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Replies: |
| |  "Xbone-X? Xbonx?" , posted Tue 13 Jun 04:15:  
quote:
Microsoft official revealed the Xbox One X, which was going around as code name Scorpio before.
Specifications compared to all the other consoles out there
I dunno if it is just me, but I just can't get excited for Xbox One after Scalebound was cancelled.
The $500 price tag is also a tough pill to swallow too.
There are small thing here and there that are nice like
Original Xbox game backward compatibility
I still play X-Men Legends 1 and 2, The Punisher and Hulk Ultimate Destruction every few years, but I just use those on my 360.
Yeah, I was kind of looking for an excuse to consider adopting another Xbox (the 360 was IMO the clear winner over the PS3, though I had both). But I didn't find it here. And that price is... well, it's not super appealing. Scalebound did kind of tempt me at first, but it was already looking disappointing for me before it was cancelled.
Anthem does look kind of cool, but my friends were already on the Destiny train and I don't know if they'll get off (I burned out on the game pretty quickly). For now, though, too pricy and not enough to really get me interested.
Edit: I know that Microsoft must have imagined how people would abbreviate the new console name. For the Xbox One, I can't imagine they didn't have delusional fantasies of people call it "The One" (as if their console was goddamn Neo). For the new one, maybe they were hoping for "X" (also never going to happen) or "XBX" (I think that one's possible). But I imagine most people would probably just call it "The new Xbox."
Still, I welcome anyone else to use my preferred term, "Xbonx." It has a certain ring to it right?
/ / /
[this message was edited by Mosquiton on Tue 13 Jun 04:24] |
| | "Re(1):Xbone-X? Xbonx?" , posted Tue 13 Jun 04:50:
quote:
Microsoft official revealed the Xbox One X, which was going around as code name Scorpio before.
Specifications compared to all the other consoles out there
I dunno if it is just me, but I just can't get excited for Xbox One after Scalebound was cancelled.
The $500 price tag is also a tough pill to swallow too.
There are small thing here and there that are nice like
Original Xbox game backward compatibility
I still play X-Men Legends 1 and 2, The Punisher and Hulk Ultimate Destruction every few years, but I just use those on my 360.
Yeah, I was kind of looking for an excuse to consider adopting another Xbox (the 360 was IMO the clear winner over the PS3, though I had both). But I didn't find it here. And that price is... well, it's not super appealing. Scalebound did kind of tempt me at first, but it was already looking disappointing for me before it was cancelled.
Anthem does look kind of cool, but my friends were already on the Destiny train and I don't know if they'll get off (I burned out on the game pretty quickly). For now, though, too pricy and not enough to really get me interested.
Edit: I know that Microsoft must have imagined how people would abbreviate the new console name. For the Xbox One, I can
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
What does the "X" in "Xbox One X" stand for?
Is it a reference to Direct X?
Or ... does it stand for Xbox??? That would be so great. Like Rictus from Fury Road screaming his own name as he goes out in a blaze of glory because his own name is the most bad ass thing he can imagine.
quote:
Still, I welcome anyone else to use my preferred term, "Xbonx." It has a certain ring to it right?
You got my vote!
Xbone and Xbork are also sufficient!
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Tue 13 Jun 05:01] |
| | "Re(1):RPG talk" , posted Fri 21 Jul 11:22
quote:
I've been a bit too busy to post on MMC recently but I wanted to draw your attention on this interesting case study: Djinn Caster, a seemingly entirely unknown RPG recently released by Kemco on iOS and Android.
I noticed this game because I am pervertly fascinated by Kemco's obscure RPG output on digital platforms, especially their collaboration with the seemingly inextinguishable Exe Create and Hit-Point to create ziillions of run-of-the-mill 16-bit style RPGs.
The art style, setting and UI of Djinn Caster were clearly not in line with the rest of their line-up and I was not so surprised to find out this game is not Japanese but developed in Indonesia, which has me suddenly quite interested in the worldview, character interactions and bestiary of the game. I figured out some of you would be interested to take a look since we often talk here about how video games (under)use Southeast Asia's cultures as an inspiration.
/////////////////
Speaking of RPGs, the always entertainingly infuriating Famitsu Top 20 Readers list.
20. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PS4/XBO/PC) - 72
19. Final Fantasy VIII (PS/PC) - 74
18. Final Fantasy IX (PS/PC/iOS/Android) - 75
17. MOTHER2 (SFC) - 78
16. Final Fantasy VI (SFC/PS/GBA/iOS/Android) - 81
15. Dragon Quest IV (FC/PS/DS/iOS/Android) - 82
14. Persona 4 Golden
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Who even is Famitsu's readership these days? Fan vote placing Persona 5 at the top suggests not-40-year-olds, but the Witcher 3 even charting suggests... I have actually no idea what the demographic is in Japan that would be the main consumer of big Western RPGs, age-wise.
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| | "Re(2):RPG talk" , posted Fri 21 Jul 11:37
We don't have any data regarding Famitsu's current readership, but luckily for you we actually have rather precise data about this specific online poll!
【The survey gathered 2,295 votes, 56% from males, 43% from females (1% didn’t specify their gender). 9% of votes were in their teen years, 36% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 16% in their forties, and 1% in their fifties, with an additional 1% that did not identify their age. Voting was done between June 22nd and June 28th.】
Même Narumi est épatée !
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| | "DGS2" , posted Fri 4 Aug 08:30
So, if you're in possession of a Japanese 3DS and you're not playing Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2 (or even worse, you haven't played DGS1), your life is a lie and you should stop and think about what you've done. It's not too late. There's a handy "DGS1+2 pack" available too!
As a small reminder, DGS1's main flaw was that it was setting up a lot of things and resolved absolutely nothing, leaving everything for the sequel. Now is the time, and we'll see how everything pans out. Let's just say DGS2 has a LOT on its plate if it wants to resolve everything in a satisfying way.
The first case starts extremely strong but ends up a bit dull. The second case is already starting full steam and I love it.
I also love that the game doesn't have any new gimmick since the first one (that I know of): that means the main and only selling point of the game is the writing. No gimmick like 5-6 to hide poor writing, "wacky" new characters designed by commitee, or flanderization of established characters: the game will live and die by how it resolves its lose ends, and nothing else will count.
Fortunately, Takushu is in full control, and the 30 seconds introduction alone were enough to hook me into playing all night. THAT is how you pick up the threads where you left them, without wasting time apologizing for the flaws of DGS1 or soothing things up for new players. These 30 introductory seconds alread rank very high in my personal "best Takushu moment" ranking.
This is, of course, an illustrated meitantei novel, so as a reader you need at the same time enough suspension of disbelief and empathy for the characters to keep going.
And yeah, for the moment, Takushu's writing is really good. You can feel that he's relieved to not have to worry about the main GS anymore, and his statements about wanting to finish DGS with the second game are really reassuring. This guy is just the best. Did you know that he's got two cats now on top of Missile? Obviously Missile is still the cutest, but the cats are cute too. Wait, what was I saying.
Ah, yes. Susato was already the best female character of the whole Gyakuten series in DGS1, and she still the best for the moment. I hope everything ends up well for her. That is all for now.
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| | "Re(2):20XX Is A Procedural Mega Man X Game" , posted Sat 19 Aug 13:29
quote:
Hey! Uh. What happened to the crowdfunded Igavania, speaking of unofficial sequels (Matterfall is kind of on-topic, too, since you could call it the unofficial sequel to Alien Soldier).
While obviously having suffered some delays (current release date is 2018, when it was originally promised for March 2017), Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is still being developed. The last gameplay footage I think came from E3 a couple of months ago. The publisher apparently held a Q&A stream last night, but the recording hasn't been uploaded to YouTube yet.
From videos of the last E3 build, it is progressing about like you'd expect? Its graphics aren't going to set the world on fire or anything, but it looks passably decent. Level design (physical layout as well as enemy placement) is a bit dull, but that seems to be a common theme with metroidvanias.
I mean, it looks competent and playable. It doesn't look like a scam. If anything, Iga might be sticking a bit too close to form. It is kind of rough saying that, particularly since Mighty No. 9 tried and failed to change up elements of the Mega Man formula, but Bloodstained is a bit bland in its safety. I'm sure that is exactly what a bunch of backers want, but I don't know that it will draw new believers into the fold.
On a related note, I did briefly try 20XX again. It has improved since I last played it (which was nearly a year ago), but it still doesn't quite appeal to me. It looks better, things seem to mesh a bit better, and it does have more components for the level generation to use. But (again to contradict what I just said about Bloodstained perhaps being too safe) it doesn't feel quite Mega Man-ish for me. Falling offscreen only causes you to respawn with a bit of damage taken, it isn't instant death. Unfortunately, the game seemed to take this as an excuse to fill levels with lots of platform jumping. The plant boss has a kind of nice design in theory, but the boss room is filled with disappearing blocks that are far more nuisance than aid.
If you want Mega Man-style movesets and mechanics in non-Mega Man stages, then 20XX might be right up your alley. If you love playing Mega Man rom hacks, as well. For me, it just isn't quite what I want.
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(2):Re:Bayonetta's adult English lessons" , posted Wed 23 Aug 11:55:
quote:
Was Bayonetta's dialogue originally written in English and then localized into Japanese, or originally written in Japanese and localized into English?
This is a good question! I assume the English has been punched up in translation, but I don't know the process, and anyway, I am saving my, ah, virginal first playthrough of Bayo for Halloween on PC. This article is from the head of marketing. It's part of a series on learning English from Bayonetta, and this article is titled, well, "Learning English from Bayonetta that you can use on your masochistic man." 
This article series follows her original article, "Learning English from Bayonetta that good girls should never imitate," which begins with the heroic and affirmative description, "The heroine, Bayonetta, is strong, smart, and fashionable. She's full of confidence, and seems hard to approach. But there's another playful side of her that is actually big-hearted, a little naughty, and loves dirty jokes."
The fact neither this woman's playful articles, nor Bayonetta herself, could possibly be understood by a single member of the American (gaming?) press is one of many reaons why nothing must ever be written in English again. In conclusion, "you naughty little angels deserve a spanking."
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Wed 23 Aug 11:59] |
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| "Re(3):20XX Is A Procedural Mega Man X Game" , posted Wed 30 Aug 11:19
quote:
Hey! Uh. What happened to the crowdfunded Igavania, speaking of unofficial sequels (Matterfall is kind of on-topic, too, since you could call it the unofficial sequel to Alien Soldier).
While obviously having suffered some delays (current release date is 2018, when it was originally promised for March 2017), Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is still being developed. The last gameplay footage I think came from E3 a couple of months ago. The publisher apparently held a Q&A stream last night, but the recording hasn't been uploaded to YouTube yet.
From videos of the last E3 build, it is progressing about like you'd expect? Its graphics aren't going to set the world on fire or anything, but it looks passably decent. Level design (physical layout as well as enemy placement) is a bit dull, but that seems to be a common theme with metroidvanias.
I mean, it looks competent and playable. It doesn't look like a scam. If anything, Iga might be sticking a bit too close to form. It is kind of rough saying that, particularly since Mighty No. 9 tried and failed to change up elements of the Mega Man formula, but Bloodstained is a bit bland in its safety. I'm sure that is exactly what a bunch of backers want, but I don't know that it will draw new believers into the fold.
On a related note, I did briefly try 20XX again. It has improved since I last played it (which was nearly a year ago), but it still doesn't quite appeal to me. It looks better, things seem to
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
Well I will give it a shot for the heck of it. Doesn't hurt to try it out. For those who are interested, Here is a list of megaman fan made games out there in the wild,
MegaMan Unlimited
Rockman 4 Minus Infinity
MegaMan a Day in the Limelight 1-3
Mega Man in the Mushroom Kingdom
Mega Man Super Fighting Robot
Mega Man Ultra
Mega Man Rock Force
Mega Man 2.5D
Mega Man Revenge of the Fallen
Long Live I AM!
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| | "Re(8):2017 Is A Procedural Puzzle Fighter" , posted Sat 2 Sep 16:41:
quote:
I'm entirely interested in what you have to say about this, even if chaz will later roll along and tell us why it makes great and fearful business sense. What, for instance, are aesthetic choices that you think the original avoided in the execution of its SD character style? What defines this new vision as being visually pedestrian as opposed to merely "ugly" or unexciting?
I can't do miracles... Maybe the point is that we are all puzzled? 
I personally really dislike the style (and I failed to recognize Jill the first time she appeared), but
1. Things I like are rarely popular so maybe that's good news for Capcom...
2. I saw Capcom Vancouver is taking care, and maybe they are genuinely more comfortable with this style.
3. In any case, I suspect the visual style is meant to evoke Clash of Clans, right? It's an extremely popular visual style on smartphones and rather recognizable by smartphone audiences now (another way to say Capcom would not be the first to rip them off). You can even see the typical frowning shouting face which Supercell has made ubiquitous on AppStore icons. I guess it makes more sense to try and seduce that crowd rather than traditional Capcom fans?
The problem is they are treating Clash characters like FunkoPop and I am not so sure you can stick any character concept so freely to this style. I am not necessarily a fan of Supercell's art style but it feels kinda insulting both towards Supercell's artists and towards Puzzle Fighter's original art by Edayan & Co. The other problem is the game remains a puzzle game and I am not sure the Candy Crush Saga crowd overlaps with the Clash crowd. I wonder if Capcom are chasing too many leads at the same time.
Anyway, as long as we have not seen how the characters are integrated in the game mechanics, it's hard to comment on this game's appeal. The limitations of the Puzzle Fighter we know (and love?) is that there is no RPG/Customization element that makes it valuable to invest time and money in collecting and upgrading characters. If they can turn this into a game a la Puzzle&Dragons or Match Land, maybe they're unto something? I am pretty sure it would have worked just as well with Edayan's style... As anybody ever rejected Puzzle Fighter because of its artstyle ? I doubt so.
Capcom's current pressing issue is that they have no successful mobile app. If you check their recent Financial Briefing Q&A, I think you can figure out a rather popular topic coming back again and again among their shareholders, and it's neither about the merits of Season 2's character designs, or the lack of X-men characters in Mahvel. So I understand why Capcom is frantically trying and see if anything sticks.
What worries me more is there was a rumor Capcom Vancouver is working on a Makaimura / G&G reboot and, boy, if that's the cartoonish art style they come up with, it's gonna be a tough pill to swallow...
Même Narumi est épatée !
[this message was edited by chazumaru on Sat 2 Sep 16:49] |
| | "Re(10):2017 Is A Procedural Puzzle Fighter" , posted Sat 2 Sep 19:35:
Right! Capcom was actually very early on the mobile trend. Smurfs Village was very successful at a time before Bandai or SQEX (and certainly Nintendo/Pokémon) could claim much relevance in the area besides licensing stuff to DeNA and GREE.
There has been historically two mobile divisions at Capcom: Capcom Interactive (majority of its staff in Canada if I remember correctly) and Capcom Mobile headed by Takeshi Tezuka (this guy, not to be mistaken with that guy).
As you can expect, Capcom Interactive was more focused on the Western market, and licensing of external IPs which were strong in the West (especially the US), such as cartoon characters or TV shows, while Capcom Mobile was more specialized on the specific Japanese market and the use of Capcom IP in those smartphone games. Capcom Mobile, despite many different attempts in many genres, has never really managed to succeed in the extremely competitive environment of smartphones. (It must have been especially annoying to see Okamoto succeed with Monster Strike after he had left Capcom.)
Capcom Interactive became Beeline in April 2011 and tried its own thing under Manabu Seko's leadership. Smurfs is their definitive success. I think their Snoopy game did OK. In any case, there has been no real breadwinner since Smurfs Village in 2011 but Beeline has prevented Capcom from receiving much heat for a while as it looked like the success of the Smurfs, their HD strategy with MT Framework (and record sales for Biohazard 5&6), the move to 3DS for Monster Hunter and the investment in Capcom Online Games indicated a good understanding of where the industry was going in every business segment.
However, as time went on, shareholders have grown impatient of not seeing any progress in the mobile business (especially the domestic market) and piled on more pressure. In April 2016, Capcom restructured its mobile business. Beeline merged into Capcom Mobile, Seko became the Boss of Capcom Mobile, and Capcom more or less gave up (it seems) on external IP licensing, hence the sale of Smurfs Village, to focus on its own games. Tezuka departed from Capcom Mobile to head a startup called Mugen Combo in Osaka (it currently has one employee).
Même Narumi est épatée !
[this message was edited by chazumaru on Sat 2 Sep 19:40] |
| | "Re(1):Not-Remake of Ys" , posted Tue 12 Sep 04:17
quote:
Sorry if this was already commented in the board, but if it wasn't, Secret of Mana is getting a 3D remake.
I think it looks cool, kinda like Adventures of Mana. I never played Adventures, though, so I have no idea if it was a good remake or not.
Nevertheless, this does make me dream Square Enix may re-make Seiken Densetsu 3 one day as well (but probably not before both PS4 and PS Vita are retired).
I think it has been brought up, but nevermind that!
The feature that delights me the most is that evidently the minimap is the regular game map from the SNES/SFC version! I wonder if I can just play the whole game by staring at the minimap!
Elsewhere, the next Ys game is upon us, and it is NOT a remake, unlike Celceta. It breaks from the Ys 7 camera with a behind the back view, and brings jumping back into the game. Seeing as how I beat Ys7 and generally quite enjoyed it, I'm looking forward to Ys 8! It is still following the Ys 7 model of the three person party with switching, and probably more crafting/grinding, and more dialogue scenes.
I'm kind of amazed that Adol is allowed onto boats/ships anywhere in the world at this point.
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| | "Re(2):Not-Release of Ys" , posted Wed 13 Sep 01:58
quote:
Sorry if this was already commented in the board, but if it wasn't, Secret of Mana is getting a 3D remake.
I think it looks cool, kinda like Adventures of Mana. I never played Adventures, though, so I have no idea if it was a good remake or not.
Nevertheless, this does make me dream Square Enix may re-make Seiken Densetsu 3 one day as well (but probably not before both PS4 and PS Vita are retired).
I think it has been brought up, but nevermind that!
The feature that delights me the most is that evidently the minimap is the regular game map from the SNES/SFC version! I wonder if I can just play the whole game by staring at the minimap!
Elsewhere, the next Ys game is upon us, and it is NOT a remake, unlike Celceta. It breaks from the Ys 7 camera with a behind the back view, and brings jumping back into the game. Seeing as how I beat Ys7 and generally quite enjoyed it, I'm looking forward to Ys 8! It is still following the Ys 7 model of the three person party with switching, and probably more crafting/grinding, and more dialogue scenes.
I'm kind of amazed that Adol is allowed onto boats/ships anywhere in the world at this point.
On the day before the game's PC release, it's been delayed!
I'm so sad. I woke up early to play it!
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| PSN: zonepharaoh
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| "Re(3):Dragon's Crown returns" , posted Fri 15 Sep 08:45
Oh my. Dragon's Crown re-release? I'm one of the not-insignificant number of people who bought and maintain a PS3 exclusively as a Dragon's Crown-playing device, but since unlike Odin's Sphere, the original Dragon's Crown is marvelous, I'm not getting tricked into buying another console. But ye gods, if there's a PC version, I just might sink another fifty hours into my favorite game in a decade besides Nier.quote:
Edit: Source: i'm a magic penguin from the future
CITATION NEEDED
I have crawled enough dungeons with Juan to know that he's actually the vicious vampire rabbit or maybe the genie.
Most interesting will be the new art. As the prophecy foretold, this will surely occasion a new artbook and soundtrack release, now containing the new art from the previous soundtrack and artbook, but lacking the newest-newest re-release artwork, therefore guaranteeing that we are blessed with an endless loop of Dragon's Crown artbooks until the end of days.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| | "Re(7): Fashionista Scarface returns" , posted Sat 16 Sep 22:26
quote:
I'm glad that this exists in the world and I'm hoping it will be more fun than the last one-- I don't know how much changes between the Japan and US versions of Style Savvy games, but I didn't enjoy Fashion Forward much at all.
Actually this new episode is not even announced for North America at the moment, only for Europe and Japan. One could theorize maybe Style Boutique / Style Savvy poses to North Americans the same riddle as « Why do Americans love Metroid so much?» poses to the rest of the world, but I am glad all sides got their respective sequel this year.
I am not sure which game is Fashion Forward since they change names in all regions, but if it's the latest episode in which one takes control of the entire city by putting other girls out of their respective jobs because one has such better fashion sense than them that their most faithful customers trust that person more after just one piece of advice, and one can use all the cash flow from those five concurrent careers to make connections will major brands and drive retailing competitors out of business and use this monopoly to influence the contents of the fashion shows and brainwash the entire city into thinking they should wear leopard pants, and you did not care for that, I am not sure what more/better this new episode would do for you. Both the EU and the JP trailers linked above hint that this new episode will have a "more dramatic story" and focus more on the fashion of the pop music / idol world. And, to connect with the musical theme, the famous Japanese label Avex is taking care of the soundtrack.
quote:
I'll never stop being amused by how Syn Sophia for years developed wrestling games.... Wrestling Savvy Trendsetters is a game I"d probably buy, though...
The day they combine both their wrestling background and fashion background, and create a GLOW-inspired episode on the harsh realities, business restrictions and creative solutions of fashion in the Japanese female wrestling scene, is the day I can retire happy from curmudgeoning about video games on the Internet.
Même Narumi est épatée !
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| | "Re(9):Earth Defense Force(?) returns" , posted Fri 22 Sep 02:03:
quote:
Isn't there another EDF game on the horizon that's being made by Sandlot? If so it will be interesting to see how these games differentiate themselves from each other. Even after the mess that was Insect Armageddon I'm glad to see that D3 is willing to experiment with their properties. Hopefully this means that Platinum will eventually make an Oneechanbara game.
Why, yes there is! The PlayStation conference actually spent a few minutes on Earth Defense Force 5 made by Sandlot, which looks like a clean PS2 game, to reveal at last its release date then confusingly 20 minutes later spent a few minutes on Earth Defense Force (6?): Iron Rain made by Yuke's, which looks like a clean PS3 game. I think Sandlot's Earth Defense Force needs an Earth Defense Force Defense Force.
Yeah, I was deeply confused by this reveal, since EDF 5 is so near on the horizon. Iron Rain's more modern camera and chunkier/less goofy look is another way in which it seems more reminiscent of Insect Armageddon, which in trying to make the game more serious to appeal to the sensibilities of a console era where Gears of War was a dominant force, lost sight of the identity of EDF.
But these days, my main questions when it comes to EDF is how many copies of the game am I going to buy. Will it come out on console first before Steam? If so, I'll probably have to buy two copies. Will it come out on PS3 first? Then I might have to buy three copies!
If they manage to make a decent EDF for Switch it may well be the death of me.
[this message was edited by Spoon on Fri 22 Sep 02:46] |
| | "Re(6):Secret of Mana returns" , posted Thu 28 Sep 17:35
quote:
Y, you can't confuse me! I may have entirely skipped Seiken, but I remember a talking duck when I see one, even if it was 15+ years ago! Or maybe he only talked in my mind...
...
... I remember that guy as an enemy, but did he have a quest as a talking NPC?
...
...
... I may have to play the game again to find out.
Also, it shall not be said I missed an opportunity to post again this fantastic opening!
Much higher ratio of talking ducks/non-talking ducks than here.
Though LoM's features talking trees, talking stones, talking turtles, talking rabbits and talking teapots, so it wouldn't be a stretch, I'll give you that.
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| PSN: gekijmo
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| "Random Fortnite Battle Royale" , posted Tue 3 Oct 02:58
I am not sure if anyone of you are into the burgeoning genre of "battle royale" probably most notable of which being Player Unknown's Battle Grounds (PUBG), but a Free to Play version of Fortnite launched last week and I got it on PS4.
I had watched a streamer I follow play some PUBG and could understand the appeal of it, but never played it myself. It is a 100 player hide-and-go-seek mixed with tag. Fortnite is the much more streamlined version of it. You don't have to equip different clothing for armor as there is just a armor potion, weapons don't have different accessories for you to mess around with, there are no bomb zones within the play zone.
The really unique thing is the fort building mechanic. You can acquire wood, brick and metal by either finding it raw or chopping down almost any building, tree, car or rock on the map to farm it. The end game can get pretty hectic with people building structures in the final zone with stair cases that extend up quite high into the sky. It also makes traversing the map different as you can just build a ramp up and over a mountain as opposed to running around it.
I have been able to win a couple of matches myself and each one was a thrill. No two games are ever the same and you never know what is around the next corner. It is what I always wanted a Metal Gear Solid online mode to be. Go in "Naked", On-Site Procurement of weapons and stealth around. A good sniper fight reminds me of fighting The End in MGS3.
I still haven't gotten the hang of building forts myself though as there really isn't a safe place to practice it. I think I will just play a couple of throwaway games and land in a remote part of the map and just mess around.
I guess my only major gripe would be that if you don't get a Sniper Rifle by the time the second circle closes you are at a major disadvantage. But I guess that is the same in PUBG, scopes are king in these games. I was able to get my third victory against a sniper though with a shot gun. He noticed me, but had to deal with the third remaining player. I snuck around the hill and flanked him. I saw he was checking where I was and got him.
If anyone is interested, my strategy to at least secure top 20 is to jump out of the bus after it has crossed over half the island and aim for a spot perpendicular to the trajectory of the bus and far away. Ideally somewhere isolated and not one of the major "named" spots. You can usually find an isolated house/cabin to loot and gather resources. Then try to pick off random cabins in the area for loot.
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| | "Re(1):Random Fortnite Battle Royale" , posted Tue 3 Oct 04:28
quote:
I am not sure if anyone of you are into the burgeoning genre of "battle royale" probably most notable of which being Player Unknown's Battle Grounds (PUBG), but a Free to Play version of Fortnite launched last week and I got it on PS4.
I had watched a streamer I follow play some PUBG and could understand the appeal of it, but never played it myself. It is a 100 player hide-and-go-seek mixed with tag. Fortnite is the much more streamlined version of it. You don't have to equip different clothing for armor as there is just a armor potion, weapons don't have different accessories for you to mess around with, there are no bomb zones within the play zone.
The really unique thing is the fort building mechanic. You can acquire wood, brick and metal by either finding it raw or chopping down almost any building, tree, car or rock on the map to farm it. The end game can get pretty hectic with people building structures in the final zone with stair cases that extend up quite high into the sky. It also makes traversing the map different as you can just build a ramp up and over a mountain as opposed to running around it.
I have been able to win a couple of matches myself and each one was a thrill. No two games are ever the same and you never know what is around the next corner. It is what I always wanted a Metal Gear Solid online mode to be. Go in "Naked", On-Site Procurement of weapons and stealth around. A good sniper fight reminds me of fighting The End in MGS3.
I st
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
So the fort building mechanics come from the fact that Fortnite is originally a co-operative horde mode game where building your fortress to defend against the hordes is a major thing!
They implemented a battle royale mode into Fortnite to try to follow off the extreme (12 million copies sold in like 2 months!) popularity of PUBG, and so far it seems to have done a lot of good for Fortnite.
The "battle royale" game type is certainly this year's "counter-strike" or "MOBA" or "fighting game" game mode!
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| | "SHEPHY IS AMAZING AND IS THE BEST SHEEP GAME" , posted Tue 10 Oct 06:36
Alright cafe folks, I'm here to tell you about this game that got released a few months ago in English that completely flew under the radar of many people, including myself.
It is called SHEPHY. It is an entirely single-player card game about sheep that contains no elements of card-collecting, deck building, gacha, or defeating an opponent. So that should already make it an utterly baffling existence in today's market.
But wait, there's more!
It contains a (not that long, but will last you a good several hours) story mode which contains PATHOS-FILLED STORY SEQUENCES ABOUT THE PLIGHT OF THE SHEEP ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. This detail alone should tickle the fancy of men of taste such as Maou and Iggy. Not only that, each scenario contains a unique objective and unique deck rules that entirely fit with the scenario and reinforce the tragic struggle of the sheep. The breadth of their struggle is vast as it is deep.
The game has opened my eyes to a profound and terrible realization:
Solitaire can be categorized as a roguelike. Just think about it. Solitaire is a roguelike. I am appalled at this, but I cannot deny it. My world has changed.
You can buy the game for a pittance of $5 on Steam or for Switch. If you buy it for Switch, you may suddenly burst into emotion while playing it on the train resulting in deep discomfort to all the grey urban strangers around you who have forgotten what it is like to be around outbursts of feeling.
Buy SHEPHY. If you don't want to spend $5, I will GIFT YOU SHEPHY ON STEAM. I'm not even kidding.
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| | "Re(1):SHEPHY IS AMAZING AND IS THE BEST SHEEP" , posted Tue 10 Oct 19:40
quote:
It contains a (not that long, but will last you a good several hours) story mode which contains PATHOS-FILLED STORY SEQUENCES ABOUT THE PLIGHT OF THE SHEEP ACROSS THE UNIVERSE.
THIS HIGHLY RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.
I just bought the game even though I'm not anywhere near my computer, and will do my best to testify about the sheepness ratio of these sheep.
At first I thought the thread would be about the upcoming Sheep faction in Smash Up, a physical card game that we've started playing religiously in the office. It's a game where you pick two factions (pirates and dinosaurs for example) and combine them into one desk following the rule of what sounds the most awesome (I'm playing dinosaur pirates!). Or zombie magical girls, or werewolf kaijus, or granny rockstars, or vampire teddy bears, or Kitten elder gods, etc. Since the game already has a shark faction and a tornado faction to play the fairly effective "sharknado" (along with all possible permutations), I'm eagerly looking forward for playing the sheep-nado whenever that's released.
No penguins yet, unfortunately.
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| | "Re(6):SHEPHY IS AMAZING AND IS THE BEST SHEEP" , posted Wed 11 Oct 22:30
Reporting!
So, it's indeed a very simple but addicting game. I got THAT close to get 7000 sheep in challenge mode, but I screwed up with my last cards and lost 1000 to a loose rock.
Nature is violent!
Also, the story mode is surprisingly tough. I stopped at the one where you need to pick positive cards and n-2 negative cards, and I have no clue what combinations would allow to survive the negative cards while sheepballing to 1000.
I especially like that you are the one using the negative cards destroying whole herds on a whim, "for the greater good".
Also, is the dog a good boy? Yes he's a good boy, look how much he's a good boy, now that's a good boy, look at you, oooh look at you.
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| | "Re(4):SHEPHY IS AMAZING AND IS THE BEST SHEEP" , posted Fri 13 Oct 11:17:
"Post your steam name here, or if you'd prefer, give me an email address to get in touch with you and you shall have it! "
....
"If you're not afraid to leave your postal address to complete strangers on the internet, then there is something wrong with you and you should be more careful about your personal data."
....
Good news! Looks like my cat could be sticking around a bit longer. Fingers crossed, of course. We'll try to get the old guy to 20 (going for a high score as it were). Pet ownership is both rewarding and stressful.
Spoon! To celebrate, I will sheepishly accept your gift with the hope that I might have the opportunity to return your kindness in the future.
Iggy, surely being strangers in the same cafe for 15 years counts for something? Of course, if you mailed me some strange package, you shouldn't be surprised if you received some form of "retaliation" in your mailbox at some future date....
If you still want to start this ominous chain of events, maybe email is the place to start.
No obligation to either of you, of course. Still, thanks for the good cheer!
/ / /
[this message was edited by Mosquiton on Sun 15 Oct 11:24] |
| | "Re(5):SHEPHY IS AMAZING AND IS THE BEST SHEEP" , posted Fri 13 Oct 12:25
quote:
"Post your steam name here, or if you'd prefer, give me an email address to get in touch with you and you shall have it! "
....
"If you're not afraid to leave your postal address to complete strangers on the internet, then there is something wrong with you and you should be more careful about your personal data."
....
Good news! Looks like my cat could be sticking around a bit longer. Fingers crossed, of course. We'll try to get the old guy to 20 (going for a high score as it were). Pet ownership is both rewarding and stressful.
Spoon! To celebrate, I will sheepishly accept your gift with the hope that I might have the opportunity to return your kindness in the future.
Good to hear that things are going your way. I regret to inform you, however, there are two imposters with your steam name.
- Candidate 1:
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
"Zepyulos"
End of Spoiler
From Ontario (Canada!) and with a Calvin and Hobbes avatar, this candidate mostly plays strategy games and has a wishlist containing many titles that have a Japanese slant (e.g. Valhalla, Tales of, Dark Souls 3, Trails in the Sky, etc.) or cafe goers would have opinions on (e.g. Last Remnant, Hollow Knight, Cuphead, etc.). This candidate's friends mostly play strategy games and indie games. As Mosquiton's email uses Bell, it suggests that the true "zepyulos" is a resident of Eastern Canada.
SUSPICIOUSNESS RATING: TINFOIL
- Candidate 2:
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
"zepyulos"
End of Spoiler
With no avatar image and no other information, this candidate mostly players card-based games, strategy/RPG games, and a handful of action games. The action games align with cafe values, such as RCR Underground, Binary Domain, Maldita Castilla, and Fight'N Rage. The combination of of the first three alone is an aggressive indicator that this candidate may not be the impostor. This candidate has only one friend in their friend list, and that friend's list of played games is largely indie games, with the ratio of indie games to non-indie games exceeding 5:1. The misanthropy expressed in this friends list also aligns with cafe values. Too perfect, likely an impostor.
SUSPICIOUSNESS RATING: FAKE-HEELED SHOE
- Candidate 3:
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
"Zepyulos"
End of Spoiler
Has an avatar image of a short-haired male that google image search reports is likely a "person", and the remark "o.0" in the profile. List of games owned is ENTIRELY Half-Life editions or Half-Life mods, only game which has been significantly played is CS Source, with nearly 900 hours logged. Is a member of a group called "Gamerstrust" which is a Florida-based gaming group. No visible wishlist. Has not been online for nearly half a year.
SUSPICIOUSNESS RATING: UNATTENDED SUITCASE
The MMCpol is currently informing me that I should be wary of Candidates 2 and 3 pending further investigation.
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| | "Re(9):SHEPHY IS AMAZING AND IS THE BEST SHEEP" , posted Tue 17 Oct 10:18:
Post Loves stage 2 and beyond advice
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
Essential to all of the chapters is an understanding of just how many steps it takes to go from 1 to 1000.
1 1 1 D
3 3 3 3 D
10 10 10 D
30 30 30 30/10 D
100 100 100 D
300 300 300 300/100 D
So you need to play 6 Dominion cards in order to take sheep from 1 to 1000. You should notice that in the standard deck, you've got two Dominion cards, and with the all-purpose sheep, as many as three.
So right away, one thing you can determine is that given the turn limit, what are a few of the cards that MUST go into your deck? Just in terms of the Dominion cards, you already know.
The next step is how to get those sheep. Suppose you had nothing to worry about in terms of negative cards. What are some ways you can think of to get the sheep you need flock together?
The last step is to create a plan for the negative cards. There are some negative cards that don't cost you much to play. There are some which you can devise ways around: if you play Crowding when you have two or fewer sheep cards, nothing happens. If you are on the threshold of going from 3/30/300 to 10/100/1000, wolf cards might be playable without any real negative effects. If you decide that Fill The Earth is part of your strategy, picking the Meteor might let you eliminate it from your deck in the opening hand without needing to use a Planning Sheep or Sheep Dog to deal with it. And so on!
End of Spoiler
I personally found the Plague scenario harder than the n-2 scenario, and actually defeating the Plague scenario for me prepared me well for the n-2 scenario. The sheer change in deck rules delighted me!
[this message was edited by Spoon on Tue 17 Oct 10:33] |
| | "Re(2):Re(10):SHEPHY IS AMAZING AND IS THE BES" , posted Wed 18 Oct 02:23
quote:
Worth noting that the card to immediately summon a 3 can speed things up if you draw it early enough, or be totally useless if you draw it late (and then become a good target for the falling rock).
I'm at 7 as well now, and damn, son.
The problem is that when the challenge is so tough, there is only a very narrow sequence of cards you need to have or not have in a precise order to get the desired outcome. The level where you don't have to draw and have all the cards available immediately works well and could have become a better foundation for the most difficult levels... As they stand, 6 and 7 are 50% logic puzzle, 50% pure chance to not get screwed by the draw any of the 3 times.
I'm quite fond of the "sometimes you're just going to lose" RNG aspect of some of the levels, which I think the Plague scenario immediately drops you into. There are a good few hands in the Plague scenario I got right away where there was literally no way to NOT get annihilated. It fits the scenario well, what with the sheep wondering if their lot in life is to be slaughtered, as well as Grandpa Bruce scattering them to the multiverse in the hopes that there must surely exist some universe where they are successful... and consequently, many universes where they are not.
I feel like once I know a winning strategy, as well as when deviations from the charted path are acceptable, I get a really strong sense of mastery of the game's mechanics and the strategy, and that feeling is very satisfying. And yes, I have multiple times just re-rolled immediately upon seeing my opening hand, but I don't feel like I'm being cheated when that happens, it just feels like part of the patience of biding my time to execute my plan. The determinism of the mechanics in a setting with random dealing I find very appealing!
Using raw numerical variation as a means of injecting progression into a game that relies on procedurally generated content is an effective design approach as every roguelike, Diablo clone, Zanac, etc. will show. But playing this game makes me wonder about non-realtime roguelikes that don't rely on numerical variation. Spelunky is not a game about growing stats, but mechanical mastery with manual skill in a real-time setting is crucial in it. What possibilities does Shephy provoke about a game which asked for the same mechanical mastery, but without the demand for manual skill and with the variety of actions afforded by the card-game milieu?
I really honestly think Shephy is a brilliant game in many ways, even for all the times it infuriates me, and in terms of the thoughts it has made think, it is a top 3 game of the year for me so far.
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| | "Re(3):Re(10):SHEPHY IS AMAZING AND IS THE BES" , posted Wed 18 Oct 03:41:
quote:
I'm quite fond of the "sometimes you're just going to lose" RNG aspect of some of the levels, which I think the Plague scenario immediately drops you into. There are a good few hands in the Plague scenario I got right away where there was literally no way to NOT get annihilated.
As soon as I got back to it, I powered through the plague by discarding inspiration and the "3 sheep" (multiply?)... then restarting maybe six times in a row to ensure a good starting hand. There are no negative consequences for doing so and, I have to admit...
My main problem previously was getting good cards I wanted to use too early, and having to either play them at sub-optimal times or do horrible things to a valuable herd. A choice between using Dominion for no gain and doing irrevocable damage to the flock is kind of a no-win situation. Having a vital card stuck in the last spot can also killer. Of sheep.
For me, re-rolling felt a bit like cheating. As you alluded to, I found that a "bad" hand is the best. Crowding and slump in the opening hand? Get rid of both with no casualties! All your flocks still at 1? Bring on the lightning and wolves! Then you can go about the business of your sheep math in peace.
quote:
Using raw numerical variation as a means of injecting progression into a game that relies on procedurally generated content is an effective design approach as every roguelike, Diablo clone, Zanac, etc. will show. But playing this game makes me wonder about non-realtime roguelikes that don't rely on numerical variation. Spelunky is not a game about growing stats, but mechanical mastery with manual skill in a real-time setting is crucial in it. What possibilities does Shephy provoke about a game which asked for the same mechanical mastery, but without the demand for manual skill and with the variety of actions afforded by the card-game milieu?
Hmmm, not sure if this 100% follows your train of thought, but have you heard of Card Crawl or Card Thief?
Edit: Man, culling the herd... I opted to have the last sheep "slumped" rather than hit by a falling rock. I figure "slumping" is a less painful way to go. Right?
/ / /
[this message was edited by Mosquiton on Wed 18 Oct 04:05] |
| | "Re(1):FFVII remake unconfirmed staff leak" , posted Wed 22 Nov 05:05
quote:
Pending that the article is legit, I'm glad the developers are valuing freedom of expression over being concious of social justice warriors.
Please, prof, not you.
That's a silly strawman if I ever saw one. The guy who wrote that (legit or not) is a misogynistic homophobe making himself righteous over some SJW nonsense, but it's not like FF7 was in any danger to provoke social unrest. The characters are fine as they are (Tifa will never be Cindy, fortunately), and if anything was to change, it would be to adapt to the current Japanese market (meaning more ambiguous Cloud/Sephiroth scenes for fangirls, something that guy would probably hate).
Moreover, "freedom of expression" in this post-Gamersgate time means "freedom to treat poorly an entire section of humanity for my own personal pleasure without engaging in any form of discussion that would challenge my views". No need to spew this kind of nonsense here, please.
And really, again. This is FF7, not Senran Kagura.
|
| PSN: zonepharaoh
XBL: n/a
Wii: n/a
STM: n/a
CFN: zonepharaoh
| "Re(2):FFVII remake unconfirmed trash leak" , posted Wed 22 Nov 10:30
Yeah, I'm all for free expression, but that trash they're "interviewing" is hardly the right advocate. Besides, I see this here:
Q: Are you worried that saying too much could put you in serious legal danger?
A: Not unless I flat out say what it is I’m doing exactly and where. There’s too many people working on the project
And I read that as, "I'm too insignificant to possibly have a reliable insight into the process."
So the combination of his slimy 2ch/4ch ultra-right views masquerading as free speech, his inaccuracies (there is no horse in Ico, there has never been a Crusader summon in the Japanese originals, only Jih-d, neither of which would be chosen at this time), and his obvious irrelevance/disconnection with the core of the project all make it a great time to summon Radish's ghost to proclaim once again that this is quote "ten pounds of sh-t in a five pound bag."
...
......I still don't like FFVII.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| | "Nostalgia for the best game of all time" , posted Thu 14 Dec 02:14
There's one thing I found interesting in this interview about the best-game-of-all-time-you're-allowed-to-disagree-but-then-you'd-be-factually-wrong: it's the fact that when one goes back to the original SFC game, it's actually not as pretty as one remembers.
The idea is that, when doing a mixed port-remake of a beloved 2D game, you have to "beautify" it so that it looks "faithful" to the original, not to the original's actual look, but the original through the fans' nostalgia filter.
So, yes, the remake has that terrible resolution mismatch with the background being inconsistent in resolution with the sprites... but then, the original backgrounds were not pretty, and the sprites are iconic, so it's quite a good compromise. Especially if you think the alternatives are the horrifying FF6 mobile port, or the soulless low-poly FF3 or Secret of Mana remakes.
I'd be interested to hear about the opinion of some of the patrons here about the issue, even if you haven't played the-best-game-of-all-time-it-has-actually-been-acknowledged-by-the-Nobel-prize-comitee.
|
| | "Re(1):Nostalgia for the best game of all time" , posted Thu 14 Dec 04:24:
quote:
The idea is that, when doing a mixed port-remake of a beloved 2D game, you have to "beautify" it so that it looks "faithful" to the original, not to the original's actual look, but the original through the fans' nostalgia filter.
So, yes, the remake has that terrible resolution mismatch with the background being inconsistent in resolution with the sprites... but then, the original backgrounds were not pretty, and the sprites are iconic, so it's quite a good compromise. Especially if you think the alternatives are the horrifying FF6 mobile port, or the soulless low-poly FF3 or Secret of Mana remakes.
I'd be interested to hear about the opinion of some of the patrons here about the issue, even if you haven't played the-best-game-of-all-time-it-has-actually-been-acknowledged-by-the-Nobel-prize-comitee.
“I played the Super Nintendo version recently, and honestly, the graphics are very different,” Ichikawa adds with a laugh. “But… imagination is kind! This looks closer to how people will remember it looking than how it actually looked.”
This is 100% the correct way to handle it. I really like the way the game looks.
I have to get something off my chest about Octopath Traveler. I know many people feel it does a good job pulling off the "idealized remembrance" thing, but to me it crosses some invisible line. The massive human enemies appear to me as literal giants, and my brain cannot accept them as simply being stylized representations of normal-sized people.
Is it because the illusion of three-dimensional depth is so much stronger in Octopath than in classic RPGs? I suspect this makes the player characters and their enemies feel more like they're sharing the same physical dimensions and space. It's pushing my mind toward expecting a "realistic" scene. There's one guy that looks like he's bigger than a house. I say this because he's standing right in front of a 3D dwelling of substantial size, and I can make a very direct comparison!
Is it because the player characters are differently proportioned than the classic 16-bit sprites—those diminutive, stubby-limbed heroes that were half head, half heart? Octopath heads are somewhat large, taking up about 1/3rd of the character's entire body. But the characters still feel much more naturalistic than straight-up "super-deformed" sprites from the classic era (FF, SaGa, Lufia), which have heads that take up about 50% of their bodies.
If memory serves me correctly, the SNES/SFC-era RPGs I recall with these slightly less stylized proportions (Breath of Fire, Bahamut Lagoon, Phantasy Star) do not have you fighting human enemies that are many times the size of your supposedly human party. You may have some compromises, but you aren't usually seeing enemies so dramatically embiggened that they are no where near your own characters' physical scale.
Many later PS/Saturn era RPGs that spring to mind (Xenogears, Suikoden) with non-SD sprites follow the same rule. The human enemies are roughly the same size as your own dudes, and the only gigantic monsters are meant to be gigantic (huge caterpillars, towering beast men, massive dragons, etc.). On the other hand, like SaGa and Final Fantasy, the SD cast of Lunar: Silver Star Story are often facing oversized opponents of every ilk. Ghaleon, the final boss, is many times the size of the miniature munchkins in your pint-sized party.
So why doesn't this scenario drive me nuts? I think it actually may have bothered me a bit when I was looking at these games with fresher eyes, but ultimately it's not quite as weird since you know that the characters you see on the battlefield are heavily abstracted representations of the handsome, well-proportioned anime characters you see in the cutscenes. I'd say there's sufficient distance between the two styles that my brain more easily accepts it.
I don't know! The way they handle it in Octopath is just weird to me. When I see these screens I can't help but see it as normal men and women fighting against abominable titans. And sometimes you appear have what appears to be 30-foot-tall boss with 12-foot-tall lackeys. Did they not get enough villainous vitamins? Are they juveniles of some horrific humanoid species, still growing and yet to reach their final form? It feels so inconsistent to me! I hate it!
I guess I'm rambling. But, in conclusion, I do feel RS2 has done a nice job and employs a sufficiently abstract style to display massive human figures without breaking my brain.
The boss animations I've seen also look really cool. It would be great if they had cross buy or cross play....
/ / /
[this message was edited by Mosquiton on Thu 14 Dec 05:21] |
| | "Re(6):Nostalgia for the dumbest decisions" , posted Fri 15 Dec 10:38:
That's the potential for PS users outside Japan, not existing SaGa fans. That's why Sega and Koei keep supporting the PS eco-system. Gotoku/Yakuza probably would not be sustainable without the rest of Asia. That is the entire point of this release: they introduce RS2 on so many different hardware and produce an English version precisely because the Japanese audience for SaGa keeps shrinking (it went from being a million seller with the Romancing SaGa series to a 100k seller with Scarlet Grace).
The goal is to get new audiences to discover SaGa, and now I am worried SQEX just self-sabotaged the sales for the entire region. There is a reason why, even on Switch which officially does not support any other Asian country than Japan on the digital front, so many games on the Japanese eShop release with English, Korean and Chinese options. It might be a coincidence but you can see these translated games perform quite well on the weekly eShop charts.
I'd be OK with "there must be some dumb technical reason why they cannot do it" but, once again, the Steam version includes both languages.
[edit] Interesting, the Steam page specifically points out: "Unfortunately Romancing SaGa 2 will be released on Steam for our fans in Korea and Taiwan later than the 15th of December, we’re trying to release the game as soon as possible for all of you and I’ll make sure to post as soon as we have an update on this, so please do keep your eyes peeled for any new posts on the community hub."
I wonder if it's the same on PS Store. Here is hoping the situation (including support of other Asian languages on Switch) is only a temporary setback.
Même Narumi est épatée !
[this message was edited by chazumaru on Fri 15 Dec 14:13] |
| | "Re(9): Super Etrian Odyssey" , posted Fri 15 Dec 15:02:
quote:
as expected, the PS4 and PSVita versions did not apply for the cross-buy option, but they at least allow cross-save.
Well, cross-save isn't so bad. If I buy one of the versions on release, then take another year to get around to playing it, I may be able to pick up the other version on the cheap during a sale or something. Or I can cross platforms every generation, and pick a new successor every year....
A new Etrian Odyssey game for 3DS has been announced.
quote:
If they go all out Monster Hunter X-style, I hope they try some form of local multiplayer, either cooperative or competitive.
I had fun starting the EO5 demo but I don't think I have enough mapping life-force to ever complete one of these games again. I did manage to finish the first game, uh, ten years ago?
Hey, speaking of MonHun did anyone play the Monster Hunter World Beta? I quite enjoyed it and I think I'll be picking it up upon release. Using the bow is kind of like playing Dragon's Dogma, and the environments are really quite nice and alive-feeling. I'll take it!
/ / /
[this message was edited by Mosquiton on Fri 15 Dec 15:05] |
| | "Re(1):Nostalgia for the best game of all time" , posted Sat 16 Dec 03:07:
quote:
There's one thing I found interesting in this interview about the best-game-of-all-time-you're-allowed-to-disagree-but-then-you'd-be-factually-wrong: it's the fact that when one goes back to the original SFC game, it's actually not as pretty as one remembers.
The idea is that, when doing a mixed port-remake of a beloved 2D game, you have to "beautify" it so that it looks "faithful" to the original, not to the original's actual look, but the original through the fans' nostalgia filter.
So, yes, the remake has that terrible resolution mismatch with the background being inconsistent in resolution with the sprites... but then, the original backgrounds were not pretty, and the sprites are iconic, so it's quite a good compromise. Especially if you think the alternatives are the horrifying FF6 mobile port, or the soulless low-poly FF3 or Secret of Mana remakes.
I'd be interested to hear about the opinion of some of the patrons here about the issue, even if you haven't played the-best-game-of-all-time-it-has-actually-been-acknowledged-by-the-Nobel-prize-comitee.
quote:
There's one thing I found interesting in this interview about the best-game-of-all-time-you're-allowed-to-disagree-but-then-you'd-be-factually-wrong: it's the fact that when one goes back to the original SFC game, it's actually not as pretty as one remembers.
The idea is that, when doing a mixed port-remake of a beloved 2D game, you have to "beautify" it so that it looks "faithful" to the original, not to the original's actual look, but the original through the fans' nostalgia filter.
So, yes, the remake has that terrible resolution mismatch with the background being inconsistent in resolution with the sprites... but then, the original backgrounds were not pretty, and the sprites are iconic, so it's quite a good compromise. Especially if you think the alternatives are the horrifying FF6 mobile port, or the soulless low-poly FF3 or Secret of Mana remakes.
I'd be interested to hear about the opinion of some of the patrons here about the issue, even if you haven't played the-best-game-of-all-time-it-has-actually-been-acknowledged-by-the-Nobel-prize-comitee.
Apologies for the late response. I'm really looking forward to finally playing this game.
I think the remake looks FANTASTIC. I never played the original, but I am intimately familiar with the aesthetic of the time (I used to look at screenshots of FF4 and Secret of Mana in magazines and tried to recreate them in Deluxe Paint--which come to think of it is my favourite thing that EA ever made!)
I think they absolutely nailed their mission of making the remaster look and most importantly FEEL like how you remember the original. Here are some of the things they did right.
-It was a good call to maintain the stumpy sprites from the original game. I don’t know if they’re the exact same sprites or subtly updated, but they certainly look more identical to the original than everything else in the remake. Those tiny sprites are the one thing from the first game that don’t look worse with age. They’re iconic and appealing.
Characters (including the enemies) are low rez compared to the backgrounds, but it's done consistently and tastefully. The result is that they stand out on the detailed backgrounds, as cel animation stands out on top of painted backdrops. This is because they use the higher detail density of the backgrounds to recede rather than draw extra attention to itself. The characters with their bright colors and sharp pixels stand out well on top of the soft, highly rendered backdrops (unlike KOF13 where the aliased lower rez characters looked out of focus on the sharp backdrops--I still love that game though, only gripe is i wish i could turn off the antialiasing).
-The backgrounds are still laid out as if they are beholden to rules of tiling. One of the reasons old school games look so good is that the limitations of old hardware enforced good habits. When you have limited resources, you have to make the most of them. This places an emphasis on clarity and efficient designs. Designing elements to tile (typically in squares that are a power of two) forces you to treat the artwork as you'd treat good graphic design and typography. Each tile has to look great while not drawing overt attention to itself. Has to be harmonious in repetition. And making all the tiles fit together in an appealing way is like having good kerning in letters. Everything is spaced in a way that lines up perfectly. There's a tidiness to sprite based games that is easily lost when you are no longer beholden to the grid. If you look at many new 2d games, they don't quite come together. It’s often clear that elements were drawn by different artists at different resolutions and brush sizes, then shoehorned together in the final product. Not so with the Saga 2 rebake. They avoided all those rookie mistakes.
-It was so smart not to simply just upscale the original artwork. That was the fatal mistake they made with the FF6 port. A friend of mine described the game as “The Uncanny Valley of sprite art.” I think that’s spot on. It’s almost exactly how you remember but … very off. The original designs were optimized for that very specific resolution. Your imagination was meant to fill in the gaps. They did not use their imaginations to fill in the gaps, they just upscaled it mathematically then smoothed out the gaps. It's like using human beings to do what those weird upscaling algorithms in emulators do.
With the Saga 2 update, they used the extra resolution to add in subtle details. All within the spirit of the original artwork. Instead of thinking “how do we uprez this!” their approach seems to be “If we could work this high rez, with this many colors back then, how would the backgrounds have turned out?”
-This is so obvious that it almost seems superfluous to even bring up but IT WAS SO SMART OF THEM NOT TO CHANGE THE ART STYLE. At a less caring company, they would have felt pressure to pretty up all the characters into a more contemporary style. That would have been awful.
-I’m really glad they didn’t use new hardware effects just because they could. I’m talking about all the realtime lighting FX that you see in 2d games now. For instance, I ABSOLUTELY LOATHE HOW OCTOPATH TRAVELLER LOOKS. To me, games like that are the modern equivalent of early photoshop art where it’s clear what filters they were using. It is relying on the hardware to do the gaudy work of making things feel photoreal rather than evoking a feeling of reality through artistry.
Mosquiton, you mentioned that the size disparity in Octopath bothers you in a way that never was a problem with older sprite based games. That is because they weren’t rendered with a powerful photoreal lighting engine with depth of field and everything that only serves to heighten the blockiness of the sprite art in the most literal way possible. It reminds you that you’re looking at blocks, and not a beautiful abstraction. I’m very sad that they followed up Bravely Default, a paean to hand drawn art with Octopath, where they realised “wait, we don’t need to put all this effort into art and design and execution, we can just use these plug-ins and people will eat it up.”
Oh man, sorry for the negativity!
Anyway, Saga 2 looks amazing! I can’t wait to finally play it!
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Sat 16 Dec 03:13] |
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| "Re(1):Jet Set Radio Evolution" , posted Wed 20 Dec 01:38
quote:
Concepts of a rejected Jet Set Radio Evolution
I would have loved to played this!
Just like some other JSR sequel concept rejects that have emerged over the years, this is not too bad looking, but I feel as though it misses the visual point of the series on pretty much all the counts.
I mean, it looks pretty, but there's too much fiddly detail and a general lack of stylization in the character models, to start, a bland sort of shader applied to the characters to have them nominally echo the cel shading of the original (but again, the level of detail in the models is too high), and a lack of any kind of innovative visual effects to indicate speed and fluid motion of all-out skating, aside from the ones that were present in the existing games, and which are duplicated pretty well here. They didn't even bother to add in any real visual flair to speak of. I know it's a concept only, but if I were to make a pitch for a new JSR game I'd be packing it with as many speed signifiers as I could manage.
I'm not trying to be harsh in my criticism of it, but I can see pretty clearly why it was rejected. Of course I'd play it, but I think the series deserves better.
It is still somewhat surprising that we've never managed to get a new game in the series after what seemed to be a decent success with the HD re-release of the first game a few years back.
You have to carefully reproduce the world of "Castlevania" in the solemn atmosphere.
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| "Re(2):Nostalgia for the best game of all time" , posted Wed 20 Dec 16:21:
quote:
Nobinobita: Rant against Project Octopath Traveller's graphical style
Whoa whoa whoa whoa! I don't think this game deserves the kind of hate just because it is experemental with its presentation. I could say there are many games that could be accused of trying to "smooth out" sprite art or not recreating it in a faithful matter, such as the case with games like Axiom Verge (especially with certain rooms/bosses that scale/zoom out, scanlines in the secret areas), Golf Story (zooming out without resolution limitation), and many others. Oddly enough, this feeling of "tampering with the old look" reminds me of the current Retronauts topic of The Wind Waker, the expectations people had with regard to its gaming climate ("Celda" stigma), and how the more recent HD Remaster tried to add too much bloom and shading that it ruined the distinct "flat" look it had. (There was also the whole talk about how it was inspired by the Toei Doga classic Wanpaku Ōji no Orochi Taiji / The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon.)
It's really such an odd phenomena/dillema about trying to improve visual fidelity of older titles while remaining faithful, that it makes me think an actual proper FFVI remake is next to impossible without upsetting people, because the expectations that people have built in their own minds have become too grand for their own good. And here I thought FFIVDS was actually pretty successful in that regard...but to each their own I guess.
Regardless of your feelings for Octopath, at least we know it's going to have great music.
[this message was edited by sfried on Wed 20 Dec 16:24] |
| | "Re(3):Nostalgia for the best game of all time" , posted Wed 20 Dec 18:02
quote:
Nobinobita: Rant against Project Octopath Traveller's graphical style
Whoa whoa whoa whoa! I don't think this game deserves the kind of hate just because it is experemental with its presentation. I could say there are many games that could be accused of trying to "smooth out" sprite art or not recreating it in a faithful matter, such as the case with games like Axiom Verge (especially with certain rooms/bosses that scale/zoom out, scanlines in the secret areas), Golf Story (zooming out without resolution limitation), and many others. Oddly enough, this feeling of "tampering with the old look" reminds me of the current Retronauts topic of The Wind Waker, the expectations people had with regard to its gaming climate ("Celda" stigma), and how the more recent HD Remaster tried to add too much bloom and shading that it ruined the distinct "flat" look it had. (There was also the whole talk about how it was inspired by the Toei Doga classic Wanpaku Ōji no Orochi Taiji / The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon.)
It's really such an odd phenomena/dillema about trying to improve visual fidelity of older titles while remaining faithful, that it makes me think an actual proper FFVI remake is next to impossible without upsetting people, because the expectations that people have
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
So I LOVE that there are tons of approaches to sprite art with modern tools and technology because even if a lot of the results are trashy and cheap, it has a certain garage punk-ness to the medium that I cannot help but admire the spirit of. Sure, a lot of things are being done that way because it's fast and cheap, but some of the things being made and brilliant and clever.
Random thoughts:
- the much longer perspective that is gained both through the viewing frustum and increased resolution means that texture tiling becomes much more obvious. When this is done as a clever stylization, it can be ok. However, when you have stuff like regular battle scenes where the floor texture is repeating itself ad nauseum in plain sight, it just looks cheap and bad.
- when the camera is rotating and the camera-facing quads used for the sprites are subtly changing in size in the viewport, the sprites are getting constantly rescaled at arbitrary floating point sizes. So if you take a look at the very start of this fight with the sandworm thing, you can see that the camera is doing is a really slow, really subtle movement, and there's this vertical seam that seems to slide across the sprites of the player's party. I think there are clever tricks you could use to minimize artifacts like that, but no matter what, you are going to get weird blurring of the sprites when they are constantly getting scaled around. Having them pop into sizes feels really unnatural in the otherwise smoothly-scaling world of 3D.
- the sprites here are made to mimic the limited resolution of 16-bit era sprites for smaller enemies and party members, but they don't do anything to simulate the physical properties of the CRT display devices. This style choice has all kinds of ramifications for how the sprites look combined with the arbitrary scaling. So sometimes you get sprites where the chunky pixels are super obvious, which might seem "ok" to people who are used to playing retro games on emulators on LCD screens, but looks much uglier than people who played these games on CRTs remember. So right off the bat, this idea of trying to be "like you remember them!" has already kind of shot itself in the foot. Second of all, it results in inconsistent smoothness based on the scaling of the sprite due to texture interpolation. Some of this is masked with their depth-of-field effect (where sprites very close to the camera or very far from the camera are blurred as if out of focus), but for stuff which is in focus, it's kind of... weird.
- they've tried to have a consistent "pixel" (more like texel) density across the characters and the environment textures. This is good effort. One of the things which makes many, especially PSX-era and doujin, games have a funny feel is that the environment textures are done at whatever resolution they are, and then the environment objects are scaled to whatever dimensions they are, possibly with the texture tiling however it is, and the result is that you have HUGE pixels in some places, small pixels in others, really smoothly interpolated textures that absolutely doesn't feel like sprites elsewhere, contrasted against the character sprites. Say, take a look at Duo Princess. Having the characters identifiably distinct from the environment is good, but having what feels like a lack of coherency isn't so good. A really "new" thing to do would be to have dynamic texture generation that would adjust apparent texel density based on size of the object in the viewport, but designing art around that sounds like it would be really hard. I don't know, I've never seen anybody try it!
- the look intentionally draws attention to how rectangular and blocky the pixels are in the environment, even. Take a look here! You can see that the stuff hanging off the bridge has super sharp rectangular "pixel edges" when set against the white clouds in the background. And then you've got stuff like the wooden parts of the bridge looking smoothly interpolated! I'm so mad!
- just because a game uses a lot of the same tiles doesn't mean it has to look repetitive. In FF6, if you could see this much of it at a time, you'd find it eye-glazing as well! But in FF6 and all the other ones, you CAN'T see that much of it at a time! You see this much at a time! The characters and interactibles take up a very large proportion of the screen (because of limited resolution), and the limited variety of tiles is partly made up for by the limited quantity of tiles you can see at once. It feels a little more balanced, rather than giving you the feeling of being totally saturated with sameness. This is one case where actually deviating from the limits of the old games would be good: it's ok to use a greater variety of tiles/textures because how much you can see.
- i dunno i'm tired
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| | "Re(5):Nostalgia for the best game of all time" , posted Thu 21 Dec 02:27
There is one thing I like about Octopath Traveller's look, and it's that it is not trying to look retro. Result aside, it does its own Cuphead in a way: taking an aesthetic that it likes, and then creating its own visual identity out of it while disregarding the context and limitations of the original artstyle.
It's an empty reference, if you want. Like people quoting one famous sentence of a famous book to make themselves sound smart, even though they never read the book nor have any interest of reading it.
Yes, it's glorified illiteracy. But then, Japanese videogames still overwhelmingly sell to people under 15. What does Octopath's visual identity mean to a generation for whom "retro" means "Minecraft"? At least it's a different branch from the western indie game "retro-looking" art style. And, well, isn't it nice to have the 16-bit art style branching out into new contemporary styles for a new audience?
What I'm saying is: Octopath Traveller's looks are the least of its problem. Its writing is dull and the game systems look busted and flawed. At that point its looks are its saving grace.
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