Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

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@ThanosReXXX Spencer is kind of like Miyamoto in some ways, isn't he? I never put the similarities between the two together! I like that Phil isn't just another stuffy CEO who's in it for the salary and prestige. He seems like he genuinely enjoys his job and puts his all into it.

I did skim the list you linked, and a few titles did catch my eye. On the whole though, I think of the two high-powered horses last gen, I'd probably grab a PS4 over a XB One. The exclusives are only part of the equation, however; time and budget also certainly factor in. To be honest, I watch almost no TV these days, but the few ads I see that aren't tied to my YouTube history/our Google overlords are either shooter or sports-related. Though I do believe I've seen a Forza commercial. I suppose it's because the former two genres are more "mainstream" and are the kinds of things the more casual audience gravitates to.

I do intend to dive into some portly 3D plumber action before TOO long...hopefully. I've played both Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy in some format, but Sunshine will be a completely new experience. It's another one of those "Dang, I wish I had access to a GameCube back in the day" situations....And no, still no family Wii. Probably not until my sister and her fiancee get hitched later this year at least, as I'm told they play Wii Sports every now and again.

@MarioLover92 Thanks! I'm not sure if I want to play through the three titles on offer in SM3DAS in chronological order or just kick things off with Sunshine, but that isn't a decision that needs made for a little while yet! XD SM64 is the most recent one I've played as I dug into the N64 version on the Wii U VC a few years ago. I enjoyed the experience much, MUCH more than the DS version.

I do recall that there was a test run for Splatoon 2 a few years ago, but I was unfortunately Switchless at the time. I also only just started subscribing to NSO a couple of months ago just for the backups (Still kinda salty about how Nintendo handles backing up saves, but I won't jump into that), so I also would've missed any sort of trials over the past year. Also, ice cream > cake, though both are excellent.

Pokemon Omega Ruby is, in my fully biased opinion, the better version of the two Gen 3 remakes. Groudon and Team Magma's story arc trump Kyogre and Team Aqua in my book. Have fun! I picked that one up as well.

@TheJGG Okami shares other similarities to the Zelda series besides having a companion character, namely with the dungeons and, in a sense, gated areas until you progress with the plot. Issun can admittedly be a bit pervy at times - one reason the game is rated T/PEGI 12 - but I did find him cute, interesting, and mildly annoying at times lol. The art style is gorgeous, and even today I find the brush technique to be a fun and unique mechanic. I do occasionally listen to parts of the soundtrack, too. RIP Clover Studio.

You've contrasted Midna and Fi quite well. The "machine becomes human" approach for the latter is fine, but I really wish she'd been given more character development. As you noted, there were few if any signs that pointed to this transition until that last scene. At that point, it just felt awkward and out of place. At least for me. From thumbing through both Hyrule Historia and Art & Artifacts, Fi definitely went through multiple concepts and iterations. To be frank, I'm not entirely sure they found it. Heck, I'd argue her foil, Ghirahim, has way more character development.

Dang...that opening cinematic for Death Stranding is really well done! There's the occasional hint that it isn't fully real, but they did a heck of a good job with the realism there. To be honest, I haven't gotten around to any realistic games in the last couple of years. My brief time with the streamed version of Control probably comes closest, but I'm not sure if that counts lol. Which reminds me, I really need to pick up Hellblade: Sinua's Sacrifice....

On SM3DAS: Normally, I would've waited at least a few more months to pick up a first-party title as they usually stick around for at least a couple of years unless the audience is quite niche. However, Nintendo setting an end date on its availability definitely lit a fire lol. I was holding out hoping that they'd announce individual eshop releases or something, but I finally bit the bullet. XD

Previously, I "chose" a console due to budget reasons, though that isn't quite as much of a factor anymore; I do stick to a gaming budget, however. Nowadays, it has more to do with time than anything else. I have enough stockpiled games in my Switch and 3/DS libraries to keep me busy for at least a year at my current play rate without picking up anything new, maybe closer to two years. And that's not counting a small handful of Wii U and 3DS digital and VC titles I'd like to pick up before their eshops inevitably shuts down. I really would like a PS5 due to the sheer amount of Sony exclusives available through backwards compatibility, but scarcity aside I really don't believe I have the time to invest in another system right now. Hopefully in the future, though it'll be interesting to see how this gen starts playing out.

@Anti-Matter First of all, I'm glad you're interested in picking up a Mega Man Star Force game! I enjoyed all three games (well, at least one version of each), though I do prefer the Mega Man Battle Network series. Star Force is a continuation of that series 200 years into the future.

If I recall, there aren't really any differences related to the plot besides which of the satellite creatures you fight/can combine with (Leo, Pegasus, Dragon) and a few battle cards exclusive to each version. You're only stuck with the one fusion unless you befriend someone (called a "Brother") with a different version however; then you should be able to use a battle card for that fusion from the friend's game as well.

Also, each of those three creatures has an element:
Leo - Fire
Pegasus - Ice
Dragon - Wood

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Oh God here's another one of my text walls. I wanted to get this out six hours ago but I stalled too much. @JaxonH Let me as well offer my thoughts; glad you've managed to get through that difficult phase, and have found a seemingly massively productive calling in videogames and investing. You've made a ton already, so good on you!

@ThanosReXXX I'm inclined to agree that modern Western culture has become much more sensitive, in the wrong kind of ways. The sixties and seventies had such casual and promiscuous culture that in today's society would be unacceptable in any metric. I know you don't like F1 but there was a driver in the seventies, James Hunt, who was a stereotypical playboy. Really laid back attitude, loved hanging around young women, but was fiercely competitive. If he did the things he did, today, he wouldn't have a career.

I’ll point to the Austin Powers films, which highlight very candidly the culture of the sixties compared to the nineties. Austin himself is a gentleman spy, who has a very promiscuous nature as well. He can exercise this in the sixties but when he is cryogenically frozen for thirty years, and awoken in 1997 he not only has to deal with the culture shock of the end of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall falling and otherwise, he also has to work with a new female partner that doesn’t respond to his behaviour as well as his previous one did.

If a male were to compliment a female, the immediate so-called Social Justice Warrior go-to line would be "you're a simp", which is extremely derogatory towards both parties. It implies that a female is only getting complimented because of their looks, and suggests that the average male is nothing more than an animalistic fool. I don't do this, for example. If someone's work is very good I'll tell them so but if it's not I'll give constructive feedback. There are, however, men, or males I've encountered that tend to prefer complimenting women over men, and without a doubt I can say that they were only complimenting the woman because they were female. Despite the seeming hypocrisy behind it, I’m personally not tolerant of this kind of behaviour, because it undermines actual work and focuses on something so unbelievably superficial and highly subjective like looks.

I’ve been preaching that people should get a life as soon as I was old enough to be able to say so. The average human is so oversensitive that any kind of insult, even if it was directed as a joke, would be taken a number of different unintended ways. Nowadays I feel apprehensive about making a joke about someone because if they do take it the wrong way I’m at their mercy. If people don’t buckle up and prepare for the salt, they’ll end up dying of salt overdose.

Comedians have been at the front of this argument; I remember watching an interview with a comedian (unfortunately don’t remember his name) that described how he was invited to do some stand-up comedy in a college in London. He was given an explicit set of rules of what he could or could not say, giving him virtually zero room for jokes that were legitimately funny. Of course at times there’s better ways to laugh than at people’s expense but when Ricky Gervais insulted Martin Scorsese, I laughed very hard, “Martin Scorsese said the Marvel movies are like theme parks, I agree, though I’m not sure what he’s doing hanging around theme parks, he’s not tall enough to go on all the rides,” compared to when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did the same thing a year prior, and were so afraid of pissing someone off that they just labelled him as “the shortest man with tiny glasses” or something. I watched the Golden Globes a few weeks back and those two were not funny. They felt like puppets, strung along by the marionette masters of Hollywood.

And to wrap up, it took your comment to make me realise why the two series were so different. The Japanese work ethos is far different from that of the Western one, and I’d like to think it shows. I don’t know specifically how it works but if anyone can tell me, like @Heavyarms55 because of your experience in Japan, I’d very appreciate it.

@MarioLover92 In response to @Tyranexx’ comment about playing the Super Mario 3D All-Stars games in chronological order, I did that at first, starting with 64, but as soon as I finished that and began Sunshine I abandoned Sunshine. I’ve likely made about five posts about why I don’t like Sunshine:

Sunshine Mario controls feel... meh. The FLUDD is overused and we lose some moves that would have fit right in, like a long jump, or a dive. The controls feel a bit laggy, either that or I control him too fast, because doing things like triple jumps are really hard because the timing’s out of whack. That and the awful frame rate means your response will be slow compared to what’s on screen.

The whole game is a mess and honestly I have zero clue why I ever feel motivated to try and advance further into it. Anybody have a problem with Ricco Harbour? Because the third Shine Sprite (the one that's caged) is an absolute nightmare that was so ridiculous that it put me off the whole game for two months, and only just finished it. The level design there is so tight, and doesn't suit the Switch controls at all. Furthermore when battling the paint plant creatures (forgot their real name), these small creatures keep popping up and disrupt my progress against it. There's no way to shoot the plant's mouth unless I enter the "shooter" mode which stops me from moving in a 360 degree pattern. I died due to this and here I am…

@Tyranexx Sooner or later I’ll attack Ōkami, though my microSD storage opportunities are limited to just a 128GB card. Shame there haven’t been many high profile games like it that had the same art direction, that translated from box art to game. Breath of the Wild has an almost Cézanne style of art, but reverts to cel-shaded graphics for the game itself.

Of course, I fond Ghirahim to be a more fascinating character. He’s extremely suave with a distinct (never said “good”) sense of fashion, and a clear aesthetic overall. He has a very vibrant, flamboyant personality, and an air about him that makes you feel uneasy very quickly. He appears calm and collected on the surface like a spider approaching his prey but he’s actually one of the more unhinged villains in the Zelda series, next to Zant.

Glad you enjoyed Death Stranding’s opening cinematic, it really sets the tone for the rest of the game. I love the music choice, which is a song from an artist, LOW ROAR (an American guy living in Iceland), whose songs make up half the game’s soundtrack. It’s a strong game artistically speaking, complemented by a superb original score and some impossibly brilliant musical choice. I bought SM3DAS on Day 1, knowing full well that its days on the eShop were limited. As much as I hate the business practices I like the games and had never played them in my life. It was very easy to break that particular rule.

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@Tyranexx Yeah... being a 9 to 5 job owner and then trying to find time to dedicate to gaming. It's a real chore sometimes. Now that I know that you hardly watch any TV, I can understand where you've found the time to race past me and finish the Breath of the Wild...

I simply like too many TV shows, and after work and the subsequent dinner, I'm just too fed up and tired to still be gaming, so I just slump down in my comfy chair, watch my programs, take a shower, go to bed, back to work, come home, rinse and repeat...

Points scored for beating me to asking you about the kidnapped Wii situation, by the way.

@ogo79 So are chop sticks.

@TheJGG Yeah, there is a distinct difference. I used the word clinical for lack of a better word at the time, but it's more like the Japanese seem to make certain things TOO clean or aesthetic, if that makes any kind of sense to you. And that is what makes me personally feel a disconnect with the GT games. With Forza, it's more... I don't know, gritty? Dirty? Pedal to the metal. Western. It just feels more like real life to me, with the Motorsports series.

Maybe I should compare it to another genre: RPG. In Asian RPGs, characters are often flashy, androgynous, sometimes almost godlike and semi-untouchable, and above all often times with a clean and almost royal look to them. I'd dare to wager a bet that no Japanese game developer or fantasy novel writer would have ever been able to come up with an Asian version of a character such as Conan the Barbarian, who's more like a human bulldozer, very rough around the edges, brutish, less than godly (save for being freakishly strong and awesomely good at chopping off limbs) and more of a people's man, if you will.

I have that same feeling with Forza: it feels down to Earth, even though it's still racing around in super cars that I'll never be able to afford, but it does feel like there's more of a "being there" feeling than the pristine, clean disconnect that I both see and feel with the GT games. Almost like they portray these cars like their RPG heroes: untouchable, clean, royal looking and flashy...

As for F1: don't take it too hard. It's not that I hate it or anything, it just can't hold my interest long enough for me to want to follow a race, much less an entire GP season. However: I used to like the cars and the old heroes, when I was young, so I know most of the 70s and 80s heroes. And I did see that movie they made about Hunt vs Lauda, and I really liked it. Hope that brings a bit of a smile to your face again...

Nice elaboration on our PC/insulted culture discussion, and I completely agree. That's all I'll say about it, though because it REALLY ruffles my feathers and it annoys me to a point where I get to a level that I want to smash these people's skulls. And not figuratively speaking...

So, instead of adding another text wall, I'll just stick to what I've now said about completely agreeing, and another nice addition that I'd like to echo, is everything that @Zuljaras has said.

On a side note: I've seen all the Austin Powers movies. I do agree to a point, but obviously, these are comedy and as such more of a satire than a true example of what cannot be said or done anymore. People will always like sex, pee and poo jokes, no matter how old or how politically correct. It's the infantile gene in all of us.

But for serious examples we don't have to look any further than the original secret agent, mr. 007. Nearly all of these movies feature scenes and behaviors that are completely going against everything that the current pantsy Nancy vocal minority cancel culture is against.

Okay, I'll stop here again. Let's talk games, before stuff REALLY goes off the rails...