Comments 1,234

Re: Best Metroid Games Of All Time

Kilroy

Updating my list from years ago to include Dread and Prime 4 (and AM2R for lulz).

From best to worst:

Super Metroid (SNES)
Metroid Dread (Switch 1)
Metroid Prime (GCN)
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GCN)
Metroid Fusion (GBA)
Metroid Prime Pinball (DS)
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii)
AM2R (PC hack)
Metroid II: Return of Samus (GB)
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (Switch 2)
Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)
Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
Metroid Prime: Hunters (DS)
Metroid (NES)
Metroid: Other M (Wii)
Metroid Prime: Federation Force (3DS)*

  • Still haven't played.

Re: Sonic Frontiers First 4 Figures Statue Sneak Peek, Pre-Orders Open Soon

Kilroy

@RareFan I don't think Sonic is as highly rated as you've seen. There were literal decades where 3D Sonics were just mediocre at best and Frontiers continued that trend. But Frontiers is also open world and released at a time when people still wanted open world games.

But anyone with two eyes and a some sense for what makes a game decent (people like this are honestly hard to come by, I work with the public, so it's easy to see how many don't pay attention to the simplest of things) could likely see all of the design flaws, bugs and lack of QoL in Frontiers. I bought it partially blind, but couldn't bring myself to get past the second island or so.

Such a middling experience that is not worth playing unless you want to understand the memes.

Re: Japanese Charts: Star Fox Proves There's Nothing Wrong With Its G-Diffuser In Week One

Kilroy

@HalBailman Yeah Assault's on-foot levels were not the best. I've definitely seen worse, but they didn't do the game any favors.

Zero, you can partially disable the motion controls (they would turn on only while you hold down the fire button) and the second screen gimmick can be completely mitigated by simply pressing Select to change views, so you would never have to look down at the gamepad for anything if you don't want to. After that, with the exception of still having some motion controls because you have to fire your lasers, you can further mitigate the motion by keeping the gamepad still on your lap or somewhere else comfortable. I managed to do it and beat the campaign while barely using it.

So, I whole-heartedly disagree on your assessment on Zero's gimmicks ruining itself. Nintendo could have ported it to Switch 1 while listening to fans by offering the option to completely disable motion controls and putting the second screen gimmick as a "picture in picture" option (or just disable that too). At that point, it would literally be like any other Star Fox game.

Re: Japanese Charts: Star Fox Proves There's Nothing Wrong With Its G-Diffuser In Week One

Kilroy

@Itsashame 64 was also sold on the Wii Virtual Console (and the Wii sold like hotcakes) as well as the 3DS remaster being available since 2011. You mention Switch 2 sales, but not Switch 1, where the N64 app is also available.

I don't know if it was never really popular, but looking at some partial sales numbers for the older games, it seemed to do okay vs other regions. The US will naturally have more sales since there are significantly more people here with a higher install base, so just looking at pure numbers isn't going to get the full story.

I will say that some of the most popular shmups in the genre are from Japan and some of them are even Japan exclusive (or in some cases, were exclusive until the rest of the world petitioned for them). On the other hand, shmups are still niche like they've always been and if you take away the story, the top of the line technical / graphical performances and meme dialogue, you're left with gameplay that I think most gamers aren't really looking for. This is very evident when you see people who aren't into these games complain that it only takes 45 minutes to beat the game and a couple hours to see everything, thus don't understand how it could possibly be $60.

Re: PSA: New Knockout Tour Rallies Are Now Available In Mario Kart World

Kilroy

@aperl19 Depends if you're paying $50 for the digital bundle or $80 for physical and also if you don't mind "losing" traditional 3 lap races (still there, but not the focus). As someone who wanted a change in fundamental designs, World is my favorite MK in the series, Double Dash used to be #1.

At $50, it's a steal. At $80, if you think you're going to get 100+ hours out of it, it's still a steal. For me, I know for a fact I'll be over 100 hours and I'm really enjoying the rarity of seeing repeat tracks when playing random courses.

Re: Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Star Fox On Switch 2?

Kilroy

9/10 for me. Haven't touched the multiplayer yet, but the added QoL in the campaign was both much needed and a nice surprise. The challenges (even if they effectively are just achievements renamed) are also fun to go through. I haven't gone through the campaign using a mouse yet, but I want to do that as well. SF64 was my childhood that I'm now reliving almost 30 years later (it was great on 3DS, but didn't hit the same way it is now).

Would have been nice if they added some new levels like maybe cut content or vehicles from past games, like the Star Fox 2 / Zero walkers or the SNES and black Arwings as quick (as far as dev time goes) gameplay changing bonuses. This would have upped it to a 10/10.

Re: Review: Star Fox (Switch 2) - Stays On The Rails, But Absolutely Hits The Target

Kilroy

@Aswannsong I'm 41, played so much SF64 as a kid I could consistently score over 2k easily. I was also hoping we'd get bonus content like new levels or vehicles (the SNES Arwing and black Arwing from Zero would have been easy additions), but looking at some of the Expert challenges as I'm doing the Normal ones to unlock them, some of them do actually sound challenging.

Also, now that I've been able to play through all the levels multiple times, I can day without question the gameplay has added QoL that make it more enjoyable and ever so slightly more challenging, probably due to the consistent FPS the game now has.

The hitboxes are also more realistic and Star Fox members absolutely hurt Star Wolf more consistently now, so it's definitely NOT a 1:1 gameplay remake. But this is a good thing, imo, a very good thing that I'm greatly enjoying.

Re: Review: Star Fox (Switch 2) - Stays On The Rails, But Absolutely Hits The Target

Kilroy

@VinzClortho1981 Not exactly 1:1. I've played the original 500 times too, but enemy placements, behaviors, level scripts, etc. are all the same, while the hit detection in this feels more realistic and the speed of everything feels just a hair faster. Maybe because of the high and consistent frame rate? The Blue Marine barrel rolls differently (for the better imo), barrel rolling in general feels like it gives even more of a turn boost than it used to.

It feels like a legit definitive version with QoL to fix the hardware limitations of the N64.

Re: Review: Star Fox (Switch 2) - Stays On The Rails, But Absolutely Hits The Target

Kilroy

@KayFiOS Never played Bubsy. To each their own, I guess. I tried Starlink on Switch intending to play as the Star Fox team (or maybe just Fox? don't remember), but the weird control scheme that couldn't be altered was a deal breaker for me very early because my brain couldn't wrap itself around controls that are not in many vehicle shooters.

So on one hand I hear you, but since I can play Zero while nearly completely eliminating motion issues if I want to (even when it would make the game harder and clunkier to control, not to mention limits my ability to score chase), I'll continue to defend it. Can't eliminate twin stick vehicle control issues by holding still.

Re: Review: Star Fox (Switch 2) - Stays On The Rails, But Absolutely Hits The Target

Kilroy

@KayFiOS Yes, I have 30+ hours in the game, lol. There is a setting in the options to turn motion controls partially off (only use while firing your laser) which helps tremendously if you don't want that. For the sections where it's still required, which isn't much after you change this setting, you only need to move the gamepad by 10-20 degrees to aim and even then, doing this makes the game easier, not harder. You can rest the gamepad on your lap to pretty much keep it entirely still. You can press Select to change viewpoints so you don't have to move your head to look at a second screen.

Seriously, I should be asking if YOU'VE played Zero and actually attempted to play it how you want to instead of how Nintendo wants you to vs parroting the usual canned internet hate speech that no one with even the tiniest amount of patience and thought would ever say.

Lastly, gameplay wasn't even the point of my statement, ha ha. The author mentioned new plot, so I mentioned new plot. Period.

Re: Review: Star Fox (Switch 2) - Stays On The Rails, But Absolutely Hits The Target

Kilroy

"but I've been craving some new Star Fox plot for over a decade now, and this could have been a prime spot for a little taster."

Have you played Zero? That was literally a decade ago (April 2016) and while you can argue the same generic plot idea remains the same (Pepper recruits Star Fox, go from Corneria to Venom, Lylat Wars), nearly all the missions are distinctly different from 64 with not just new things to blow up and protect (subtly adding to lore if Zero was still canon), but whole new areas too along with more character development.

Despite the SNES games being retconned, the same general idea behind the settings remained the same in the 64 > Adventures > Assault timeline (Fortuna, for example), so stands to reason the new ideas in Zero would also remain the same if they were brought back (like Area 3's halo-shaped colony).

Re: Star Fox's Switch 2 Launch Day Update Has Arrived, Here Are The Full Patch Notes

Kilroy

Fixed an issue on Meteo where hitting a Flip Bot with a charged shot would incorrectly add to the bonus hit count from the explosion.

Okay, this part doesn't make any sense to me. In the demo, this has already been patched, tmk, because every time I try to do this, no Hit+1's are scored. On N64 and I'm pretty sure 3DS as well, this is doable. As a score chaser, I hate that they patched this.

Re: Star Fox's Switch 2 Launch Day Update Has Arrived, Here Are The Full Patch Notes

Kilroy

@Nep-Nep-Freak So you're actually serious? The year is 2026, it's damn near impossible to guarantee everything being on the cart/disc pre-release. It's actually pretty common now for publishers to announce a release date and still work on the game in anticipation that whatever they're finishing up will be ready by day one.

You're cutting off your nose to spite your face if you are really not buying this because Easy difficulty wasn't completed before the shipped version was put on the cart.

Re: Preview: Star Fox (2026) - Just A Remake, But What A Remake

Kilroy

@AlexOlney "Or it would, if it didn’t lack one key feature. In Star Fox, and indeed Star Fox 64 — which I only learnt on the day — you can disable the lock-on of your charge shot by holding both 'ZL' and 'ZR' together (or 'Z' and 'R' on the N64). Doesn’t sound very useful, but what it does do is provide you with more bonus hits if you manage to land this free-aim charged shot.

However, this is not possible when using mouse controls (from my testing), at least in the co-op mode that I played."

I did some testing in the training mode in the demo and discovered you can still disable lock-on by pressing both L and ZL (or R and ZR), depending on which buttons control tilting. Obviously, the demo doesn't have co-op, so I can't test that, but at least it works with all single player control schemes.

Re: Opinion: Mario Kart World Deserves Its Flowers, So Let's Stop Comparing It To MK8 Deluxe

Kilroy

MK8D felt like the pinnacle of Mario Kart's tried-and-true system of driving around a track drift boosting and abusing items. Very good designs, but also very restrictive and basic, so if you've never played kart racers that thought outside the box like Crash Team Racing, you might really enjoy MK8D. When the CTR remaster came out, I completely changed my opinion of MK8 to something mediocre.

After a couple hundred hours in CTR:NF and a handful with a few other less popular kart racers, it's easy to see where MKW's inspiration came from (CTR) and it's quickly become my favorite Mario Kart since Wii (before they patched it to nerf fire-hopping and snaking).

The open world part felt kind of tacked on at first, but it's really grown on me. It's a mode I can jump into when I don't feel like thinking and just drive around relaxing for a bit while slowly chipping away at objectives.

I'm nowhere near the best World player, but give me all the skill-based driving tech, I'm tired of Mario Kart's old item meta that dominates 8 and previous titles. (World still has an item meta, but it's been rebalanced so it's harder to jump from last to first).

Re: Mina The Hollower Sold 300,000 Copies In Its First Three Days

Kilroy

@sdelfin Yep. A good example in a different genre of how to make something hard but fair is Sektori. It's a twin stick shooter heavily inspired by Geometry Wars 2. Even seasoned genre players (or at least myself lol) find it pretty hard, but pretty much nothing on the default difficulty is made unfairly. I've barely played the harder modes, but still haven't come across anything that made me think "this is not my fault".

I've said multiple times to myself playing Mina that I died or got hurt because of game design.

Re: Mina The Hollower Sold 300,000 Copies In Its First Three Days

Kilroy

Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm tired of soulslikes. I turned on several of the modifiers that make the game actually fair for casual players and now I'm enjoying it. If I had to play it with default settings, I'd feel like I wasted $20 backing the game on KS. I know Bloodborne was a heavy inspiration and that's great, Bloodborne is a damn near perfect game even when I randomly go back to it nowadays, but I feel like they took all of what made BB great, looked at the rest of the soulslike genre and said "we're changing these BB mechanics and making them harder, the rest of the genre is right".

Re: Round Up: The First Previews Are In For Star Fox On Switch 2

Kilroy

TechRadar: "With its release, almost half of the series’ nine mainline games will be some version of Star Fox 64,"

3. 3 games will be some version of Star Fox 64 when this comes out. OG on N64, 3DS remaster and this. Zero doesn't count since it's a reboot. Reviewers need to stop being sensationalists. If they really want to be like this, Star Fox 64 was on the SNES before it was called Star Fox 64, in which case, they should be saying 5 of the 9 games.

Moving on...
I am excited for this release. Played the hell out of the N64 title to try to master every level and would've done the same on 3DS if the 3DS didn't give me cramps sometimes. Not looking forward to looking at the characters who look like a mix of the SNES animatronic originals and AI slop (I will say everyone on Star Wolf look great).

Re: Mario Kart World Races Onto Nintendo Music Today, App Web Browser Support Added

Kilroy

@Yoshi3 Zelda's stories were never that good to begin with. Aside from what you see in the prologue and the ending, almost every Zelda has a forgetable story. Not to mention, most of them regurgitate "Ganon gets resurrected, Link and/or Zelda need to power scale to beat him". If repeating that story is interesting to you, then more power to you, but that's not why I play that series. BotW and TotK also definitely have tailor-made characters (champions/the descendants of the champions) along with fully-constructed side stories for them. I honestly can't fathom how you think the two games DON'T have these types of characters. But I digress.

I liked Prime 4 in a vacuum. It was indeed an awful Metroid game, but it was not a bad game strictly looking at its merits without an IP and when Retro (assuming it is Retro) makes Prime 5, they can easily take what did work for 4 and expand it in 5. Won't bring the debate about World back up because I'll be repeating myself, basically.

Re: Mario Kart World Races Onto Nintendo Music Today, App Web Browser Support Added

Kilroy

@Yoshi3 What are the many, many faults, in your opinion? The 202 different routes you can take? How a large chunk (possibly a majority) of the tracks can be driven from different directions? Knockout Tours? Wall-riding at will? Grinding? Finding shortcuts in the most unorthodox locations which has vastly opened up design principles for each track? Bringing Missions back to the series? Adding a casual open world mode? Balancing the ratio between skill, items and pure driving knowledge?

Seriously, Nintendo realizing Crash Team Racing is part of their competition was the best decision they could have made during development of World.

Re: Gallery: Here's A Look At Star Fox On Switch 2

Kilroy

@datamonkey What? A game being on-rails is 100% a design choice and since Star Fox always has been* a series about score chasing, on-rails perfectly fits the design. That's the whole idea being arcade-style games; to be replayed again and again until mastered. Has absolutely nothing to do with hardware limitations.

Just in case you're unaware, the GameCube and Wii U Star Fox games also had on-rails levels.

  • Except Adventures which was designed to be a once and done adventure game, not a score chasing arcade game. Considering the reception for Adventures vs the rest of the series (with longtime SF fans who didn't want a Zelda game), including Zero, it's no wonder they keep going back to on-rails arcade design.

Re: Gallery: Here's A Look At Star Fox On Switch 2

Kilroy

The game looks absolutely amazing, but I am not on board with these character designs. Man, it's almost like they employed AI to do them, especially Falco. At least Pigma looks ugly af, which is appropriate for him, but he might be the only one I'm okay with.

Re: PowerWash Simulator 2's Next DLC Will Let You Clean Up A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Kilroy

@Paraka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Rogue_Squadron

When I said it got a Steam release in 2015, I was specifically talking about the remaster. It released for Windows back in '98 around the same time it released on N64. But looking at the wiki again right now, I realize I missed something important, lol. The publisher for Windows (all regions) and N64 (US) was LucasArts. The publisher for N64 (EU) was Nintendo.

I live in the US, so had no reason to ever know this unless I looked it up like I just did. Now I want to know why LucasArts didn't pub it in EU.

Side note: According to the wikis for Rogue Leader and Rebel Strike, LucasArts was the only publisher in any region. Interesting.

Re: PowerWash Simulator 2's Next DLC Will Let You Clean Up A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Kilroy

@Paraka @AussieMcBucket Disney has greenlit a bunch of remasters from that era. Jedi Knight, Racer, Jedi Power Battles, Dark Forces, probably others that I'm not thinking of. Even Rogue Squadron! It's available on Steam (released in 2015), along with all the "X-Wing" series of games.

You say Nintendo has the rights to the Rogue Squadron namesake, but LucasArts published it. LA is now defunct (dissolved into LucasFilm), but they are owned by Disney. Do you have source proving Nintendo owns the rights? Highly doubt they would allow a game to be published on a platform they don't control and without having any credit given to them on said platform (that I can find).