NotTelevision

Eh, it was fine. Gameplay felt repetitive.

Oh heck yeah. The theming and enemies really set a mood. The Hexen 64 opening screen with “Greetings, mortal” really brings me back. I used to just turn it on to watch the demo of the character punch those brown demons with spiked iron fist. So metal.

The Adventures of Elliot from Accounting: The Spreadsheet of Time. A clueless department manager introduces a new cloud based business solution and sends all client data to the twilight realm, Chicagolandia. Team up with Seth and Andy from System Operations and journey to the five server farms before the file gems get devoured by the time traveling encryption beasts.

@Kraven Yeah for real. The caveats would be lower resolution than other consoles, big file size that wouldn’t be able to fit on a cart (possibly game key card or digital only like Divinity 2?), and only being able to play the game for max 90 minutes on full charge (resource hungry piece of software). But it is definitely possible to get it on the system.

Going on no evidence here, but I predict a Baldur’s Gate 3 port announcement.

@nessisonett But why? When the rest of the games industry looks to Hollywood and boring as hell anime, this guy bangs to a beat of his own drum. It’s not my thing but I’m for it.

Super Mario Kart is still my favorite. Sure the later games got bigger and more ambitious, but less is more in this case. The specialness of the series became lost when Nintendo decided that every game console had to include a mandatory Mario Kart game.

After holding it and playing some Mario Kart World, I’ve decided that waiting a year or so to get one is the best decision. It’s definitely a power boost, but at this point I’m playing all the more demanding high budget games on the PS5 and less memory intensive games (currently Citizen Sleeper 2) on the Switch OG. All the indies are still going to get Switch 1 releases, which means the only software that I won’t have access to are Switch 2 only releases, which there will probably be 4-5 worth picking up by this time next year. So it’s cool, but I can’t justify spending the money right now on this console. If I do cave it means that I’ve lost the battle to FOMO and that’s just sad lol.

I want to live in a world where sd cards are scalped. Give it to me, baby. I wanna be top of the heap, eating mine on a Ritz.

All Doug said is that there is a cheaper option available for consumers who can’t afford the new console. What’s the controversy?

I don’t really understand the big issue surrounding Switch 2 pricing. 450 isn’t that much for consoles nowadays and games aren’t that much more expensive than before.

Considering how much everything cost now, I’m not really surprised by the price on this fancy new model.

A lot of it doesn’t seem to be “Nintendo being Nintendo”, but more like late stage Capitalism making goods more expensive and stockholders expecting infinite profits quarter to quarter. It’s been bad for a while but it’s really reached breaking point now and video games aren’t taking priority over food, transportation, and housing for the average person already stretched beyond their means.

Alright I’m in on Switch 2 now.

A genius product. Did you really beat every Dragon Quest game? Did you actually collect every moon in Mario Odyssey? Yes, yes “I” did 😉

I am Soviet man smoking in favorite American shirt. Hope you enjoy game. Do svidaniya. See you in red square next time.

@rvcolem1 ohh hot diggity. How’s Nine Sols? Been wanting to play that

@rvcolem1 Yeah for real. The good times be so happy. Bad times so sad. Why be sad sad when we can be happy glad? Oh Danny boy don’t use the belt. The belt be making the mannequins angry.

Enjoy your weekend and makes Danny happy.

I like the look but this was unfortunately a pretty forgettable experience for me. When I heard about a game where you play as a stray cat I was thinking you’d have to find food from garbage cans or strangers, take shelter during rainstorms and cold nights, befriend other gangs of roaming animals, make challenging acrobatic movements, etc… you know like the things stray cats do. Instead it’s just a linear puzzle platformer where I didn’t feel much towards any particular element because there is little to no friction between the character and the world it inhabits. Just trial and error chase sequences that really wore out their welcome.

I was unimpressed by it and I really wanted to like it.

Why is he attacking gang members in a junk yard? Is Michael Myers fighting crime alone or is he part of the Justice League now in the DC extended universe?

@nessisonnett Yeah that makes sense. I suppose Charli Xcx also has some friends in high places to thank for her early success as well. The trick is breaking through that initial barrier.

You guys have always been really brutal to your own though, thinking back to the days when the rock journalists at NME, essentially held the key to your success or failure based on one crappy album review. I suppose it might be a little more egalitarian now.

Your radio stations are better than our stateside as well, favoring fresh and upcoming artist and not the same old pop diva’s new single. Barring Adele of course, but that voice, that voice… how could you not?

@nessisonett Yeah I suppose y’all have always fancied a little bit of Victorian dress up with your pop. Frilly puffy shirts should probably be sported with a bit more irrelevance than Dinner Party currently displayed at their shows. It’s helps to understand that the reason why their influences like Siouxsie & the Banshees are remembered so fondly is they were great musicians with great albums before being absorbed into a culture focusing more on magazine features and music videos.

There has to be an active subversive element to your approach in the music industry, otherwise you quickly become another flashy thing to consume in the endless parade of images constantly shuffling across our screens, in the name of “engagement” and product placement.

Unfortunately for Dinner Party I have a hard time listening to their music without visualizing the accompanying 10 second TicTok clip.

But in the grand scheme of things I suppose it’s alright and perhaps this is one of the only routes to make it as a breakout artist nowadays.

@nessisonett I’m predisposed to not fully embrace something when it’s just too much fun lol. That’s why this and Last Dinner Party I can only listen to in short doses. I require more gravel in my sugary breakfast cereal or it just starts feeling wrong, like it’s going to be used in a Pepsi Ad later.

It’s fine on PlayStation but the movement in the game just doesn’t feel right and the attempts at whimsy and humor are lost on me. It’s an interesting aesthetic plastered over a pretty boring game.

I really enjoyed Alien Isolation at the time, but the thought of replaying it doesn’t appeal much to me. Hiding in lockers, waiting a couple of minutes, running away , rinse repeat…seems boring and won’t hold up on repeated playthroughs. Same problem with Outlast.

Though the art direction and sound design is fantastic. A let’s play may be in order.

@Captain_Toad So you are not buying a product for “unmoral things” you have no evidence was even committed by this consulting group in this game. This is just ridiculous and I always hope people like you can step away from the astroturfed “anti-woke” discourse being used by grifters like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro for revenue and attention. These people are profiting from you my dear and spinning wild narratives in your
head about sjws controlling the world. It’s all a lie.

I’m throwing down my life savings, car, left kidney, and two kids on Silksong being in this direct. Going to be rich baby!

This is a great game. Very thoughtfully designed world with depth that requires patience but gives you so much back in return. It’s a much more rewarding experience than something like Skyrim that gives you everything you need in several hours by simply running around the map pressing the attack button.

@Ooyah We wore our sunglasses at night.

I mean we don’t even know what this “Switch 2” will be. Many people think it will be a Switch with a better CPU,GPU, RAM but that hasn’t been Nintendo’s strategy for selling consoles since Wii. They find the “same but with better graphics” approach boring and not the formula for success. So I think it is best to reserve opinions until we see the thing…

The most recent comments, describe the arc this game took in the public discourse perfectly. This guy was amusing at first but I grew to hate this mini game and how he repeated the same 5 lines of dialogue. Same with those backpacking koroks.

Alana has some great recommendations. That film Aftersun is really fantastic. One of the best films I’ve seen these last several years with a really amazing final scene. Reminds you of the possibility for cinema to connect to our collective memories and experiences.

But I’ve been too busy this year with work and school to do much reading. I did finish a book on Krautrock which encouraged me to explore the discographies of lots of great bands from the 60s-80s. Great music to listen to while going on chilly morning jogs.

Definitely interested. Love the aesthetic

The archers in Anor Londo- Dark Souls 1
Shrine of Amana- Dark Souls 2

Those come to mind first but recently… those labyrinths in the sky- Tears of the Kingdom . I must of spent 30 minutes flying around aimlessly trying to find those stupid terminals. A real not fun part of the game.

@SalvorHardin Salty, eh? I actually agree that BG 3’s inventory is too overwhelming. The prospect of opening the menu and organizing everything does fill me with a bit of dread. But that’s a common issue with RPGs, it just feels slightly worse in this one since the items are so small and they all have novel effects which means lots of reading. It certainly affects pacing. But ToTK has inventory issues as well.

Outside of that it doesn’t feel like it is that overwhelming though. The maps are large but they aren’t full of repetitive tasks and it always feels like you are experiencing something different. The characters and world feel complex but not unnecessarily so.

Zelda on the other hand has so much repetitive content in the world sandbox, that feels great to interact with at first but then gets boring 50 hours later. The weather and physics are so groundbreaking in the game, but it doesn’t amount to much more than just a novelty after a while. BotW was all about the world of Hyrule returning to nature, so Link having to traverse the ruined world, survive, and get stronger made sense. I’m not sure what all the systems amount to in Tears other than the developers thinking they would be cool. I understand how the building mechanics work into the concept of Hyrule repairing itself, but what about flying cars and driving tanks around destroying bokoblins in a vast dark wasteland under Hyrule?

Tears is still a great game though and I had fun with it.

Both Tears of the Kingdom and Balder’s Gate 3 are great achievements, but Balder’s Gate left more of an impact on me. Tears has so many systems that the game overwhelms, but not always positively. It feels like a bit like eating an eight course meal at a fusion restaurant. It impresses you with the effort the chefs went through but you end up feeling like the experience lacked nutrients.

Balder’s Gate impresses both in scale and execution.

Hard to believe it’s actually finally in the works. The pressure this young director has to make this a good adaptation is immense. Hope the fans don’t give this poor guy and the team a heart attack before they wrap production.

I don’t care as much about video game movies as I once did. Good or bad, the games are where this franchise lives and thrives. Hope it’s good enough to be a standalone film, because there aren’t so many great big budget films out there.

To each their own, but this sounds really bad to me… the melody, lyrics, music video are all just way too corny. It also doesn’t seem to be much in the spirit of the series.

A pretty good direct with some interesting games, but the biggest surprise is that Nintendo Museum in Kyoto. I was just in Kyoto last month and passed by the site of Nintendo’s HQ, looking a bit like a law office in a very unassuming area of town. For a company with such a storied history, you’d think there would be some way to experience that while in Japan. A museum is long overdo.

Edit: Let’s just hope it’s not like the Ghibli Museum that requires you to sign up on a waiting list months in advance just for general admission.

Baldur Gate 3 and Sea of Stars this weekend… when I have time. I think I must be at least halfway through Sea of Stars and I’m still enjoying it. Great podcast game as its very breezy overall and while it requires some strategy, it’s not really challenging.

Baldur’s Gate is well… a lot but it’s extremely absorbing. I’ll be thinking I’ll play for a bit then go about my business but it totally sucks you into this world. I think it must be the acting and the dialogue being so good. You want to keep walking around interacting with everything and every character. Also sorry residents of Emerald Grove, I led those goblins right to your camp 😮‍💨

@awaltzforvenus Yeah it definitely feels nostalgic, even though it’s a new game. With all the retro influenced games out nowadays you’d anticipate that feeling more often, but not really. I keep expecting to look down and see a SNES pad in my hands.

This game really captures a “kids going on an adventure in an exotic world” vibe well. The colors are so lush and the music is tuned just right for the visuals. The characters aren’t especially deep but they aren’t annoying me like many Final Fantasy casts have and the dialogue interludes are never too long and boring.

I’m not sure if it should be the indie game of the year because it’s hardly groundbreaking, but it’s definitely about as well made as one of these “power of friendship JRPGs” come.

@Takoda After playing both I think BOTW has about 65 hours of worthwhile content, while TOTK has about 80. Most of those 15 additional hours are spent working through content in the overworld, since it is a bit more dense.

I think I gaslit myself initially into thinking that the content in the depths was worthwhile until coming to the conclusion that it was just tedious and would’ve been better if a 1/3 of the size. It’s the opposite problem to Elden Ring where the overworld become samey while the underworld got more interesting and mysterious.

Tears is admirable for being a really experimental game that is a buffet of fascinating systems. But it’s also a bit of a mess in retrospect.

Hard pass. Games weren’t even fun in the 90s.

Never had to knock on wood, but I know someone who has…

In the words of Carl Denham: “It wasn’t that old guy’s junk. It was Warioware that killed the beast.”

That Sonic game is going to be on sale for 20 bucks a couple of months after release. The Mario game will never be on sale. It’s a no-brainer.

This is one of the cringiest trailers I’ve seen for a game. These “hip” shutterstock models look like they are having a seizure with the joycons and don’t get me started with horse mask guy.

Cool. I had no idea that this was coming. But why not just make Rain World 2, since the base game is so old now?

I have really fond memories of the first Katamari but I never got around to the sequels. Putting this one on the old wishlist.

It’s certainly the most modern cinematic AAA game (Naughty Dog or Sony Santa Monica) intro Nintendo has ever done. It’s alright because it’s not too long and establishes the premise of the game.

@PinderSchloss I enjoyed the movie for the most part, but if I were a critic I’d need to be honest and state it’s a pretty underwhelming film. Jack Black and the visuals are very good but the movie goes so quickly through every plot point that no one character or scene is developed in a meaningful way. It’s rather disposable ultimately.

Even with all those criticisms, it’s still a rather acceptable product. It’s just bland overall.