N00BiSH

@Strawblaze Not entirely true, you can change the music if you have 100% completion. At least, that's what I heard.

Tragic way to go, and way too soon. My condolences to his loved ones, and God rest his soul.

So many folks here bending over backwards to try and defend what is by all accounts a pretty terrible use of technology. Much as I would love to engage this further, I'd rather be doing literally anything else. I will however say this:

If you constantly rely on GenAI/ML/LLMs for any part of the artistic process, you are imo, lazy, and uninspired. Any attempts to justify it just come off as a way of saying "I have very little thought for the eons of effort every creative has ever put into their work and find the process of making art inherently meaningless." A perception that is so shallow and uninformed it practically tells me how you see the world. Our irrepressible imaginations are one of the few strengths we have as a species and if you can't be bothered to act on that and have to rely on an algorithm to imagine things for you then you're the biggest waste of carbon and water ever put on the Earth. To reiterate, I don't inherently despise new forms of technology. I do appreciate when new tech creates new tools to help better with creative endeavors. But it's been like 3-4 years. This GenAI craze has been going on for that long and it hasn't made better art than what came before. If anything, art's only gotten way worse.

I very much hope that all this GenAI junk and it's many intrusive uses unceremoniously crashes hard into a 540ft ravine as it should, with the decency to never try and crawl out.

Not that it will, unless it somehow can generate climbing tools, which I sincerely doubt.

@PharoneTheGnome I'm not a luddite, make no mistake. I do appreciate and am open to when new technology can help with the creative process. But none of this new tech has done any of that. If anything it's done the opposite. It doesn't make things easier or convenient in any meaningful way, and frankly, calling ML/GenAI/LLMs a "tool" is just plain false. It's an undesired service that doesn't really help anyone. It's anti-art, pure and simple. It's telling that you say there are "good games that are made by HUMANS that use some AI tools" but haven't named a single one.

What a stupid hill to die on.

@PharoneTheGnome Tools are actually reliable and don't usually come at the cost of devaluing the work of artists or dismissing the general creative process.

@PharoneTheGnome I'm getting the impression that you don't really like artists very much

@PharoneTheGnome at least low quality shovelware from the olden days was still ultimately made by actual people. Actual artists. They still had to put in some level of effort rather than relying on LLMs to generate everything for them.

People who make the "It isn’t going away, live with it" retort seem to be oblivious to the fact that no one has to live with anything if they don't like it or find something more detrimental than it is beneficial. Quite frankly I find machine learning of any kind to be a punishment rather than a boon and I think the folks gassing it up are frankly pathetic and lazy.

this comment section is about as abysmal and doomeristic as i expected.

More folks need to be content with games just being content complete. We don't always need more more more.

@Scapetti BLASPHEMER

@AussieMcBucket This ain't about him. 'Sides, he's a Mario character, not a Wario character.

The definitive Wario experience. It has it all:

• A cartoonishly surreal aesthetic
• Combat that makes you feel like a pro wrestler
• The greatest pause music you'll ever hear in your life
• Charles Martinet's best Wario performance
• Bosses that look like sleep paralysis demons
• Greed, greed, greed for DAYS
• An inspirational story of tenacity and profit

If you're in love with God's Gift to man(aka Wario) as much as I am, then you owe it yourself to play this.

@PinderSchloss Agreed, they gotta put more effort into selling F-Zero's characters. They're just as important to the games as much as the core racing(or at least they should be).

@NolandC

...okay. whatever lets you sleep at night.

@NolandC ...it's been 8 months.

Why would you drag this back out now???

2's a lovely time but I'm more interested as to whether or not 3 will get a rerelease. That's where it's at for me.

@rio_j you mean like how they've been doing for the last couple of months

I refuse

@Yoshi3 Grinding is still collecting.

@Yoshi3 Well by technicality, yes it is. Grinding is just a more tedious collecting process. And again, you don't even need to buy 200. You just need to buy only one for it to qualify as completion. Unless you really want to see a number go up, you don't have to waste time "grinding" if you want to beat the game.

@Yoshi3 "dude you’re complaining about having to find things in a collectathon."

Said the pot to the kettle.

@8bitKirby they don't even squeak! What's the point of buying a rubber ducky if it doesn't squeak?

@Yoshi3 it's 880 moons, and you only need to buy the one moon from the shop for it to count towards completion. Anything else is just an extra.

I don't care how easily you can beat them, 100-coin challenges are still tedious on replays and the weakest part of Mario 64. And if you don't want to act like they're not pixel hunting, fine. Whatever. You know what DOES qualify as pixel hunting? Sunshine's blue coins. Those are tedious as hell. Having to find and spray the exact right spot 8 times on every map to get all 240 is an objective slog.

@Yoshi3 "Which actually stands as a challenge and requires actual gameplay?"

Neither, really. Both are time wastes in their own right(the former is glorified pixel hunting, the other is grinding), but the difference is that at least the latter isn't actually required to 100% the game.

@Yoshi3 "buying 200 stars or moons, without real, fun gameplay involved, is “engaging” and a “mechanic” … then ooohhh boy, that just tells me you know nothing about gaming design."

I didn't say that. I said you chose to buy more "COLLECTIBLES"(and yes that is the OBJECTIVELY CORRECT MONIKER no matter what's you say) instead of choosing to play the game to find them.

Maybe you just don't like collectathons.

@Yoshi3

"100 coins vs 1000 thingies? Really?"

Yes, really. 100 coins in 64 are a pain to collect. You pretty much need a guide to know which mission is going next you the coinage needed and it takes forever to scour the level beat every enemy just make sure you have 100 of the things IN ADDITION to making sure you're not in a spot where it's impossible to get the star since it spawns the moment you get the 100th coin. A painful slog. Compared to Odyssey, which goes like this:

• I see the moon
• I go over to the moon
• I grab the moon
• bing bang bop, donezo

Simple and efficient by contrast and the game does a good job of guiding you to most of the moons without it feeling like a hassle 95% of the time(with some exceptions).

"Also, green stars are far better than “buying” 200 moons or bananas from a store just to reach 100%."

If you like having to replay missions over and over just to make sure you're in the exact right area to find the star since the levels are so linear.

Do you really expect me to believe that just simply buying extra collectibles(which aren't technically even required) is somehow more of a slog than that? I'll save you the trouble of answering that: NO. IT ISN'T. If you're just wasting time buying collectibles then that just tells me you don't actually want to engage with the games and their mechanics(which wouldn't surprise me given how much you seem to dislike Nintendo's current design philosophy).

@Ryanm519 people will look past every critical point so long as they have shallow references to point at and clap for

@NintendoWife "I'm one of those who don't quite warm to open worlds and scattered bite-sized rewards. I'd rather have linear design / storytelling and epic missions back."

I find that I can accept either approach as long as they're designed and executed well enough, which I feel has been true of Nintendo's current output. Of course I understand if you prefer one over the other, and that's totally fine, so long as you're not as resentful about it as others are.

@NintendoWife hey if you liked them I won't fault you for that but I just disagree with the notion that Odyssey's collecting feels more of a chore than the previous 3D Marios. I had more fun getting 500 Moons than I did hunting for 100 coins in 64, or the nightmare that was getting 240 blue coins in Sunshine, or scouring the overly linear levels of Galaxy 2 for the hidden green star.

@Yoshi3 "Mario 64, Sunshine and Galaxy are the best because they ALWAYS felt fun during its run and never turned into a chore."

100 coin challenges. Blue coins. Green stars.

That is my response to that.

@timschel Except there is. Even with the various subtle tweaks and changes, there's still plenty of constants to keep his design consistent throughout iterations, including the eyes. And just because Nintendo gave Illumination's design their approval doesn't mean it's objectively good or without flaw.

@Spider-Kev said no one in particular

@Anti-Matter That's not really saying a lot because Miyamoto isn't writing or directing this. His role is mainly just to ensure everything is "on brand," which doesn't necessarily mean it'll be truly faithful to the source.

@PeterTomlan86 it's not just you. I sincerely doubt Illumination will do a good job of adaptating Galaxy's grandiose nature to film without sanding that away in favor of a more safe and shallow product.

@CaleBoi25 you might wanna scroll up a little bit to where I said I thought Jenny Kidd did a great job as Pauline

@Lizuka they're way too big and wide-eyed. Yoshi's eyes are supposed to be a little smaller and half-lidded.

Anyways yeah these Mario movie designs always somehow make the characters look a lot less appealing than they do in the games, especially when they try to recreate renders from the game art. Here we Mario soaring through space getting dangerously close to cracking a DreamWorks smirk - a far cry from the more friendly look of the render it's based on. For comparison:

@batmanbud2 Kidd's Pauline was great - better than I thought it'd be - but I felt some of her line reads were slightly off. A tad too overacted in a few areas, specifically the cutscenes.

@Dom_31 Hard agree. Nintendo's english voice department has always been mediocre(with some exceptions) but it's taken a serious nosedive in quality during the Switch era. Sometimes it's just bad direction(Zelda, Bananza) and other times it's just bad casting(Mario). Or both.

It's never happening.

@UnbreakableAlex Nintendo stories can be good and enjoyable even if they're not all serious and I've still managed to be moved by them regardless of whether or not they're emotionally complex. If you think simpler stories are bad because they don't give you "the feels" or whatever then that says more about you than it does me. Maybe reconsider how you engage with art a little more instead of forcing people to accept one solution, you philistine.

We are done here. You do you.

@UnbreakableAlex "Nintendo Stories are more childish, slapstick type."

Ah yes, how could I forget about the childish plot of Mother 3 and its slapstick laden themes of coping with tragedy and fighting back against corrupt industrialization.

Happy 20th, NL. You don't look a day over 42.

(I think I did that wrong.)

If you're looking for ideas then I would suggest adding a poll option for the forum threads.

@SirLink Let me be clear: if you didn't like it? that's honestly fine, I've no qualms with that. I don't expect to change your mind.

My main issue is people criticizing Bananza for not being 1:1 DKC and acting like smashing and punching things is too "oUt Of LiNe" for a character like Donkey Kong. It isn't! It's a style of play that fits perfectly with the character and his most defining traits(his MASSIVE strength and power).

If I wanted a nimble precision platformer in a 3D space, Mario is right there. I'd much rather a 3D Donkey Kong have him do things Mario can't do, focus on what makes the ape different from the plumber beyond just the aesthetics, which Bananza(imo anyway) does quite successfully and to see people immediately deriding it for doing that just really disappoints me. Like no one wants to be challenged by new styles of play.

@SirLink Well I've never seen a gorilla tie a tie and yet here we are. If you don't think destroying rock-hard terrain with his BARE HANDS isn't enough of an example for showing how powerful the ape is then frankly I don't think you've actually paid any attention to who Donkey Kong is or what he's done, which honestly wouldn't surprise me. I guess all he should do is jump on things according to you.

@SirLink "I mean, he’s not just any gorilla, he’s Donkey Kong, and he's supposed to do a lot more than just that."

What is he supposed to do then that isn't exercising his raw power, aka his most defining character trait?

@SirLink God forbid the 500lb hulking gorilla does the most natural thing one would expect a 500lb hulking gorilla to do instead of just being a Mario clone