Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Pastellioli Sounds like a lot of people bought the idea of a good multiplayer mode when the Conker remake released. But in execution it definitely was lacking from hiring description. Glitchy, unbalanced when it comes to the bots, irritating mechanics....Yeah, definitely not my speed lol. Granted, this is a game that's almost 20 years old, so online play wasn't as refined then in my limited experience with playing with others. Which was mostly World of Warcraft back around then.

Glad you enjoyed Shredder's Revenge; it's a game I'd like to try for sure, though I'll follow your advice and definitely try to wrangle some help if/when I do get to the game.

@Tyranexx I can understand the multiplayer being unrefined and poor compared to modern shooter games since it was one of the earlier online shooter games, so the multiplayer sucks way more than games released nowadays.

The online multiplayer in Conker could work if they did remake it (which is absolutely never happening sadly) and fixed issues with it, like the glitches. I found the World War II inspired setting pretty interesting, and they did try to do stuff with it. The three-part campaign that it had was kind of was trying to tell a story, but not a really deep or memorable story. When my Conker obsession was at an all-time high, I read a game manual online for Bad Fur Day out of curiosity a few months ago, and it did seem like there was background/lore with the conflict between the squirrels and teddy bears. In fact, a lot of Rare’s N64 games had manuals containing background information on its characters and story that usually went unused in the game and acted more as fun facts and trivia. I think that some of the background info Bad Fur Day’s manual featured could have been really cool if they incorporated it in the game somehow or fleshed it out. If they tried to tell another story in the remake’s multiplayer with the same war setting and incorporating some of the lore with the squirrel and teddy bear conflict mentioned in the Bad Fur Day manual, it would be super interesting and could have the potential for a storyline.

There were other maps in the remake’s multiplayer that were set in the future in space instead of using a World War II setting. The space maps were set on a big ship and a terraformed planet, but they weren’t used in the campaign at all and had significantly less background on them. Those two space maps were the most interesting to me, since they could have a lot of potential with its setting if they fleshed it out and actually used them more in the multiplayer.

Alongside that, if the gameplay was more refined and the game objectives were less repetitive, then I would have liked it, but thanks to the age of the game, the online being nuked by the time I got to it, and the countless other online multiplayer games I’ve played in the past, I didn’t like Conker’s shooter multiplayer as much as I would have liked, and it was way less memorable than Bad Fur Day’s multiplayer. However, there was this class I would constantly play as where you wield a gigantic bazooka and I had a blast playing as that class, so at least I kind of found something fun out of it.

Yep, always play the game with other people. It’s less repetitive and way more fun that way! I think it’s how the game is intended to be played.

Got some new headphones today! Turned them on a few seconds ago and they feel great and better quality than the old one.

My old pair had worked well, but were cheap since I got them at Dollar Tree. While Dollar Tree has some items that are usually good, some of the stuff they have there are cheaper quality than others, and I have occasionally gotten items from there that are kind of bad, like this gel pen set that came with a defect pen that didn’t write ink, and the working pens sometimes take long to flow ink even when I put the caps back on. In fact, when I got the Dollar Tree headphones, the charging cord didn’t even work!

Anyway, the ear cup and ear cushion on the Dollar Tree headphones had broken when I took them off once to do something, I assume because I took them off too quickly or with too much force. I think it could have been a combination of force and the headphones being cheap. The ear cup shockingly still emitted sound and wasn’t entirely broken, but it would dangle and not go onto my ear. I had tried to fix it with some duct tape by sticking it into the part it broke off of, and it did work at first, but the ear cup would get loose and dangle and never stuck back on right, not to mention the duct tape was super annoying to take off and left ugly residue on the headphones once I got it off.

I had been using these official iPhone earphones instead since I couldn’t stand the headphones being broken, but I got super sick and tired of using them since they are partially busted, as one earbud does not emit sound at all and some of the wires are sticking out, but I kept them since they still work. To add, I have to put the volume on high just to hear the music or video I am listening to, but my brother has told me that he can hear the audio when I do that. Thank gosh I got new headphones today, so now I can’t inconvenience someone with my garbage earphones’ audio quality. I did want to check if the headphones were Xbox-compatible, but I’m going to assume they aren’t. I was going to get wired ones, but I use my phone way more than my Xbox.

Gonna go to bed now. Very early over here, but I finished a drawing! Yay!

Try postimg

Man I feel so proud for having bought Palworld at launch

The MLB thread is defunct, but seeing Shohei Ohtani become baseball's first 50/50 player is special.
He's a unicorn, a once-a-century player. I imagine LA Angel fans are remorseful for seeing so many years of his career amount to not much while he was with them.

@Magician that’s still unbelievable and really hard to process, but at the same time not unexpected from someone like him at all. Really happy to see my man shake mlb history.

@Pastellioli Makes sense that the multiplayer wouldn't have aged well, so I suppose one's modern lens does need adjusted accordingly. I'm guessing you don't think Conker will ever be remade since it didn't exactly sell well? One of the reasons I like classic game manuals so much is because they tend to give plenty of backstory that may not be explained in the game. Sometimes it's completely silly and nonsensical, but I still enjoy the writing. I do like the idea of Conker & co. in space.

Why does adding a bazooka to about anything make it more fun?

@Tyranexx That and Conker is a very niche game IP. The few games that they released for it always sold poorly, I don’t know how well the first game, Pocket Tales did sales wise, but Bad Fur Day sold poorly at release and while the remake did yield better sales, it didn’t break any significant sales milestones, so it also sold poorly too, and I do feel like that Microsoft wouldn’t want to revive a game IP that has been notorious for selling poorly and is only known by a few people.

But, I think that Phil Spencer did give an explanation a few years ago why Conker had not seen a modern revival, and I believe he said it was up to Rare if they wanted to make them (which is obviously never from how much they changed) and he explained that he and Microsoft do not force their game studios to make specific kinds of games or games that are in-demand. I believe that they also want to find a game studio or team that does have a genuine interest in making a modern entry rather than making it to fill a quota or obligation, and back then, Rare was still making a Bad Fur Day sequel alongside a prequel spin-off to the remake’s multiplayer, so it does seem like they were not really concerned with sales and had a genuine interest in making them. Maybe Microsoft does see potential in Conker but is waiting to be approached by a game studio capable of making a good modern entry and has actual interest in it.

I absolutely loved reading the Bad Fur Day manual, a lot of the writing and backstory they gave on a couple of the characters and the setting of the game were pretty fun, plus I do think there was a short story written in the manual. I do like that classic game manuals attempt to sort of world build with a lot of trivia and small bits of info on the world of the game and how something came to be. I can remember Banjo-Kazooie had a manual too that did something like that, but I didn’t read it in full and only know some of the info. It is sad that modern games don’t do this a lot anymore…

The bazooka was the weapon class I would always go to when playing the remake. Although there was only a single rocket you could shoot and you’d have to wait until it reloaded, it was super fun just aimlessly shooting around. I can remember shooting with the bazooka and it hit three enemy bots at the same time. I was pretty proud of myself when I did that since the bots were super annoying to deal with. I really can’t explain why playing as the bazooka class was fun. It was way more fun than the other weapon classes the game had to offer, though there was another weapon class called the Sneaker where you wield a katana and can camouflage and disguise yourself as an enemy to blend in, and I thought that concept was cool (especially in an old war setting) but it wasn’t on the same levels of fun to play as like the bazooka.

It’s a very beautiful morning here! Good morning everyone, how are you? What are you all up to?

I just woke up from bed and am going to start coloring a new drawing. I spent a lot of the day yesterday using pens to color in artworks I made and I shared them on here yesterday. Pretty proud of what I made, though in the posts I intentionally included a pretty bad looking piece of artwork that brings me so much laughter from how bad I executed the drawing. It was basically an attempt at a realistic drawing of a singer named Hatsune Miku and she looks very horrifying in it lol. I really wanted to draw everything realistic at one point, and I used to be kind of good at drawing objects but I always avoided drawing humans, hence why it looked bad, but I think I used the wrong reference image for her face.

While I was drawing yesterday, I was watching a couple of videos on YouTube, mostly on video games, and I watched one that went over art direction and character design in games and the impact it had on the commercial performance of a recently released (and also recently closed) video game called Concord, and wow, I didn’t realize how much bad art direction could impact a game super negatively and make no one want to play it and make the developers lose money. I posted a take somewhere on a forum where I said I personally didn’t care about the art style or look of a game and will play it anyway even if it looks like garbage, but I do think my opinion has changed a bit, looking at how bad, bland, and unappealing, character designs can affect the commercial performance of a game and be a detriment to it. The person who made the video said that he wasn’t an artist, but the tips he gave on making good character designs, the examples he gave, and his analysis on the character designs in Concord were really well done and had a ton of good points. Alongside that I just watched a few other random videos and an hour long video on that awful Skull Island: Rise of Kong game and it was so hilarious.

@Pastellioli Good point; Conker is fairly nice as far as game IPs go. At least compared to what else Microsoft has at its disposal. Rare has certainly changed a lot since the SNES and N64 days, so I can see them wanting to work on/be interested in different games and genres. I've not kept up with what Rare does get up to. At least it doesn't appear Microsoft forces game studios to churn out something they aren't passionate about. At least from what Phil Spencer says (I don't dislike the guy, not the biggest fan though).

Besides world building and story, game manuals also had some really great character illustrations and art. Not that we can't get that sort of thing online today, but it was turli something special to open a page and find a really neat art panel or character design. It was sort of like getting a free art book packed in.

Conker + a bazooka makes so much sense it hurts. XD

@Tyranexx Unlike most game studios, Rare prefers not to make sequels to their games. Usually, whenever they make a new game, it’s a one and done thing, maybe it gets one sequel or a related installment of some sort and then move on to a new, fantastic idea for a new game. Some people think it’s something they have only been doing in recent times, but Rare has been like that ever since the 90s-00s, in fact, for Banjo-Kazooie, I believe I read that they actually wanted to end it at Tooie, but some games of theirs (like Conker) were supposed to get sequels and continuations and possibly get turned into franchises but didn’t happen and stayed as one and done things.

Since modern Rare has different staff than old Rare, they would not want to use their old IPs for anything besides merchandise, and what modern Rare has been up to after Rare Replay is continuing work on Sea of Thieves and developing a new IP called Everwild, but no one knows what the heck is going on with that game; all everyone has been hearing is that development for Everwild has been unfortunately been going a bit poorly and was rebooted not too long ago. It is interesting to see how much the studio changed significantly and their approach to making sequels, and I am hoping that Everwild is good or decent, cuz despite being a huge Rare fan, for some reason their newer games don’t really interest me. I think why Sea of Thieves doesn’t interest me is because it’s an online game (which I don’t have the time for) and although you can play the game alone, I heard the game is really unfun when you don’t play with other people. Not that I’m against modern games at all or think their bad, I love modern games and old games equally, but for Rare, I don’t know, I’m not into their new games a ton for some strange reason.

It is nice that they are sticking to making more original stuff, and I would like to see some of their other IPs getting lent out more to other game studios that can make good games and have perfect ideas for modern entries, like how they let some of Rare’s old IPs like Killer Instinct and Perfect Dark get modern reboots by other studios. A cool thing is, I believe someone noted that the upcoming Perfect Dark reboot appeared to be taking some ideas from a cancelled two-part sequel Rare was making for the original N64 game, so it makes me happy to see that some old ideas from the original creators are being recycled and put to use for newer games. I am excited for the reboot, but I hope it isn’t one of those situations where a game is hyped up and then released with glitches, bugs, or technical issues that make the experience unfun, cuz I have heard of a lot of games releasing in bad states and not being fixed till later, but I don’t actually think Microsoft’s game studios would be the types to do that.

Even though Microsoft has messed up a lot of things in the Xbox division as of late and has a couple of things to improve on, I do like that they want to let their studios make games they actually feel like making, and not forcing them to make specific games.

In one of the game’s chapters you do use a bazooka, but when I played the original, I really messed up with using it when I got near the end of the level and kept dying lol. I kept forgetting which trigger to use to aim closer at the enemies, so the second I took the bazooka out, I shot too close to a wall and died, though it was more on me and not the game.

Pretty late, but just finished up a few pen sketches and adding in a few details. Listening to a couple new Vocaloid songs and they are really great!

@Pastellioli hey man! Mainly chiming in to say. I got really nothing to say atm. There’s probably something in these threads I forgot to reply to, and I could definitely read up on what I missed if I had more energy. xD
Sadly my current week is not giving me much leeway energy wise. I’ve at least been cooking a lot (Evan if that was a byproduct of extra free time…

@Yousef- Hello! Haven’t talked to you in a while. Hope that life is going well and that your day has been good. I also haven’t had a lot of say on NL, but that is fine!

I am hoping you are fine. Cooking is great, for me, I’ve been drawing a lot more in my free time. Feels great having more creativity and not getting art block a ton. I’ve made at least three art works last week and I am really obsessed with using pens in my art. Probably going to share some new art again tomorrow.

My The Sims 4 PS4 was running better on my PS5 machine and it gave me some new confident to getting more engaged with The Sims 4 despite of tons of DLC stuffs.
Not gonna lie i still don't like the idea of never ending DLC but i started to feel bored with my current The Sims 4.
I bought 6 DLC stuffs for my The Sims 4 since 5 years ago and the fact of more DLC for The Sims 4 added, it will drain my wallet if i want to get the DLC that i have interest about.
I will study more about the DLC stuffs and decide which i will get next.

It’s so late! Staying up late is fun but I need to go to bed. Anyway, I hope everyone had (or is having) a good day, hope to have lots of more fun chats later today!

@Pastellioli I’ve made chicken, omelettes, chocolate cake and also French toast! I plan to make a mutton burger too since I got some minced meat yesterday I’m currently dethawing!

This week I’ve got some really wholesome comments from my pops that are really helping me me keep going. He told me his first year on the job was his roughest, just like how I am right now haha. It’s really heartwarming and motivational, stuff like this helps going. I respond a bit too to positive feedback. XD

Good to talk to you again : )

@Yousef- Gosh that all sounds delicious, I haven’t actually heard of a mutton burger before. French toast and chocolate cake sound the best…I love sweet stuff but I need to actually cut down on sugar since I’ve been having it way too much. My sister is the baker in our family, she loves making desserts like cookies and brownies.

That’s very good to hear about your father being very supporting and loving. I am a very negative and don’t feel happy when things get rough for me, but similar to your father, my family (especially my brother) also tell me hopeful things to help me push through when things are hard but most of the time I don’t feel encouraged at all because I tend to focus a lot on how awful I feel and the situation at hand, because sometimes I feel like positive words do not change the situation; however, if I did actually follow what they said, I would feel better even in a bad situation and hopeful that things would get better. Even being self-deprecating to be funny can be a bit hurtful, and I do want to try to be less like that and more positive about myself.