Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

So we got Argentina vs Colombia for the Copa America final and Spain vs England for the Euro. I am rooting for Colombia (would love to see their winning streak continue) and England but I have a feeling Argentina and Spain will win.

I watched the Copa America semi final just now between Uruguay and Colombia and it was a great game. Very foul heavy but that's to be expected with two South American teams but over all enjoyable.

I really need some new blog ideas, but I also really need to go to bed

@Scabzilla dream blog

Thought I'd roam Nintendo Life for a little before I get sleepy. I nearly deleted a forum I made on accident, but I canceled the deletion before it went through, so it is still up! I was so relieved to see that it was still there.

I played more of Perfect Dark Zero earlier, specifically its multiplayer modes despite already completing the main story campaign. I never really paid a lot of attention to the multi, but I had so much fun with it despite dying constantly to bot players. I'll probably play a bit of Smash tomorrow.

I am thinking of changing my avatar on here soon, maybe to yet another Conker avatar, but I think I've only had this Banjo avatar on for maybe two weeks, so I'll maybe wait a little, though I already have an idea for what I'll have my avatar be in October. I don't know what it is, but I love changing profile pictures a ton! It is a good way to show people your interests and tastes in games here. As a random question, how frequently do you guys change your avatar pictures here?

This basically echoed all my sentiments. I have little to add except not wanting this to be left ignored. (Although halfway through writing this I realized I should’ve pinged you in the PS footie club, whoops).

Uhh… since it’s easier to bring this up in an off topic thread, I may as well ask before I forget. You’ve been keeping up with the Triple H era lately? I’m only now catching up and there’s a lot to unload in the past four months I’ve been off the product. (To be completely honest, I’m primarily waiting for the Netflix deal to be complete because I don’t wanna watch WWE in Shahid, which is the arab steaming servers we have here, to be honest it’s quite bad but I don’t wanna write a sidebar within a sidebar while I have this headache).

Cody and Punk been great. Nice to see Braun and Awesome Truth together, did not expect them to have so much tv time, Damien being champ is like a dream come true for me, judgement day are great, Dominik is good, cool to see Rey still got a lot left in the tank, Sheamus 15th anniversary was quite sweet, the Wyatt stuff is a little iffy but I cannot complain about my man Bo Dollas eating well, he completely deserves it after everything. Oh, and Joe Hendry’s debut was cool.
Huh, I said his name. You know what comes next…
Say his name, and he appears!
I believe in Joe Hendry. 🙌

@Yousef- I haven't really followed WWE in years. I just got tired of their same old crap. Basically let's elevate one Superstar and hold everyone else back. I was happy when Cena finally left only to see that they did the same crap with Roman. I heard with Vince gone and Trips in charge now it's gotten better but honestly with AEW and NJPW that's all the time for wrestling I have in my life and even then it's hard to keep up. I am about 2 months behind with AEW, thank God for DVR, and about a month behind on NJPW. Next week I am off from work so hopefully I can catch up on some.

@Tasuki that’s understandable. I’m following WWE and TNA and that’s enough for me but I still miss some so getting invested in other promotions is currently a no-go (although I would love to do it in a perfect world). I happen to like the talent more and can also somewhat verify that since Vince’s departure, the company has been on a perpetual state of course correction. So far so great. (Wrestling with Wregret and CVV also been helpful in catching up).

Though now feels like a good chance to elaborate on my earlier sidebar and why I had to take a dip from pro-wrestling. Shahid (literally translates to “Watch” in Arabic) has been phenomenal compiling all WWE stuff for us here but man oh man is it terrible for live viewing. Thing is, I’m not even interested in rewatching old stuff so that’s one selling point off the table (not to mention the service being incredibly pricey because it packages so much other stuff with it look footie, American football, other sports, some American dramas and a lot of Arab dramas).

If I wanna watch old stuff, I’m fine with YouTube clips and shoot interviews. I almost never find the urge to revisit an entire Raw or Smackdown episode (not to mention they’re pretty annoying to look up due to how crappy the search system is).

So I’m only left with live viewing and man, it’s bad. First off, it’s stuck at 480p unless you switch to a different monitor. Bad start. Secondly, it’s a giant lie. It says only English commentary is available but that’s not true, it’s the opposite. It’s actually only Arabic commentary and English commentary becomes available 24 hours later which is really frustrating for so many reasons because it’s dishonest or at least negligent, the waiting period is painful and you may as well just forget about it entirely, the Arabic commentary is inferior to Arabic commentary in other sports like footie and basketball (seriously, mounting against the announcers but they sound younger than high schoolers and they’re pretty amateurish. No quality assurance) and…. That’s about it. Not much more to say. Or my headache is catching up to me.

Netflix deal will hopefully amend some of my issues. I don’t necessarily think it’s a faultless service, in fact I quite dislike it, but it’ll be a lot more manageable. Since I’m on the road quite often due to my hospital job and all the traveling, I have to watch wrestling on my phone. My tv is not always an option.

Well I hope this is interesting cultural knowledge at least. Christian Cage is the reason I might start watching AEW. He’s hilarious.
I swear this is peak wrestling. Captain Charisma strikes once more.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ6mtnm_1Q4&pp=ygURQ2hyaXN5...

@Yousef- It's been even longer since I followed TNA lol. I want to say 2010 to 2012 is when I mostly watch it and then a bit a few years ago when AEW and TNA had a cross promotion going on when Kenny Omega was the belt collector. The only thing I keep up with on TNA is some of the talent, like The Hardys for example, and I only do that cause I heard that they left AEW but wasn't sure if it was true or not. I googled it and sure enough it was and they were back in TNA. Same thing with Santana. I think that's why I gravitate towards AEW they have alot of my favorite people from both WWE and TNA now. Jon Moxley (Dean Ambrose) Christian, Adam Copeland (Edge) Jay Lethal, Jeff Jarrett, Sanjay, Chris Daniel's. Don't get me wrong TNA and WWE still have a few I like but like I said before time.

That's understandable why your limited to what wrestling you can follow. That's one reason I stopped following TNA. Here in the US it was hard to find because of their network deals, it seemed they were always jumping networks so I couldn't find what day or time it was. Then for a short time they weren't on TV at all here!! I believe Wrestling with Wregret just covered a PPV of TNA where they had to set up everything on the PPV because they didn't have a tv deal at the time.

Speaking of WwW one of my favorite YouTube channels to watch! I need to watch his latest videos but I don't miss a video of his for long.

@Sunsy I did watch the linked video. Looks like there was a ton of work involved! Some high production values too, being an official event. I'm sure it was stressful to make something like that experience come together, but it looks like it paid off in spades! I would have enjoyed working something like that. I really liked the reporter lady, from her slight Jersey accent to her "I'm wearing this Poppy hat for you guys" bit at the beginning. XD

I sometimes wake up at night, and it's usually 50/50 whether I fall asleep again. It was worse when I was dealing with acute insomnia. I'll try to get around to posting a couple food-related pictures this weekend. The ramen restaurant was especially awesome since the only way to get any nearby is the packaged stuff; I randomly searched on the way home, and the closest ramen place is in a college town over an hour away. There is a local Japanese steakhouse, but that's mostly hibachi and sushi. My friend and I had an amazing trip and honestly didn't really want to return lol. Sadly, we both had to face reality sometime.

At this rate game pass'll end up costing $70 a month, at which point people'll just abandon it to buy a new game instead.

Can't be understated just how much damage game pass has done to video games though. There's less risk-taking, less desire to do well and it's ruined the way gamers treat games. It's like skipping a movie in theatres to watch it on a streaming service: it's convenient and cheap but it's just not the same and most importantly you don't own it.

@jedgamesguy It also breaks the feedback loop for the developers, because it no longer really matters how much players love your game compared to a competing game, you’re just one ingredient in the gamepass soup and “success” is detached from reality. I’m not privy to exactly how much analytics developers have access to in terms of play hours etc., but even if they have the same insights as on, say, Steam, they don’t have sales numbers and they don’t have equivalent discussion forums. Heck the amount of gamepass owners taking to steam for tech support confirms this.

Apart from that though it just devalues the art completely, same as Netflix devalues movies and series. It incentivises low effort filler to keep people on the service rather than engage people deeply in one game for a while. Not that this is universally true for every subscriber but it’s obviously what benefits Microsoft. And it’s also apparent in what their studios have pumped out since its inception, with the exception of a few studios that were already deep in existing projects when they got gobbled up by the maw of Microsoft.

@RygelXVIII Netflix also doesn't publicly reveal data for their watch hours and the like, meaning they make the decision at the end of the day whether their movie is a success or not. It's a predatory business model that turns games and films into pieces of 'content' to be stuffed into the machine to be consumed by audiences at a set interval.

Another thing I've hated is how movies and games go digital straight away, and in gaming's case go straight to game pass. No theatrical release, straight to Netflix. Microsoft in particular is guilty of not even releasing their best games physically and just dumping them on the store / game pass. Not only does it prop up game pass but it also makes people buy digital... and the concept of digital ownership is a whole other can of worms.

I mean... we can't even play Alan Wake II physically until October. That in itself is a travesty.

Hello, good afternoon or good night! What are you all up to? I'm just trying to check notifications and new responses to forums while listening to a banger video game EDM song. Thinking of changing my avatar picture again in a few more days. I am super indecisive over choosing an avatar.

@Pastellioli Neat, here I thought Nintendo was publishing them the whole time. I knew THQ did some of the GBA stuff, and found out about Conker's Bad Fur Day in Europe.

Yeah, a lot of stores won't carry AO-rated games. Indeed, I don't think the friend I knew who bought the game was offended by it. I think it was by that point we knew what to expect from a remake of Conker's Bad Fur Day. That's what I would expect, most mature games end up being more about the violent games like Call of Duty comes to mind, IIRC, Conker played like a Rare platformer with adult humor in it. Been a long time since I've played it, but going by what I remember.

Enjoy Pocket Tales when you try it. Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing older screenshots in a magazine, I think was called Conker 64: Twelve Tales before it went the mature route.

Good evening from where I live. I'm not up to much, just have on a livestream of someone playing a flight sim game, and just relaxing for the evening.

@Tyranexx Definitely, it was incredible in person. All that work they put into it, and the meetable Poppy being the same as Universal's parks on top of it, wasn't just some character costume that was put together. Really an incredible event they made for Trolls fans. Haha, I have the Poppy hair. My friend and I went on a Saturday, where they do the sparkle spa, included with the ticket is the "Poppy add-on," which includes face paint and a Troll hair. I didn't want the face paint, don't like anything touching my face, but they let me have the hair. I have something to wear on Halloween this year, lol.

Looking forward to seeing it. Where I live now, there isn't much Japanese food nearby. There use to be a Japanese steakhouse near where I live, but it closed up. I think there's a sushi place nearby, but never ate there. Realistically, the only restaurant I go to is the local pizzeria. Glad you both had an amazing trip.

@Sunsy Oh I'm sure they brought in a well-made Poppu costume too! It's insane how much work goes into costumes. I especially appreciate some cosplays I've seen since I know I'll never have the patience to make a decent costume on my own. It really does sound like an incredible Trolls event. The hair sounds great, and I'm with you on the face paint; that stuff can look cool, and I can tolerate that and effects makeup for a short period of time. But I definitely don't like it on long-term. I don't like most stuff lingering on my skin. Soaps and shampoos are fine though since those are meant to be washed off right away.

My hope is to get some photos uploaded this weekend, but we'll see. I like the nearby Japanese steakhouse, but it's somewhat pricey and in a busier part of town. So I don't go that way often. It's one of two places to get fresh sushi, and the best. The other is a local grocery store where it's freshly made daily; this is good too, they just have less options. I'll take most forms of pizza whenever too lol. Thanks! It was a great vacation. I think I've finally adjusted to my time zone again.

Good morning from Southeast Asia. On a plane about to see one of my best friends, haven’t seen him in five years. I imagine there’s gonna be lots of Smash Bros. involved.

@jedgamesguy Five years is such a long time! Hope you two have a good time. I love Smash a ton, probably one of my favorite game franchises of all time. Is there anyone you main or play the most on the game? I main Banjo and Kazooie a lot in Ultimate, though I used to main Corrin and a ton of Fire Emblem characters a ton before.

@Sunsy Conker is considered "mature" not because it has serious themes but because of its suggestive, crude, and offensive humor and somewhat gory (but sometimes over the top) violence, which is pretty much the entire selling point of Bad Fur Day and its remake and what the games are known for. However, there were at least two messages the game had that I do think were true and important underneath all the raunchiness the game had. It is pretty much your standard platformer from Rare, except more weird and full of "adult" content.

@Pastellioli yeah there’s a difference. A mature game that handles things like death, violence, war, etc isn’t gonna be the same as one that just has a lot profanity, dark humor, crude humor, suggestive themes, etc.

@Yousef- I can remember this cartoon reviewer on YouTube, and he has a secondary channel where he talks about video games. He did a video on Conker but was extremely disappointed with it, which is fine. However, I think why he was so disappointed because when he went into the game, he expected the game to be "mature" in dealing with serious themes and topics rather than being "mature" with its irreverent and inappropriate humor. I think the game is more enjoyable if you go in knowing that it is "mature" for having irreverent and crass material and not serious themes that will make you think very deeply, as well as also knowing that the crude humor (like the toilet humor that is excessive at the beginning of the game) was done intentionally not because the developers thought it was funny, but to be intentionally juvenile and offensive.