Comments 2,204

Re: Talking Point: Star Fox Old Vs. New Designs Compared - Which Do You Prefer?

Samalik

I can deal with the new designs, but the Zero designs look realistic enough while being very stylistic.

The Switch designs look a tad too realistic but they still work. honestly, I'm looking forward more to the expanded cinematic story. That's one thing Zero teased but missed the mark on heavily.

Though I am wondering who the developer, and new writer, of the game is. I prefer to play games in the OG language until it's clear they were meant to use dub as a stylistic choice.

Re: Talking Point: Star Fox Zero Is 10 Years Old - Have You Actually Played It?

Samalik

I was one of the few people who actually defended this game back then. (maybe too much given my behavior at the time)
While it has been a long time since I played it, my current feelings are that it's still a great game.
It's such a shame that a lot of arcade heads didn't try to give it a fair shot, since the whole setup for the game feels like a game you'd play at a uniquely build arcade machine. Ya know, those kind of sniper arcade games with a mini monitor in the scope.

Story was definitely not something to write home about though, even though they hyped it up hard pre-release.

Re: It Sounds Like Peach's Mario Galaxy Movie Backstory Will Be Canon In Future Games

Samalik

Reminder that Miyamoto also said that he's Bowser Jr's mom (ok, meta cheeky, I'll give you that) and then also had a period where he said Mario is no longer a plumber before walking that back (likely from pressure from Nintendo themselves)

For a guy who wanted to be a mangaka before joining Nintendo, I don't think he even knows what to do with his characters anymore, narratively speaking.

Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (18th April)

Samalik

Oh hey, it's the weekend already?!

Still not haven't made much progress in Mary Skelter 2. So I am still on that. Will get back on that. I wanna do a full overview on that. What I will say, however, so far, I like the characters a lot, and the nightmare mechanic can be panic inducing.

Blue Archive currently has a Joint Firing Drill that's rather easy. So I'm melting everyone.

Nekopara: Sekai Connect just released too. It's basically a gacha management game. As someone who's read the VNs from Extra to Vol.3, it's such a nostalgia trip seeing the slice of life antics of the Minaduki cats again. Still have to finish Volume 4 and get to Nekopara After to finish the whole VN series. Will have to make time and patience for that. Azuki is still my favorite (tomboy loli ftw!!! 😭😭😭) but gacha newcomer Saffron..... the words that come out of her really gets your blood pressure going with how rotten her mouth is 👺👺👺 (I love her SO MUCH 😭).

Finally, gonna be jumping back in for a certain iconic Hatsune Miku clone, grinding out gacha tickets in StarWard. It's basically a serious 2v2 arena fighter on the same vein as Pokken Tournament or Gundam Extreme Versus. It recently got F2P console versions and the community has since gotten bigger since. No Switch 2 versions yet, but I do hope that's on the cards.
New character just dropped and it's none other than Black★Rock Shooter herself! And her rival, Dead Master, is also on the way too! Anyways, game is one of those that require duplicates to make your characters stronger, so that's kinda annoying. And collab characters barely get an alternate way to get stronger other than duplicates. So I'm gonna be working on this game for the next 2 months on my PC... At least it's fun.....

Re: "What's This Stupid Thing?" – How One Silly Idea Became The Jet Set Radio-Inspired Denshattack!

Samalik

Played the demo on steam. this is the kind of craziness I look for in an action game.
The visuals look fine, but the nonsense you can pull off "just because" while you have the most "SEGA Arcade" music blaring at everything you do while the insanity unfolds.... I just keep getting callbacks to the Sonic Rush games! I love it!

Personally i would rather wait for a Switch physical release. more pick up and play and no storage concerns.

If they ever wanna do collabs with other "train" themed games, Maitetsu is there for the cuteness and Blue Archive's shuppogakis are there for the insanity. In fact, I think the shuppogakis would be the strongest fit for the game's energy considering the whole, ya know...

Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (4th April)

Samalik

...Other than the translation still being stuck to dubbed localization (ew) causing lots of missed language that you can deliberately hear but not see in text, I do have some lesser gripes. Like, why isn't Compa-chan or IF-chan playable? I want my chunni cellphone addict!!! Why is it that when Nepgear should be alone I can still use other characters and ruin the immersion? Why does Shanghai Alice not look like a loli even though ZUN explicitly makes all characters in Touhou canonically lolis (as admitted in his shared emails)? Kinda weird that the team took a character who is an expy for Hakurei Reimu and made her about as tall and figured as the texas cheerleader-built Goddess. (it's Vert fyi.) Why is there no sprint button in combat-less free roam sections? It does seem like they fixed that one in the next game but I was kinda feeling dragged on in a certain iconic landmark of the series.

Overall, I would recommend this game to a newcomer, assuming you know what you're getting into. Unless you're going through a really heavy depression, it's not gonna be a game to change your life...but it's fun...and cute...and funny...and heartfelt in just enough ways. And yes, you can still see the striped NePantsu if you know how. 👀

Also Blue Archive as usual. Gonna have to figure out how to do the Grand Assault against Hieronymus. My stock team isn't cutting it, so it's likely i need to rebuild. There's new story content coming up assuming it's not already out, so I gotta read that as well. New somewhat anticipated event is coming up soon too, so looking forward to that read.

Also gonna be trying to properly finish TriggerHeart Exelica's story. 1CC true ends. I just have to.

Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (4th April)

Samalik

Just finished Neptunia Sister v Sister, along with the true ending on first playthrough (because why end on a lie)?
It's a solid semi-casual Action RPG, or rather, RPG with action game elements. Thing about the gameplay is that you have to go into it expecting an RPG first, not an action game. I saw someone on youtube complain that the combat isn't as fluid at NieR Automata and I was going, "yeah, that's the point, it's a more tactical game, pick your strikes." Basically a Tales of Namco game, as I probably said last week. I love myself some straight action games, but it's nice to play something slower.

Personally I love that they did away with copypaste dungeons. The environments themselves can leave something to be desired, what with the same woods and caves again and again, but at least they are mostly original layouts!!!! I kinda also noticed that they were using static procedural generation for the level design. You do get some rooms that are reused, but at least I can dismiss that up to passable asset reuse. It's not the smartest reuse, but it gets the job done. It does have a problem with getting lost because there are no landmarks in the dungeons. But for a very overdue revamp, it's a solid first step. Maybe GameMaker R;Evolution might fix that. Just set your map settings to "fixed" and be prepared to look at it alot while Nep mentions how "This is an RPG so it absolutely must have a map!!!"

Moving on, this is also a game that has a slightly more serious story compared to the Neptunia usual. It does get the emotions going in the same way a kids anime might, with some shocking moments for sure, but the character writing is what people really come to Neptunia for and I must say...
NEPGEAR IS SO CUTE!!!!! EVERYONE MUST BE LEGALLY OBLIGATED TO HUG YOUR LOCAL NEPGEAR!!! Her interactions with Neptune and just everyone are funny with her being the straight-gal but the best moments with her are when she wants to care for Neptune, even when she's outright spoiling her or just gushing for how much she loves her sister and looks up to her like the little sister she is (even though she acts like the bigger sister more than the real big sister). She's such an endearing character, so sincere and earnest to match NepNep's rapid fire wit and laziness and just general narrative breaking fookery. Honestly, entertainment wise, I think these two might be the best sisters in all of gaming. Like Sonic and Tails but with 10x the love....

Re: So, Will you Be Watching The Super Mario Galaxy Movie?

Samalik

Gonna wait for reviews. Last film seemed to have some hollywood-isnms that you typically see in kids films.

Since Galaxy has a good story, I wanna hear if they did the sincerity justice, though with Fox Mccloud suddenly being in the film, I feel like they are starting to jump the shark

Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (28th March)

Samalik

Blue Archive. This week's DPS joint firing drill is having swimsuit mika murder everyone. ( ≧ᗜ≦) Doubly so if you have Swimsuit nagisa. Also found out that you can still use Chiaki if you buff her alot and also have normal Hanako or Magical Girl Reisa do some healing on the support robot.

Also been playing Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters as I said I would last week. It's fun, kinda like a Tales of Namco game. Story isn't as funny as other Nep games due to Nepgear being such a straight girl, but as usual with moe' protagonists like her, her positive energy is enough to wanna make you hug her for how caring she is. Currently I am almost halfway through it, and honestly, I am wondering when the hell am I gonna get IF-chan on the team again. For some reason, I have a soft spot for her chunni antics, even if she is the tsukkomi of the cast who is on the receiving end. Also it's bloody hilarious at how they jab the big 3 of gaming. they even had the MariCar lawsuit in as a way to jab how violent Nintendo can get. it got to the point where Blanc even blew up the whole track! (I love Neptunia) ( ≧ᗜ≦)

That being said, i do feel like the script does have some issues, like honorifics being obscured or slang that might get dated. Sometimes they don't translate the line 1:1 when they absolutely could have. There's even an instance where Uni, transformed as Black Sister, was referring to Neptune as "Nep-sama", which wasn't in the translation. IF really needs to start doing that language separation that Like a Dragon and Ninja Gaiden 4 did where they create a raw translation script for those who want a pure translation and a dub script for those who can't be bothered reading in a visual novel. (lol, jab jab)