we are. Here's hoping some hackers put together a homebrew app to replicate Bank's features, but offline.
But, I have a different bit of good news. It seems there's now a way to alter Gameboy games to use nonvolatile chips so they no longer require a save backup battery. In most cases, that's not a mod I'm too pressured to implement, but this would be especially useful for Gold/Silver/Crystal, which use the battery for both save storage and time keeping, draining it far faster.
Note that because of that duel usage, the mod is more complicated on those games, requiring a few extra components to keep the battery you'll still need from frying the new chip.
One of the biggest annoyances of the XBox Series design is the use of a proprietary connector for adding NVME speed storage to the system. It's a problem MS had with the XBox 360, again with the XBox One (where technically you CAN upgrade the drive, but only to specific sizes that were originally officially supported) and again now. As the only company that pulls this nonsense, it can be annoying.
Fortunately, a company has put together a functional adapter to allow very select m.2 drives to function. Specifically, the m.2 NVME speed drives using firmware already preapproved by the XBox Series' OS. This appears to work and work well, but the fact it works at all means there's nothing special about MS's connector protocol. It's literally just a lockout tool. In any case, it'll be important to have converters like this in the long run when external support and production of these custom drives stops.
Download it now and forever, and create new media using these versions of the characters, or unique new interpretations of these versions of the characters. It's free.
I've been sick this week, and while I'm getting better I'm not quite fully recovered yet so this will be shorter than it otherwise probably would be. This year, I bought as many games as ever, but did I play them? No, I often didn't. I've spent far too much time this year just watching Youtube and such and not playing anything.
And when I do play games, it's mostly the same things. For example, my most played game this year is, surprise surprise, Super Mario Maker 2. According to my Switch I've played something closing in on 300 hours of that game this year. That number may be a bit high but it should be close. Second place on my list, for playtime, according to the 'what did you play this year?' pages that Sony, MS, Nintendo, and Steam put up, is Diablo IV. It says that I played 200 hours of that game on Xbox, which definitely seems too high; I know I've left my Xbox on more than a few times while actually watching Youtube, that's going to add to the time. However, I certainly did play a lot of Diablo IV. I wrote that two-part review for a reason, I finished the game and kept playing it some after that.
After those two, though, there's a big dropoff from second to third; my next couple of most played games are in in 50-something-hour range, namely F-Zero 99 for Switch next and then Dead or Alive 6 for Xbox. The first of those games I love, the second ... not so much, I just play it sometimes anyway.
The other games that would be in this category if they were on those listing sites are Nintendo 3DS games -- I played many hours of 3DS puzzle games. Specifically, digital ones. Most nights I play a few minutes of 3DS puzzle games before bed. I've finished a lot of the 3DS Picross games now, I only have a few left. Other digital 3DS puzzle games I played a lot of include Wordherd, Block-a-Pix Color, Link-a-Pix Color, Sudoku Party, and 505 Tangram for DSiWare on 3DS. I've also played a bit of Angry Birds Trilogy on 3DS cart. I've finished all the puzzles in Link-A-Pix Color and Wordherd, and am close to finishing Block-a-Pix Color. I've come to love puzzle games in a way that I didn't when I was younger, and the 3DS is the best portable format ever for them thanks to the stylus. It'll be pretty sad once I run out... the 3DS is still amazing and has yet again been one of my most-used devices this year.
What PS4 games did I play this year? Well, my Sony year in reviewsite said that I played 12 hours total of PS4 games this year, so the answer is unsurprising, not many. The most played of the bunch is the Star Ocean: 2nd Story Remaster.
As for retro games, I haven't been playing them as much as I should, but the one system that I have been returning to is one that's on a lot of people my age or older's thoughts these days, the NES. I've returned to it after many years of mostly ignoring the system for probably the same reasons as others. I mean, even though I didn't own a NES as a kid, I played it a lot, it basically was console gaming in my childhood. How well does it hold up? I know that there are some things about the NES that I don't like very much, most notably overly inscrutably confusing and "just wander around and figure it out" game design. However, there are also a lot of games that are still good. I turn my NES on and play something or other on it on a regular basis. I got a Famicom Disk System for my NES last year and a while ago finally got an accessory to allow for expansion audio to work without needing the internal mod, so I try out FDS games sometimes as well. All I don't have is a way to play Famicom 3D System games, I'll probably need to give up on the dream of an adapter to make those glasses work on a regular NES, since to use them on a NES you would need to make a homebrew cable that connects to certain pins on the bottom port, and just buy a Famicom at some point. Oh well.
With that said, here are my top lists for the year.
The Best New 2023 Releases
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1. F-Zero 99 (Switch)
2. Akka Arrh (played on XSX)
3. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch)
4. Diablo IV (played on XSX)
5. Caverns of Mars Recharged (played on XSX)
My Favorite Older Games that I First Played in 2023
This won't be the interesting list that it often has been in the past; while I bought a lot of retro games this year, again, I never actually got around to trying most of them. So... uh, I guess this handful of 3DS eshop games will have to do, and maybe a couple of other games.
505 Tangram (DSiWare)
Art Style: DIGIDRIVE (DSiWare)
Gotta Protectors (3D eshop)
Mighty Flip Champs! and Mighty Milky Way (DSiWare)
Bookworm (Nintendo DS version)
The Best Remasters of the Year
There were some fantastic remasters this year. These are the best among them.
Metroid Prime Remastered (Nintendo Switch)
Towers II: Enhanced Stargazer Edition (Atari Jaguar remaster of an Atari Jaguar game)
Star Ocean: The Second Story R (played on PS4)
Quake II [Remastered] (played on XSX)
Overall Game of the Year
1. Super Mario Maker 2 (Nintendo Switch) - For me, is this the unsurprising pick of the century? Perhaps. But I really do deeply, deeply love this game, it's the most perfect game concept ever. The execution needs work, and I hope it gets that work in a third Mario Maker release someday. Even as it is, though, with its issues and its declining userbase, SMM2 is incredible. I'm still loving this game as much as ever, and continue making levels for it. I made a new stage this month that is probably one of my better ones.
[It is not new, but perhaps here I should mention that I finished Super Mario Bros. for the NES on real hardware for the first time this year. I'd beaten the easier GBC version back in '00, but the NES version had always eluded me because of how hard getting through world 8 is. Well, decided that I can do it, and put in the effort. Eventually I won and it feels very good. The game is certainly one of the best ever.]
2. F-Zero 99 (Nintendo Switch) - The surprise of the year by far, Nintendo's shocking announcement and immediate release of this new, SNES-style online-only F-Zero game was some of the best news I've had from gaming in a long time! I really, really love the classic F-Zero games -- the first two are nearly perfect 10/10 classics in my book, and are both among the best racing games ever. Due to its online nature requring a large player base to be at its most fun, which you can never count on, I don't think that this game quite matches either of the originals in overall greatness. Even so, F-Zero 99 is a truly exceptional game. It's easily my favorite new release of 2023! I'm amazed and thrilled that this game was released.
3. Akka Arrh (played on Xbox Series X) - Legendary developer Jeff Minter's latest release is this game. This is a title that's a modern re-imagining of a cancelled Atari game from the early '80s. Or rather, this is a game loosely based on that title, but if you look at the original prototype and this game you'll see how different the two are. The core concept of both is that you are defending a turret from enemies attacking you from all around, and that, like in Tempest, each stage has a new shape. Also, in both games if certain enemies get past your defenses they attack the tower from below, and you have to zoom in and fight them off there. However, Minter's take changes the fairly simple 'shoot the zone to kill the baddies' gameplay of the original for something much more like the brilliant '00s arcade-style game Every Extend. Somewhat like in that game, you shoot bombs that create spreading explosions within the zone you shot at. Each enemy destroyed by a bomb creates its own chain explosion, and your chain bonus counter resets if you shoot another bomb. You also have bullets, with limited ammo that replenishes with enemy kills, and bullets don't reset your chain.
Because of instant-death enemies that rapidly zoom at you and everything going on on screen with the numerous game mechanics Akka Arrh is probably one of Minter's harder games and the skill ceiling is high, but it's a brilliant concept done well. Expect to be very frustrated but also addicted. I find that I often find it hard to tell when I'm about to die and when I can take a hit, but otherwise I absolutely love this game! Akka Arrh has beautiful classic arcade-inspired visuals, that classic Jeff Minter flare, compelling gameplay, and great design. Nobody does classic arcade gameplay plus synthesesia better than Jeff Minter. Perhaps this is unsurprising considering that he's been a game developer since about 1980, working in the same genre the whole time, but it's true. Akka Arrh is incredible, play it immediately if you haven't.
4. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Switch) - I wrote a review of this game last month as well, so I don't think I need to repeat myself. Mario Wonder's a mostly easy but otherwise great game that any Mario fan should consider a must-play.
5. Diablo IV (played on Xbox Series X) - When I think of my XSX, which by the way I got via mail order on its day of release since I was so fortunate as to get a preorder in from Microsoft.com that one day that they were available, I think of a system with a fantastic controller and amazing graphical capabilities, but few games that really compel me to play them in the way that Nintendo games do. The Switch is junior-grade compared to the Series in controller build quality and graphics, but in gameplay Nintendo, for me, are the unquestioned masters of console game design. With that said, though, Diablo IV is a fantastic game. I didn't play it that maybe as much as 200 hour playtime I mentioned earlier for no reason, I played it because of how good this game is. Diablo IV has some major issues with its story, its overlong boss fights, and some of the seasonal content, and more. The core gameplay is fantastic, though. The controls, action, skill systems, and more are compelling and very well designed.
6. Nintendo 3DS puzzle games, and, since I finished it and really liked the concept, perhaps Link-A-Pix Color in particular. There is a game on 3DS with the same concept as this title, but without capacative touch it'd surely be much worse...
Honorable Mention: This year's outstanding remasters of Metroid Prime and Star Ocean: The Second Story are absolutely top-tier. Metroid Prime is one of the best games ever made and this remake is extremely impressive.