Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Anti-Matter

1. The portal should work either way. I bought SuperChargers on Wii before Wii U (they're both different games, Wii one being racing only), and I used the Wii portal on Wii U no problem. The SuperChargers portal also works with Imaginators, as I bought the Portal owner's pack (game and creation crystal only).

2. You should be fine with the starter figures. Other figures do open up new paths and areas, but the base game is playable with starters. I played Swap Force, and only bought two extra figures. I mostly stuck with the starter set figures.

3. IIRC, the portal is pretty much universal. I have the basic one from Swap Force, and the SuperChargers one. I used the SuperChargers one with Imaginators as mentioned before with no issue. I can't speak on Trap Team, Giants, or the original as I never played those.

4. That is correct, the portals connect via the USB port on Wii and Wii U.

The updates with the Skylander games I've tried were mainly patches to fix bugs. All the data for the figures are on the disc, and should work with no problem. You just can't use newer figures with older games.

@Sunsy
Thanks for the answer. 😀
I think i will consider a few Skylander figurines that appeal me the most and as long still compatible with Superchargers.
Btw, what are the different between Trap Team, Swap Force and Giants ?
They looks like Disney Universe game style from what i watched on Youtube.

@Anti-Matter You're welcome. I personally wouldn't know for Trap Team and Giants, I haven't played them. Swap Force's gimmick were figures you could swap parts. Typically a Swap Force figure can come apart and you can mix and match them. They typically stay together with a tiny magnet on the figure.

@TheJGG I actually got Gran Turismo 3 for the PS2 some years ago. Didn't play too much of it, but from what I've played it's pretty good. I do like racing games quite a bit so I do intend to play more of it.

I'm not sure if this is an intended site change or if it's just my dumb luck, but it seems I can now only be logged into NL on one device at a time. Normally this isn't a big deal since I browse the site on mobile 90% of the time, but I do stay logged in on my laptop over the weekends to belt out longer replies easier. I'm usually home then. XD

Also...fingers crossed for work tomorrow now that we've moved forward an hour. I am NOT a morning person, and this time change is by far the worse of the two. I REALLY wish we'd stop switching back and forth like some US states and countries. I feel like the negatives outweigh any positives as to why this is still done. X_X

@TheJGG Midna was certainly a perfect balance between helpful companion and being a fully fleshed out character. She has a personality, motivations, was rarely if ever intrusive, and had a very unique design in my book. I enjoyed watching her change for the better throughout the game. You've nailed why I like her character so much. Twilight Princess was my first Zelda game; heck, it took me two attempts to even properly get sucked in. The handling of the story certainly played a huge part, though in hindsight it does play things a bit safe by overall series standards.

On the other companions: I didn't dislike Fi, she was so-so for me, but like you I expect that she'll be toned down a little in the HD release. Some of her constant talking and slow text really broke the immersion for me, especially "Master, the batteries in your Wii Remote are nearly depleted". I like Navi overall despite getting slightly annoyed at times, and Tatl is a better version of her IMO (I've only played the 3DS entries, so for all I know they were toned down). The King of Red Lions isn't bad either, but I found him a bit stuffy and stoic; granted, that does fit his personality lol. I don't really mind Ezlo as some of his dialogue and mannerisms are, at least, humorous at times. Ciela is my least favorite series companion. I don't feel she added much to Phantom Hourglass and only served as a glorified indicator that could talk. XD

...Wait, the Navi Wii Remote pointer in Twilight Princess counts as a companion? I always thought it was just a glorified indicator and didn't treat it as a character or anything.

@MarioLover92 You've nailed why I don't care for the few Xbox exclusives out there: most of them are shooters. I'm not a big fan of the genre. I find them relatively mindless, plus many of their aesthetics are ultra-realistic these days, which makes a lot of them look the same in my book. I don't mind games with some similar elements, like the Metroid Prime series, but those games also mix up the gameplay in other ways.

Honestly, the only series I'm even mildly interested in is Fable.

Agreed that internet connectivity shouldn't be mandatory outside of online multiplayer scenarios. The internet I have now is fiber internet and is very speedy overall, but once in awhile the connection does drop for a minute. It doesn't occur often enough that I'm concerned though lol. My current ISP is a regional co-op who's gradually working to bring fiber to more areas. Thing is, more people are getting on it, so the speeds don't skate QUITE as much as they used to.

I was just in an among us lobby where all that happened was... uhm... suggestive roleplay. I just stood back watching it all go up in flames lol. Made me think of @Eel ‘s first impressions of the game. Sometimes you get the most idiotic people😂

Those stupid sexy crewmates

@Eel "Its like I'm wearing nothing at all"

@Blooper987 I get those LOL, There was one time were everyone in the lobby hated one another, I didn't like orange, orange didn't like me and so on.

but there are the rear times were you get the nice's people ever were everyone is just Haven, you will have to be in one to know what I'm talking about.

@Snatcher I was in a room with these two people who straight up had master like detective skills for about an hour it was pretty great. There was another time where a girl tried to get my number so that she could talk with me and meet irl lol. Definitely some weird but fun rooms😅

@Tyranexx Twilight Princess was also my first Zelda game, and incidentally was the first one I managed to finish, only when it was remastered for Wii U. When I was younger I was terrified of the Zant Hands you'd encounter in the Palace of Twilight when stealing the Sols so it took me a really long time to finish it when I got the HD release in 2016. It was then that I began to finish video games in general, before that I'd just do a bit and leave, unless it was an easy peasy Mario game.

I honestly didn't hate Fi at all. Anything subjective that the Internet has a general consensus on, I tend to disagree with. Ocarina of Time isn't the best Zelda, neither is Breath of the Wild. Death Stranding was a masterpiece. Navi was all right (I know, I played only on 3DS), and Fi was fine. We'll both hope of course that Fi doesn't start warning us that our Joy-Con batteries are almost depleted (though it'll be funny but also pathetic if Nintendo didn't change the text to Joy-Con in the infamous dialogue).

Navi was alright too. She didn't have too much character other than "peppy companion", and tended to act as a visualisation of the player's thoughts, and in instances, what we're meant to be thinking according to the game. But that doesn't mean she was bad. I do question at times why she left after the end of the game[/story] but game's gotta happen I guess. She was fun while it lasted though and she was a technical marvel because of the L-targeting.

Tatl on the other hand, did have personality and when I think about it, served as the precursor (geddit?) to Midna. She started out hostile, and extremely reluctant to participate in the Hero's Journey, but warmed up to him and began to sympathise with the people around her. She also, of course [spoiler] separated from Link at the end of the game but it was here more on a happy note. And yes, you have two companions in Twilight Princess for Wii; Midna and the fairy pointer. The fairy pointer's just boring, and makes Ciela look pretty competent. At least Ciela has dialogue and... a personality, however bland it may be.

I'm not a fan of Xbox for the very same reasons, and you've pretty much nailed almost my very own thoughts on the matter. Because these hyper-realistic shooters focus on graphics they lack proper diversity and end up having pretty blasé art direction. At least with Nintendo games there's the minimal expectation that the art style will be interesting enough to make up for the graphical power, or lack thereof. If only Fable was powerful enough to sell a console all by itself.

Doesn't apply to shooters much but there's games that just need the power, and just don't need an art direction, such as the Gran Turismo games, @MarioLover92. I've only played Gran Turismo: Sport but one thing that they went above and beyond in, excluding the outstanding graphical performance and the realistic simulation aspects, is the sound design. Apparently the sounds from all the cars weren't all that great until Sport released, and they sound so good now, that at times I can't help but turn up the volume.

The music choice is also really good, and the dozens of original tracks composed by Daiki Kasho... are really motivating, and just bangers in general. Most of them are different kinds of rock. I'm not a music expert but there's so much diversity. Plus the singing (also by Kasho) is sublime.

On Tyranexx's comment on mandatory online connection, GT Sport has this, and it's inconvenient at times. If I don't have a connection I can't save my game. That's why I like offline experiences in general, unless the experience changes the game in a positive way, like in Death Stranding. If you build structures in your world, they'll turn up in another player's world. This also means you'll get a massive amount of player-built structures like zip lines, power generators, and so many goddamn trucks. It's so useful that I haven't built a truck in two months.

Plus, you don't have to meet a single player face to face, which considering the potential for online toxicity, is welcome. There's also a system to give likes (and only likes) to structures that help you. You automatically give one out but you can give out more if you want by mashing the controller Touchpad. It encourages positivity.

When i was broswing about Surf's Up video games gameplay from Youtube, i accidentally found this one.

Yo, look at the games i got this evening. 😀

I bought Starfox Adventures from Tokopedia just for Rp 285,000 or US$ 19.77 (nearly US$ 20).

@Tyranexx Yeah, a lot of shooters blend together with each other. Pretty much all of them go for ultra-realistic graphics, and yes they can get pretty repetitive as well. So I never liked stuff like CoD, and as I've stated earlier, I don't see myself getting an Xbox anytime soon. Always had more fun with Nintendo and Sega games anyway.

I will admit though, I do like Splatoon quite a bit. I like its unique gameplay compared to other shooters, and I love its 90s-esque art style! Love Metroid Prime as well, though I haven't played much of its sequels.

@Wavey84 $11.99 is more than what I've paid on etsy for repro's. But, based on those pics, the boxes seem like a really good quality. Cardboard looks right and the colors seem good (maybe a little bright).

If you do buy some I'd be interested in knowing what you think.

AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! God$%#@^ %&@!! $$%&*@!!! Almost finished with my text wall and one teeny-tiny little copy/paste mistake and it's back to f-ing square one. I'm THIS close to just forgetting all about this comment and kicking the crap out of my damn computer... /rant

Sorry folks, but I just HAD to get that off of my chest first...

Anyway, on with the whole re-typing of my carefully constructed text wall, albeit somewhat shorter here and there, because I just don't have the energy left after a long and annoying office Monday to type EVERYTHING again for the second time...

But enough complaining, on with the show!

Hello everybody! Guess what time it is? Yep, it's DELAYED REPLY TIME!!!

@Tyranexx Well, here's hoping that there'll be enough copies of Super Mario 3D All Stars floating around in your area for you to be able to still get your hands on one, because it's most definitely worth getting.

@TheJGG Man, I'd WISH I had a backlog as small as yours. As mentioned a dozen or so pages back, I have enough of a back log to almost last me another life time, and that's not even too much of an exaggeration.

One other thing: my heart wept a little, when I read the criticism concerning Super Mario Sunshine. To this day, it's still one of my favorite Mario games ever. People that say that the controls suck, are just lousy players...

All kidding aside, I never experienced any troubles with the control scheme myself, so whenever I read comments of people pointing that out, I always wonder what the heck they were doing and how they could have had such a completely different experience with the game. Oh, well...

On a completely unrelated side note: I had to laugh a bit at the spoiler part of your comment #50,773 on page 2539, because you did the formatting of the spoiler comment the wrong way around (you started with "end spoiler", aka the slash), but funnily enough, it still worked regardless.

@Blooper987 What's a Culver's?
Just kidding, I already gathered from all the other comments that it's some kind of fast food franchise? Either way, good on you scoring a job in these annoying and troubling times, so congrats.

One other thing, and I'll just tag all of you people in here, @Tyranexx, @TheJGG, @MarioLover92 (I'll forego adding the usual suspect, considering his limited taste):

After reading all the comments concerning the Xbox brand over the last couple of pages, I feel I have to speak up/go to bat/make a case for/take up the cudgel etc. for it, because it offers SO much more than some people seem to think.

To clarify, I'm not offended or angry or anything, it's just that I feel that some assumptions need to be corrected, because as an owner of several Xboxes, I just don't like this ongoing misunderstanding. (and YES, @TheJGG you are both objectively AND subjectively misguided)

First off, it's NOT all first person shooters. And while it's true that the Xbox One didn't have the best start of all consoles, it did recover relatively nicely, also by ultimately resulting in the release of the Xbox One X, which is still the most powerful console of the last generation.

Either way, they only lost the last generation because of the idiot Don Mattrick, just ask @NEStalgia.

Ever since then, Phil Spencer has been moving mountains to repair the damage, get them back up and restore faith in the brand and their ideas, and now, they've got a really wonderful platform in the current generation, offering a wealth of games of multiple generations of Xboxes, ranging from OG Xbox to the Xbox One, and obviously current gen titles. The cross-platform titles of which look better on the Xbox, so even if they're also on PC, if you don't have a rig that's powerful enough, the console is simply the best solution.

And speaking of these games, here's the supposedly "limited" list of Xbox One exclusives:
https://www.gematsu.com/exclusives/xbox-one

And to add to that, the list of Xbox 360 exclusives, many of which are also compatible with both Xbox One and the new Series consoles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Xbox_360-only_games

So many great games, many of them not grey/brown shooters, and some truly unique classics. You just have to know what to look for. Or who to ask...

P.S.

@TheJGG (and sorry for tagging you so often, but I had to address topics in the right order and you came up several times over the last dozen pages):
Gran Turismo has already been surpassed by Forza ever since three iterations ago. And not just marginally, but by a landslide, also since the ever more brilliant Forza Horizon series has gone from strength to strength to add to the more purist/sim racing Motorsports series.

GT just doesn't have the same impact, compared to what these series offer. Lesser car models, fewer damage models, or in some cases even none, less complete audio database and so on, and so on. It's become the more clinical experience of the two, when compared to Forza Motorsports.

Even the critics agree: Motorsports has won many awards already over the last couple of years, most of them won at the cost of Gran Turismo, so it's now literally the leading racing sim on consoles.

And concerning this too, @NEStalgia will attest. If I promise to make less fun of his train-fetish...
@WoomyNNYes also gets it. He knows how great the Forza Horizon games are as well.

CLOSING DISCLAIMER:

The (re)making of this comment took me the whole damn evening. My computer has become agonizingly slow of late, especially when browsing the web, pages sometimes LITERALLY taking ages to load, like 5-10 minutes max per page, no kidding, and this is what I'm usually staring at in the mean time:

I literally have NO idea what the hell is going on, and I've just about turned my PC inside out...

#respectthecommitment #rageintoperseverance

Phew!!! Glad that's done...

When the wall of text becomes sentient and demands a rewrite, the titan weeps.

@Wavey84 I looked up Super Castlevania IV and you're right - that looks too dark. I compared their Donkey Kong Country to my original, and it seems much more saturated. DK almost looks red in their image. Of course, my copy may be faded a bit. In any case, they seem decent. I can't recall the etsy store i used, but the quality was pretty iffy. Stiff white cardboard stock and glossy covers. I'd be willing to pay a few extra dollars just to have something that blends in with the originals a bit more.

@Eel Well, normally, a Mad Titan certainly wouldn't, but in this case, I certainly almost did. Only on the inside, though. And only ever so little, purely out of frustration...

@ThanosReXXX I'm so sorry. that happend to me one time I just never posted the comment tho.