Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@ThanosReXXX It's not that I'm comparing them directly to newer games, not at all. It's just that graphic technology has improved, and the things that impressed me then have indeed been pushed much further now and at this point, I've seen the improvements so many times that I just assume the tech is going to keep improving. Unless of course coronavirus kills us all in which case there will be no one left to improve the tech.

Also, I was biased, I much prefered the Gamecube to the PS2 and Xbox. I got that little cube first and loved it! I got the Game Player for it and I think that's a big part of why I love the Switch so much now, because it reminds me of playing the same games on TV and on the Go back then. Though ultimately I did get each console that gen, and thoroughly enjoyed all 3, Gamecube would be my fave. There's only a few PS2 games I really am nostalgic for and basically only Halo 1 and 2 on Xbox that I remember as fondly as Nintendo titles of the same era. Also not saying there aren't tons of great games on those system, just that for nostalgia, for me, that's how it works.

@bimmy-lee My first thought would be to paint the wall surrounding the alarm to look like a barrel so that the alarm could be the barrel end, but I'm not sure how that would work or look in practice.

@Tyranexx I really think that years of the ability to hide behind a screen and say worse and worse things to and about one another has taught segments of the population that "it's okay, you can get away with it". Like with everything, there are better and worse places but in general, I've come to expect, by default, the worst of people online. At least that way I can be pleasantly surprised with the minority of decent people I run into occasionally.

Two remarkably pleasant experiences recently have been here, on NintendoLife, having recovered mostly from the cesspool of Pokemon hatred that it descended into a few months ago, and last weekend on Discord, I teamed up with a few random people from a Discord server I'm in and we hunted Mewtwo raids in Pokemon. It was a lot of fun and shockingly pleasant, polite and friendly.

But then, any time I look at the comments on YouTube or any news site that allows them, I'm reminded how nasty things get. Or if I am forced to check twitter for something like a release date... yuck.

@ThanosReXXX It’s usually the software that entices me. Right now there is a lot of stories speculating which machine will have more flops, “true” ray tracing...

All I’ve seen is that Hellblade game and something on the PS5 being marketed as a “looter slasher” (that name 😂).

So it’s hard to feel too impressed yet. With all those flops though, I’m sure something will impress.

@Heavyarms55 I just avoid most comment sections much of anywhere on principle except when the topic seems (key word) innocent enough. I've been bitten by this more than once - it's amazing to what lengths some will go to drag politics or some form of trolling into a barely related (or fully unrelated) discussion - but I've also found some decent behavior too. I'm getting better at bailing out of comment sections and threads that become toxic. I didn't read the Brie Larson article here merely because it didn't interest me, but now I'm happy to avoid it after reading some of the feedback about the comment section here. I can only withstand so much facepalming....

If only there were more effective ways to punish people for behaving like morons. Unfortunately, unless they do something VERY illegal (and sometimes not even then), the repercussions are negligible to non-existent.

@HobbitGamer Well, at least their respective critics will be able to wipe their behinds with them, then...

@Heavyarms55 Well, regardless of any kind of preference, you still didn't close your eyes to the other platforms, so that tells me that at the very least, you aren't one of those close-minded fanboys who only thinks that the platform he supports is the best and that the other two should die.

I've always been multi-platform, even when I didn't have a console yet. Back then, I had several home computers and a PC, and then I added an N64, and then a Dreamcast, and then after the GameCube generation, I bought my first Xbox, the 360, and I've basically stuck with Nintendo and Microsoft ever since. I personally don't buy anything Sony, but that has nothing to do with the console itself, but more with the company, and my personal issues and experiences with them over the years, which have been less than stellar, so to speak.

But like you, I'll never just support one platform, because they all have their merits and good games, and a healthy industry NEEDS multiple parties, so wanting the others to die off would actually be the exact opposite of what any sane gaming fan should be wanting to happen. But try and explain that to those kinds of individuals...
I think I'd rather stab myself with a serrated steak knife. Multiple times... And that would STILL be a more useful and enjoyable experience than trying to talk sense into tunnel-visioned idiots...

@Tyranexx Far as I'm concerned, that criticism is only valid/warranted in the eyes of the beholder. Much like with other books to movies features, everybody always is the expert on how a character should be portrayed or look like. I also do that to some extent, since I'm also only human, after all, but thanks to my job, I've also been trained to look past these subjective things whenever necessary or applicable.

Captain Marvel is supposed to be a member of the Kree, a warrior-like race that also suffers from a superiority complex, that has always been the case in the comics, at least, so her acting all aloof and haughty and stuff in the movie, is not so much Brie channeling her inner self, but actually correctly portraying the character as it was in the comics.

For all intent and purposes, she's basically the sane version of Jean Grey's Dark Phoenix persona, so she might come across as all those things I said, and perhaps even as an empty character, but the character is all those things to some extent, except for empty, but in all fairness, the MCU, although having done a reasonably decent job at bringing all these characters to life, does have this empty character problem with nearly all of its characters, simply because of there being too much source material, and too little time to cram that all into a trilogy or quartet, or even if you add cameos in other Marvel series or movies.

So, they have to pick and choose, and as such, a pretty big part of the die hard comics fans will always see these movie versions of their beloved characters, some of which they grew up with, as empty, inferior or at the very least watered down versions of them.

Me, I just see them as entertainment, and even though I know most of the original stories AND the multiple re-imaginings done over the years, I won't put the movies and the comics side by side to point at every little thing that the movies "forgot" to mention or did wrong. And don't get me wrong: I simply LOVE the original stories in the comics, but I also understand how translations to the big screen work and that choices needed to be made, and I think they've done a pretty decent job with most of the movie series so far, and personally, I'm quite looking forward to the upcoming phase of movies.

@NotTelevision The whole Teraflops thing is just a data channeling/pushing feature which, in and of itself, has nothing whatsoever to do with better graphics. It only allows a chip that has more of them, to push more data and more data faster than a chip that has less, but it doesn't mean that it can process better graphics. Just that it can process MORE graphics in the broadest sense of the word.

Actually, if you increase the resolution of these graphics, which I'm sure they will, then the number of data packages that you can push through a chip will decrease again, so it's also a balancing thing. You'll both want the new system to be faster and producing better visible results, but you don't want it to stutter, obviously, so they'll more than likely achieve the best results with the backwards compatible titles, even if they add some kind of texture pack upgrades, because these graphics (and as such the data) will be much smaller in size, so on a newer, faster system, they will be able to push/stream these must faster than the native graphics.

But as I said, unless both new consoles pull some kind of magical rabbit out of the hat, I'm not expecting there to be a true generational leap over the current premium models of the Xbox and PlayStation. It's definitely going to look better, but not by much, and that's also a cost thing. People aren't going to want to pay premium PC gaming rig prices for a plug and play console after all, so a gaming PC at its highest setting/configuration will still trump any of the new consoles arriving shortly.

@ThanosReXXX There's always people who latch onto something and just refuse to consider anything else. I wont lie and claim I don't favor Nintendo, but I favor Nintendo because what they offer happens to be what I like best. They have the games I love on the platform I prefer. But that could change. Although I have a Wii U and enjoyed it some, it didn't draw me in at all like Switch did, or other consoles in the past. I've owned most major consoles over the last 20 years in some form or another so I like to think I've given most things a chance at least.

I think we see, in smaller scale, with video game companies, what we see with politics. People get so invested in one group that they start refusing to consider anything else.

The Switch has been for me, while still imperfect, the absolute best gaming experience I've ever had. It's 3 years in and I can say it delivers the experience still, that I always never even knew I wanted. I say it like that because if you'd told me that something like the Switch was coming, back in the GBA or Game Boy Color era, I'd have laughed in your face and asked how many tens of thousands of dollars would it cost to have a handheld that's also a console? Back then I didn't consider such a thing remotely feasible. And yet, I have always loved having the ability to play my portable games on the big TV at home. The Switch is saying I don't need to sacrifice much of anything to play the same games portable or on TV? It was love almost at first sight!

It's also important to note that Nintendo has many of the game series that I have loved all my life and has continued to deliver the experiences I most enjoy in terms of software as well as hardware. It's not that other companies haven't given me games and systems that I've enjoyed, they have, but they've never managed to really take that top spot. Though Xbox 360 did really come close.

But all that said, Sony or MS or someone else could drop something tomorrow that I never new I always wanted and steal that spot from Nintendo, and while I don't see myself ever abandoning Nintendo games, I could be won over for that number one spot. It's not impossible.

@ThanosReXXX - Man, I’ve been missing replies all day. Only in America is right. Not only could Snoop be a celebrity lawyer, he probably has a shot at being president. I don’t know how many Twitter followers he has, but I assume a lot. That’s the number one prerequisite these days. I need a beer now.

@Tyranexx - That’s a great idea with the barrel. I could do a couple levels of platforms and ladders as if it’s tumbled all the way down. I know I can’t tape off a DK and paint him though. I initially tried taping off Ms Pac Man in an eight bit aesthetic, but it was madness. I can’t do stuff free hand. I can only tape and stencil.

@HobbitGamer - They’ll still be 800 times more powerful than Switch though. Then what are you gonna doooo brother, when the 27” pythons run wild on youuuuu and there ain’t no more Switch games?!? Bet you didn’t think about THAT!

@ThanosReXXX "People aren't going to want to pay premium PC gaming rig prices for a plug and play console after all, so a gaming PC at its highest setting/configuration will still trump any of the new consoles arriving shortly." As they should. Top of the line gaming PCs tend to push well past 1000 dollars. I've seen high end machines even break 2k. It's completely unreasonable for people to expect a 400-500 dollar device to match or surpass that.

It's for that same reason I laugh when people say things like "My laptop can do so much more than your Switch!" And I'm like "It cost 2-4 times as much as the Switch, I sure hope it does more!"

@ThanosReXXX Yep, that's pretty much a "the criticism is in the eye of the beholder" subject there. Not saying I agree with it - again, that's not a character I'm well informed about, so thanks for some of the info there - but as long as discussion is kept civil, I can totally deal with different viewpoints. It's interesting to read your own take on that subject matter, particularly as one who can look past one movie portrayal. There are different ways and interpretations of a story and its characters. That's how I view comparisons between, say, the DCAU and the DCEU.

I've only seen the MCU piecemeal, which is something I hope to correct sooner or later. I slightly prefer the DC side of things (overall; we won't get into some of the movies, though I did like The Dark Knight trilogy, and Suicide Squad wasn't BAD IMO), but I like aspects of and characters from the Marvel canon, too. The X-Men are my favorite team of heroes, Magneto is arguably my favorite anti-hero (Sorry Deadpool fans!), and who can forget that awesome web-slinging spider dude?

@bimmy-lee I'd have to use tape, stencils, and other guides, too; my freehand isn't bad per se, but I really need to take my time and concentrate. I'm definitely no professional artist and couldn't live off of my work. XD

Come to think of it, is there a way to 3D print stencils? If you or an associate has access to a 3D printer, there's bound to be some sort of flat DK design out there somewhere....

I get it, it's like the ultimate first world problem. I'm required to be at work by contract, but there are no students because the schools are closed. It was the end of the semester, so there's not even new prints and activities to make and we're rapidly running out of random tidbits of cleaning to do...

I love Japan but sometimes I really wish they weren't so serious about rules. Like, let's all just go home early and pretend we all stayed the normal time. No one is going to check. No one ever checks...

@Heavyarms55 Japan without rules and honour is not Japan

@ThanosReXXX Yes you’re right about the graphics. I’m thinking Microsoft will be more in the business of putting new texture and asset packs in their older games. But assets and character models are one thing I’m not sure we’ll see as much of a generational leap in.

I can definitely see a big difference between the character models and assets used in PS3/360 games and that in current gen titles. I still think last gen stuff looks good, but the actual quality of the animations and facial features especially are just... I’m not going to say a improvement because certain graphics have their own appeal... but more believable certainly on current gen consoles.

Improvements in lighting are going to look great on 4K TVs, but lighting and reflections are one of those things where you have to look at two images, one with the features enabled and one without, to really parse. It’s a more a subtle thing. I’ll admit that it’ll be cool to see your character model reflected in a pool of water with crisp detail. I wonder if developers are just going to put reflective surfaces everywhere to show off that effect 😂. Expect glass, mirrors, and shiny countertops for a while.

Smoother overall performance and fewer loading screens, or no loading screens at all, gives opportunity for games that want to present high res expansive worlds. Draw distance detail will be improved along with that. But I hope games don’t get too much bigger than they already are, to be honest. There are already too many open world games full of boring checklist and needless time sink sidequest. So hopefully developers aim for quality over quantity, even if the opportunity is there to make a 300 hour Assassin’s Creed game.

@NotTelevision There's nothing wrong with bigger and bigger open world games so long as they are full of meaningful things to do. That's a big point there, if the open world game is full of big open and meaningless space, it's not good. Or if that space is full of mindless and pointless busywork, that's also good. But then you have games like Xenoblade 1, X and 2 and Skyrim and FO New Vegas where everywhere you go you have interesting side quests, no and varied locations to explore, interesting activities to do, creative side characters to meet, etc etc.

Personally, I think if someone can make a 1000 hour long game that remains meaningful and interesting for that whole monstrous duration, that I'd drop that 1000 hours.

Oh, before I fall asleep and forget. Last night I had a fun nightmare, not one of the sickly traumatizing ones, a regular spooky one.

For some reason my brain has some recurring places that stay consistent every time I dream about them, they are usually extensions to real places, but they do not exist themselves. In this particular case, it was the two rooms my brain likes to add to the house of one of my uncles, a really old house that has been in the family for a really long time, and that is famous among my cousins for being a bit spooky.

So, in a few dreams through my life, I’ve sometimes visited that house, and sometimes, I explore it. On several of those dreams I’ve reached this hallway that doesn’t exist in real life, but in my dreams it‘s a consistent part of that house that I remember being there, even in dreams where I don’t see it. In that hallway there’s two consecutive rooms, and you usually have to walk through the first room, which is usually pink, to reach the second room, which is usually blue.

They look like well decorated old timey fancy bedrooms, like children used to sleep there, but they haven’t been used in a really long time, and there’s always an oppressing feeling whenever I enter them, like, a heavy scary sensation. They’re honestly creepy and that’s always the case whenever they appear in my dreams, specially since I’m usually alone when I find them.

This time though, I was with a group of people, a mix of family and friends, and while they were also aware of the story of the rooms, us being more people made being in the rooms more pleasant- like a sleepover. Because for some unholy reason it was decided we would need to sleep the night there, I guess because the other less haunted rooms were taken.

I ended up having to use one of the beds in the blue room, next to a mirror. Because of course, what would be a spooky room without a spooky full body mirror in the corner.

I just knew I would be scared by something if I randomly woke up in the night and looked at the mirror, it made a lot of sense in my mind, at least, so I used my usual cowardly technique of sleeping completely wrapped with my blanket, head and all. For some reason I decided to sleep facing up, which I never really do.

It went well until I inevitably heard a sound coming from the side of the bed, the side with the mirror. And even though I could see nothing (the blanket protected me!) I had this terrible feeling like something was above me, and that alone made it hard to breathe, and the entire atmosphere was uncomfortable.

It was like having a sleep paralysis episode within a dream, truly unnerving.

Then I woke up.

The end.

@Heavyarms55 Agree 100% there. FO:NV, Skyrim, and the Witcher 3 are good examples of interesting open world games packed full of rich content. Heck I spent at least 30 hours in BOTW messing around with the physics and flinging Bokoblins off a cliff, so it was worth it for me because I was having fun. So hopefully the above games become the models developers are working off of. I haven’t played any of the Xenoblade games yet, but I want to check them out. I hear good things.

I don’t mean to stir up any controversy, but I was picked up Red Dead 2 again the other day and was astonished at the poor quality of some of the sidequest. I rode at least 30 minutes in the snow and up mountains, helping random NPCs with same predicaments (snake bites, give me a ride home, etc...), eventually reaching the gang hideout indicated on the map. Shot the gang members at the camp then did a quick draw on the leader. The reward was another gun I didn’t need, some Mexican sombreros, and more money to throw on the pile. No side story progression or anything memorable at all happened. Occasionally something interesting will happen if you ride around long enough, but I don’t think this is a good blueprint for future open world games. Some aspects maybe but I don’t think they need to expand it any further unless they come up with enough that warrants expansion.

@Eel That was truly a tale that’s worthy of submission to the Midnight Society.

@bimmy-lee Imma snap into a Slim Jim!!

Nintendo could have trouble next generation. The Switch doesn't stand a chance against the PS5 and next Xbox. It struggles with PS4/Xbox one games now, PS5 and next Xbox games will not run in any form on the Switch. We need a kitchen mid generation upgrade for the switch. If Nintendo have thought of that. The success of the switch may make them think that the current switch is enough.

@DannyBoi Nah, I’ve already got a kitchen.