On the Nature of Things

Video games? What are those?

I wouldn't know, every time I turn around there is the missus with another brand new Zelda. Starting to lose the boundary line for where Hyrule begins and Earth ends.

What could be added? It's charming and it's brilliant and fun for what it is.

The gimmick this time is you are the princess and she (mostly) doesn't directly fight but conjures up facsimiles of defeated enemies and everyday objects to either do the fighting or be used as projectile weapons.

It surprisingly works much better than I had imagined. Still, waiting around to watch the COM fight itself is weird. (and to be fair, it doesn't usually take all that long so there isn't really disengagement)

I vacillate wildly between "this is clever" to "I wish it were more of a normal 2d Zelda"

Juno markII wrote: ↑11 Nov 2024 16:27 https://support.sega.com/hc/en-us/artic ... sics-FAQ

I wonder if this means Sega is gearing up for their own streaming game service.

If I had the extra cash, I'd think about grabbing a physical copy of that Switch collection with an eye on selling it down the road.

Finished Zelda- not really much to add. It was very good, despite a bunch of things to nitpick.

Is it a masterpiece or must play? No. It's not a top tier Zelda but despite the unusual combat mechanics, it plays almost like a conservative attempt at a greatest hits for the series.

-The map is an expanded/slightly altered version of the Link to the Past/Link Between Worlds hyrule.

-Inventory mechanics; cooking and ingredients; little shrine-like areas one enters; random enemy encampments (often with chests); map and quest markers; an open approach to puzzle-solving taken from Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom

-The story is more akin to the Capcom produced trilogy of games but the character types feel more akin to the ones in the Ocarina of Time. The homeland of the Goron (rock people) and Sea Zora (fish people) look like scaled down mini-set pieces from that game.

-The game was built on the same engine they remade Link Awakening with and so shares a lot from that one; including the most sidescrolling sections in a Zelda game since the NES's Link's Adventure.

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Maybe being so tied into the rest of the series holds it back (maybe the only amount of rope Grezzo was given- the prototype of the game started out with the intention of becoming a game builder ala "Mario Maker.)

But I think it's more that the dungeons are lower-tiered for the series (with an exception to 2), too much dialogue, and the combat mechanic doesn't really move beyond fascinating idea as it's hard to build momentum.

Eastward-

An indie game in 16-bit SNES style that promises to mix Zelda (there she is again), Earthbound (or the Mother series outside the US) and Chrono Trigger- with a bonus, game-within-game parody of the Dragon Quest JRPG games as on the NES/gameboy.

My goodness, they almost pulled it off. I ended up really enjoying this game despite glaring flaws.

I can't pin down why, outside the music being great and pixel art excellent. The pacing is awful; too linear; combat is Zelda clone flash game territory including simple dungeon design I was just dinging Zelda for; there are cinematic cut scenes that fade to black to bring you 2 more. The dialogue and story are as convoluted as it was overwhelming.

We made tremendous use of the fast-forward button; which ended up being a blessing to include. Skipped or sped-read 90%+ of it.

Yet, there was something about it that kept us going forward and getting invested from chapter to chapter. Some of that was the gameplay loop was clear cut and didn't waste too much time. Some of that was the clever (and short) game within a game; some of it was that the writing and characters was actually okay, within its own context, despite needing an editor.

The influences did come across and it worked pretty well. It's been a very long time since I played a Mana game or the Illusion of Gaia game that were supposed to be SNES Zelda-like hybrids with JRPGs and I think I liked this one better than both of those.

A bonus: we did almost everything within 18 hours of game time, with maybe an extra 1:45 in the game-within. So despite the pacing issues, it really doesn't overstay it's welcome for an action-adventure rpg.

FT | Is gaming’s graphical arms race over?

The industry seems to have reached a visual plateau, leaving the way open for games that thrive on fun and creativity.

Typhoon wrote: ↑08 Jan 2025 07:05 FT | Is gaming’s graphical arms race over?

The industry seems to have reached a visual plateau, leaving the way open for games that thrive on fun and creativity.

Very reasonable to think we've reached a stage of "only dogs can hear the difference"; wallets & pocketbooks of the average consumer are probably there already.

There is also no great rush to find another gear at the moment because beyond costs, indies are incapable of reaching major studio standards as it stands. If that changes, maybe with the help of AI, then I bet you the head of the totem pole will be all about that 10x high definition picture quality.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle- fantastic movie game. Easily could be considered on par with the original three films in the trilogy- especially as it gets around "Action Man" Indiana Jones's age in video game format. He can be forever late 30s to early 50s Harrison Ford.

As an adventure game stripped of the brand? Well, it's good; the puzzles are light on difficulty. The hitting people over the head with objects and getting into fisticuffs is fun but not really what the game hangs on. The collectables? No.

There is a bit of diminishment going from one location to the next because it does get to a point where the game isn't going to surprise you game play wise. Go to location X, and if doing side missions, there is going to be an x,y,z here like in every location.

It doesn't help that the game starts at a very busy and intricate Vatican City and peters out in a "Siam" whose temple set pieces are delightful but traveling by boat to get anywhere (making it one giant water level) grows old fast.

We played on an Xbox Series S- so I suppose the lowest of low settings the thing could handle. At times it looked spectacular and then in other moments, you could confuse it with a game from 15 years ago. How much of it was our available hardware I do not know. We did download the extra 100 gbs of "textures" on top of the 100-ish+ gbs for the game itself.

It's a gripe but these 300-400 gigabyte games just feel like its runaway coding and timeshare creep-- "X game needs to be 75% of the harddrive to make sure little Johnny and Suzie aren't downloading the competitor's game at the same time so as to give us his or her full attention."

Atari 50: anniversary collection/documentary

Picked this up in a bargain bin mainly for the documentary and a laugh on the couch with a simple game of PONG.

The documentary is nice and some of the never before released prototypes are wild.

Is it worth it for the download-only customers? Candidly, no. It's really hard to argue Atari games have a continuing value beyond museum curiosities. The most interesting ones are all things which were already being programmed onto calculators thirty years ago- the "newer" stuff like the Jaguar stuff or Atari reimagined are like free to play flash games. That whoever owns Atari still can milk it is more an accident of copyright.

Grounded

A survivalists/sandbox game which swipes the plot of 'Honey, I Shrunk the Kids': you're a kid who has gone missing in his own backyard because you accidentally got shrunk to the size of an insect by the local mad scientist- who also accidentally got himself lost somewhere in that backyard but set up convenient science and research facilities for you, staffed with robots who are slowly rebuilding their memory banks on what happened (and how to get you out of there) every time you turn on a lab.

Haven't played all that much because it seems like a huge commitment and I get the impression that it was really made with multiplayer in mind and the single player experience is secondary/more grueling. Other than that, there is something just off about the game that I can't put my finger on. If we go back to it anytime soon, maybe I'll figure that bit out.

Resident Evil 2 Remake--

Tried this out on gamepass. Going by the bit I played, and only having a very fuzzy memory of Resident Evil 2, the remake is really well done and modernizes the game in a very thoughtful way that improves the experience.

The missus wasn't too thrilled with it and I'm not gonna find extra time to play this one, so I'm probably done but would recommend.

Prince of Persia- The Lost Crown:

Wonderful Metroidvania; neck-and-neck with Metroid Dread for tops of the genre in the last few years.

Just wrapped up; I think I liked Dread slightly better but I could see it going the other way for others.

The powerups were unique for the genre; combat and movement were pretty great; a nice mixture of tough fights and tough platforming; this had some clever puzzles and surprising ways in how all the different modules connected into one overall world.

Metroid still had slightly nicer movement and boss fights but the real difference is that Prince of Persia works against itself by the end. About 2/3 of the way through, the players has done the gist of everything and that's when one hits the ubisoft copy&paste territory where the last 1/3 of the game is padding to justify the huge triple AAA development team and (I assume) budget for their small game competing against indie titles in a niche space.

Very strange for a game that was clearly aimed at being a budget title but I guess its the very familiar problem of big corporations: elephant guns apply to every thing.

So, I got to the very last boss, tried to beat him a few time times (he has four different stages and I kept getting stuck on part 3 of the fight) and then turned down his difficulty to as near zero as I could. I reached a point where I didn't want to sit there for another hour to learn and perfect his patterns just to say I beat the challenge.

Nintendo Switch 2-

We were going to hold off until a proper Zelda was announced but between tariff stuff, Sony consistently raising their prices during the last generation (so nothing is getting cheaper) and my brother talking me into it; I picked one up.

It is the most conservative generation shift Nintendo could've possibly done. One can tell that the creatives are no longer in charge of the company and that the bankers and financial people have the upper hand.

We got the system bundled with Mario Kart World. We are very much the sucker in this transaction; gotta wear that on the chin. The game and system are not worth the price thus far.

Mario Kart is not a disaster on the level we've seen other triple-A studios release disasters recently but it sucks for a Mario Kart and more reviewers and critics would be comfortable saying it if not for that Nintendo trademark attached.

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