@Vexx234 Is that the size of a man with an elephant head? Or an elephant size but with a proportionate giant human body? I don't think I have enough room for the latter.
@Woderwick Great reply, really interesting, thanks! Yes sometimes its hard for me to be objective when I know people or am privvy to behind the scenes stuff, or are just more realistic about the business side over the art, because when billions are at stake you sometimes have to make those concessions. Its not just about making endless cynical money for "the man", of course each film is hundreds if not thousands of jobs for normal working class people.
From a personal standpoint I don't love all of JJ's work, though I agree Cloverfield was brilliant. One of my favourites actually. 10 Cloverfield Lane was interesting too, although he only produced that one. Lost is a very interesting case, I actually felt it started very strongly. The real problem was that the writers' strike happened and the tv company insisted they carried on making the show without its writers and showrunners. Absolutely ruined it and killed all momentum or planned continuity. The same thing happened with Heroes. Lots of potential needlessly squandered with both those series and many others. Thankfully, seemingly this lesson was learned and the same didn't happen during this recent writers strike, everything just shut down production rather than arrogantly carrying on with no writers.
Broadly, I agree with all you said about both Tarantino and Ritchie, though you are kinder to Ritchie's later work than I sometimes am. A lot of my friends worked on Rockanrolla and at the time I was dead jealous but I really didn't enjoy it when it came out. Something got lost in translation somewhere along that films journey I think.
Funny you said Lock Stock and Snatch felt like he was doing a British Tarantino. The reason Ritchie trained with Dov is because Tarantino was very vocal about crediting him with his career. Ritchie literally did the course because he hoped to emulate Tarantino and of course the association as a sound bite would be useful when raising funds, or in interviews. And then I did exactly the same a few years later, studying with Dov because of the useful soundbite that I have the same film teacher as them both! 😂 He's genuinely a great teacher though. Spike Lee and Will Smith have subsequently gone to him for advise on various projects they've produced. He knows his stuff.
Rodriguez is someone I admire a lot and yeah of course Rebel without a Crew is a wonderful example of exactly the type of zero budget guerilla indie filmmaking that is the stuff I'm most passionate about. Him and Tarantino work well together, though I agree Grindhouse isn't their strongest work, though I get what they were going for and they got the aethetics mostly right - for me the fake trailers were the best bits though!
Eli Roth is a mixed bag for me but I really liked the first Hostel film, and thought the second one was very interesting in that it essentially entirely remade the first film, but gender swapped which gave and extra layer of interesting social commentary about stereotypes of how women and men are marketed to and manipulated by the media, on top of what was already an interesting piece of social commentary on how Ameraicans opinions of foreigners and otehr cultures are manipulated by the media. The third one was really weak sauce though. A friend of mine recently got cast as one of the leads in a project he's helming so I hope its one of the better ones!
I agree that in an ideal world, parents would sit down and watch the original Star Wars trilogy with their kids before taking them to he cinema, but in Disney's eyes, thats still too big a risk. Many (most?) parents use Disney movies as proxy baby sitters and substitute parents, rather than sitting down and watching them with their children, and of course Disney were also hoping to get kids interested even if their parents weren't existing mega fans. Force Awakens was essentially what it had to be to justify that huge upfront cost to shareholders. Like I said, it was a film by commitee. Given that, I think the fact it was as entertaining, visually interesting and well made as it was (for example using actual practical sets, animatronics, droids etc rather than cheap quick CG, shooting on 35mm film to have better continuity with the look of the old films) its the best we could have realistically hoped for, despite its shortcomings.
Its just a shame that Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker didn't continue the story beats it was so clearly trying to set up for the arc of the trilogy. The three new main actors were great and had good chemistry, only for all that to be somewhat squandered by 2 more films that were absolutely intent on keeping them apart and not playing to their strengths. Again, I'm somewhat biased as Boyega was someone I sort of knew and had worked with before, and liked a lot. But I think him, Ridley and Issac could have made a really nice modern replacement for the "Luke, Leia, Han" dynamic, had the films followed the original plan JJ was trying to set out.
@Woderwick Interesting you mention Corman. My film teacher at the Hollywood Film Institute was Dov Simens who was a long serving line producer for Corman and therefore an expert on making films that came in under schedule and under budget to ensure they made a profit for the investors and therefore the next one would be funded. Genius teacher - cares less about the art and more about the business, but really good at being realistic about getting people to have a long running career rather than trying to create one great master piece and getting chewed up and spat out by the machine.
As well as being my film teacher, Simens was also teacher to some far less important names, such as Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie. Both of whom are directors who very liberally "borrow" from other films and shows. I'd be interested to know where you sit on them, but personally I think Tarantino especially is on the right side of "inspired by" and "homages" but joined together in an artful and cohesive way. Ritchie probably less so, but I'm very fond of his first two films at least.
And yeah, Mandy was wonderful but I have a blindspot for anything involving Nick Cage. Even when the films bad, its good because he's in it. 😂
[edit] "I did worry previously that I'd upset you with my previous comments. " Noooo not at all. If you ever did upset or insult me, I'd just tell you! 😄 I felt annoyed that I thought I'd typed a really good response to what you wrote, then wondered why you hadn't replied a week or so later, and when I checked, the post wasn't there. Must have gotten lost in a server update or something. I actually was concerned that you might feel I'd ignored your message, so I was glad when you mentioned Star Wars again and it reminded me.
@Woderwick "I don't recall the last time someone pulled an Alan Smithee although I know some people still do walk away from projects". I have done exactly this several times. Was a shame to do as they were projects that would have looked great on my cv too. Though I walked off not because of creative differences (which you expect when working on a studio picture. Always "too many cooks"), but because of extreme ideological differences, or discovering something really awful about one or more of the people funding the projects, so those were bridges I didn't mind burning, and can happily justify if anyone ever questions me about it. As you said, Hollywood can be a "filthy town".
As I've mentioned elsewhere on this site, I did turn down a $30 million budget movie as the changes they wanted me to make to the script were unconscionable to me. That was not an easy thing to do. Perhaps it was foolish. What I do know is if I was offered to direct something that young me would have been excited by - Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Marvel, Muppets and a handful more franchises, I'd gleefully accept knowing full well that studio interferance would absolutely sabotage everything I tried to do and the finished result would probably not be what I wanted. But still, its an honour to be associated and a rite of passage to be chewed up and spat out by the evil corporate machine! lol.
I'm too close to JJ to give any objective opinion on your critique (not that we are friends or anything, he probably wouldn't even remember my name! Might recognise me in person though) but I will say that he's a thoroughly decent bloke who has used his association with Star Wars to do an enormous amount of good. Force For Change was set up by him and I was one of the founder members, it raised many millions for unicef and I felt lucky to be involved with a lot of wonderful fundraising events that made a lot of kids happy, whilst doing genuine good in the world.
Your criticisms of Force Awakens are the most common and are perfectly valid - it very much plays like a "greatest hits" of Star Wars moments. But thats exactly what he was tasked to do by Disney, its barely his fault to follow orders. You've got to remember how long it had been since a Star Wars movie. They knew Force Awakens would be many kids' (and even teens') first experience of Star Wars and they tasked him to make something to instantly show and explain why its cool to a new audience of attention defecit (I say that with love) kids. As a parent it was a moment for me to take my own kids to the cinema to experience their first Star Wars film on the big screen, and see how excited and immediately invested they were. Suddenly it was their favourite new thing, they wanted lightsabers, droids and X Wing / Millenium Falcon toys, and it gave a window for me to explain the older stuff to them, and also for us then to be able to enjoy the theme park stuff together as a family. Force Awakens was never going to be a satisfying "Star Wars" film for long term fans, but as a "quick catch up" establishing the universe and themes for a new audience, it nailed the landing. Its very much a film by commitee, but thats par for the course when Disney had just chucked literal billions into buying Lucasfilm. It had to be a safe bet for the long term - IE onboarding basically 2 generations of kids who had no concept of what a "Star Wars" even was.
Rians film was the follow up, and tried to do a knee jerk to the criticisms you laid out, and instead made an "artsy, indie, subverts your expectations" kind of film, which purposefully shat on a lot of what was set up in Force Awakens, and managed to (in my opinion) actively damage or even disrespect beloved characters, and broke long standing continuity by trying to retcon stuff that to many fans was sacred. It was brave, but felt like a film made by someone who didn't even like Star Wars and was somewhat sneering at the fanbase. Its beautifully shot and edited though! Great cinematography whilst ruining our childhoods!
I'm glad you enjoyed Mandalorian. Boba Fett isn't up to the highs of that series, but I'd say Andor is actually better, and so far Ashoka is great, especially if you know the character already from Clone Wars / Rebels and can get invested in Prequel era lore. If anything, Disney's current Star Wars "problem" is not so much teh quality, but the quantity. There's so much, its hard to keep up, or for it all to feel "special" when there is such an abundance of it. But overall the TV series in both live action and animation are of a good quality, I just think they should slow down a little and pace them out.
I feel even more certain that if you enjoyed Madalorian, then you'll find things to like about Rogue One. Its very similar, but obviously higher budget and adds to the films we grew up enjoying in the same way Mandalorean does.
@Woderwick Now. Star Wars. I'm glad you brought that up. I realised the other day that you'd mentioned the Disney Star Wars stuff before and I'd replied, but for whatever reason my reply was lost. Which annoyed me as of course I'm rather tied to that brand in several ways over the last decade. First off, the reason Lucas sold to Disney is because he was sick and tired of the fanbase constantly harassing him because they didn't like the Prequel trilogy and felt he'd "ruined their childhood". Its only in recent years when kids who grew up with the prequels are now adults and very vocal online that people are reassessing them. It can't be overstated how much hate there was towards them and anything to do with them for many years. I was lucky enough to be invited to Celebration this year, and Hayden Christensen (who nearly took his life over the constant hatred) stepping on stage for the first time in over a decade and getting a standing ovation was an absolute moment. He could barely speak and it was so lovely seeing the fans old and young bandying together to make him realise he wasn't hated and it was actually nice to have him back.
The LARP hotel you mentioned was a great idea but excecuted terribly. It was like $5000 for 2 nights, and during that time you couldn't even experience Disney World else you'd have wasted your money. It was an underwhelming claustrophobic 100% indoors experience (not even windows) with a luxury price tag that meant only the richest of fat cats could afford it, and most of those people don't want to be part of "dinner theatre" style crowd interaction. If you weren't aware, it closed after only being open about 6 months.
That said, the Star Wars land ( Galaxy's Edge ) is great and you can full on larp til your heart's content, drinking at the cantina, pilotting the Millenium Falcon, building a droid, getting assigned a Kyber crystal and being given lightsabre training with your custom blade. Its pretty cool. Movie producer friends of mine got married there, it was a trip. If you don't fancy a flight to the States, they are building it in Paris next year - I'll be able to get you in free 😋
You mentioned before that you got a distaste for the Disney Star Wars after watching Episode VII / Force Awakens and didn't watch beyond that, and were somewhat annoyed with Rian Johnson for leaving his indie routes to make Last Jedi. I have many opinions on the Sequel trilogy. They are far from perfect, but I can see merit in all of them. The biggest problem is that they AREN'T a trilogy. They are 3 almost unrelated films. Each one has a miriad of issues, most of which come from trying to please the increasingly fractured fanbase. A single director with an arching vision for all three and the confidence to just make what they wanted to would have been far better. But Disney had so much money riding on it all, I think it was a safer bet in their minds to at least try and appease the fanbase, which meant each film was very different to the last to try and course correct what people complained about in the previous entry, and each time they went too far in the opposite direction.
I'm biased because I know too many people both on camera and behind the scenes, and I know the passion and love that went into creating even the smallest details. I'd be hard pushed to say that I think they are all "good" films but each one has elements that are amazing and absolutely worth experiencing as a Star Wars fan, and they add real value to the canon. You just have to look past all the obvious cringe, mistakes and plot holes. Similar to the prequels, theres really good stuff hidden in there amongst the not so great stuff. I concentrate on the bits I like.
One point I should make is to somewhat stick up for Rian Johnson (even though their film is the one I like the least, by a long margin). Basically what Disney (and all other big studios) do with a franchise picture (ie ones that people will go and watch because of the brand) is look to the indie space to hire talented and well regarded people from lower budget movies and offer them a chance at a step up the ladder. The reason for this is they are much cheaper to hire than a big name director, and that big name (Speilberg or whatever) would have no impact on whether people would pay to see the movie. Every big franchise film will have people from the indie world picked to direct it. I myself am a fiercely independent "starving artist" type who is often head hunted for hollywood stuff nowadays and its very likely that I'll agree at some point if I'm lucky enough to be asked to direct something my inner child would have been excited by. I see nout wrong with it, its not selling out. Hollywood vs indie is often a "one for me, one for them" ethos. If you only make art, you'll fall out of favour and run out of money very quickly.
I completely understand you not feeling like watching any of the sequel trilogy, or even the recent shows (most of which are quite well recieved, comparitively. Andor is especially good).
However, the one that I was the most involved with, and the one I very briefly act in and mentioned that I actually wrote a line which went on to be very famous and a springboard for doing good in the world (and for which I recently went super viral accidentally when I did an AMA about for the official reddit) is Rogue One.
Even without bias, I'd thoroughly recomend you watch Rogue One. Not for me, I'm barely in it. Blink and you miss me, almost all of what I did was chopped out. But instead because its by far and away the best thing Disney have done with Star Wars and the one thing almost all fans universally agree is actually really good.
The reason for this, is its not a "Star Wars" movie, as you'd traditionally expect one to be. And its not part of the new continuity. Its essentially "Episode 3.5" and the film that bridges Revenge of the Sith ( Ep 3 ) to A New Hope ( what we oldies used to call "Star Wars" ). Its a very cleverly written film that very satisfyingly fixes a few of the most egrigious plot holes in both those films, and helps make the continuity between the prequels and the original trilogy make sense.
But its also more than that. I say its "not a Star Wars movie" in that it doesn't start with an exposition crawl. There are no lightsabre battles. Barely any ships or dogfights (exception one super cool one thrown in there which many think is the best in the series). Its a human film, about the ethics of war, global politics, corruption, the fact that in life there are no "good guys" or "bad guys". It humanises the people fighting for the empire. It shows bad eggs in the Rebel alliance. And most importantly, it satisfyingly explains exactly why the Death Star was built with such an obvious flaw of a self destruct button thats just sat there, exposed for Luke to shoot, and how Leia even knew about it in the first fricken place! 😂
Both Gareth Edwards and Tony Gilroy (who essentially co-directed) are huge talented people. Again, Edwards (the named director) is someone who I came up with, him making super low budget indies and making visual effects freelance for the BBC before Hollywood scooped him up.
I think out of everything Disney has done with Star Wars, for better or worse, Rogue One almost justifies everything. And Lucas was never going to make another film anyway. I think overall, its a net positive rather than just letting it die. And likely, just as the prequels are now reasessed as many kids grew up enjoying them, the same will happen with the sequels. They are films made for kids, after all. It just rankles for us adults when stuff doesn't live up to our childhood memories. But its nice that it continues and is contantly reimagined - if a certain incarnation isn't to my taste, another might be - much like the Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Spider-Man et al (and indeed Sonic! See, we're still on topic!) its a mixed mag, but always being refilled and taking another stab at it. And some of the attempts are pretty cool.
@Woderwick Yes Alan Moore is certainly somewhat of a prickly character and I definitely don't agree with everything he says or does, though he's someone I greatly admire. I've had the pleasure of attending a few talks by him and briefly spoke to him on one occasion, seemed a thoroughly decent chap. I agree on your assesment of Constantine too.
As for Harry Potter, you know, that was my opinion when the first book came out and everyone was going mad over it, adults included, and I just didn't get it and was quite snobbish about it. I thought the writing wasn't much special and the themes and settings were all thoroughly recycled and played out from a million other teenage witch/wizard school retreads (say the person making a game about a young witch. Oh well. Its a trope I'm fond of). I only paid much attention as my kids were the right age to enjoy the movies and each one improved over the years (I even worked on the last 2 in a tiny capacity).
However, as the books went on and she became more bold with the political and social commentary that she felt she could get away with squeezing in there and I thought it became a lot more interesting. Some of it is quite ambiguous and clearly meant to make young people think of the grey areas of difficult subjects. One example would be Hermione wanting to free the elves from what she percieves as slavery, but actually they were quite happy with the arrangement and when they were free'ed, some of them couldn't handle a life with no purpose, especially when all they had ever experienced until that point was servitude. It can be read all kinds of ways, some of which are not very favourable to Rowling (certain races love to be oppressed! It makes them happy!) but others of which could be percieved as a commentary on the Western "democracies" going to war to "free" certain countries with very different regimes, but leaving them a splintered mess and causing terrorist groups and extremeism to flourish etc... the fact these conversations happen within universe and doesn't give clear direction or easy answers is pretty bold for a kids book. Things like the balacning of the personality traits of the 4 houses is very well done too - would have been very easy to just make Slytherin the bad guys but thats not the case at all, and actually is easy to read as a societal allegory for all different types of people with oposing views and ideologies having their place and being an important part in society regulating itself.
Upcoming rant on Star Wars which I'll type in a separate reply!
@HeadPirate I love the story of your friend's daughter. I think the younger generations are far more switched on to this stuff than we are. Whenever I speak to my own (now adults in early 20s) kids, my younger friends and colleagues, or even just watching younger youtubers who make philosophical or political videos, I always feel I learn something from them and become a better person in the process. I'm a work in progress, as are we all, but I feel the world is in good hands with younger millenials and Gen Z, once the old guard have retired or moved on.
I'm actually a HUGE Peanuts nerd. I have what may be the largest collection of Peanuts books in the world, pretty much everything that exists in multiple languages 😂 Schulz is a hero of mine. Japan's fascination with Snoopy, and the fact he's often associated with Sanrio is very interesting to me. Obviously I can see visual similarities.
Thats also super cool about those Sanrio male characters. I LOVE magical girl anime, my favourite anime and magna of all time are actually Tokyo Mew Mew and its various spinoffs (which included a gender swapped version btw).
My own gender identity is pretty fixed - I think I look like a man, I feel comfortable being a man, I've never felt like I shouldn't be a man. I like being "the man" in my relationships, if I can say that without sounding toxic. But its always been a running joke for close friends and my partners that if I could click my fingers and turn into a woman, I would. Or that I'd like to be reincarnated as a woman. I don't have any kind of gender dysmorphia or feel that I'm trans. Its just that my personal preferences for aesthetics in most media lean more towards things that are gender coded as "for girls" by society.
But frankly, I think many men feel that way. And I think its completely unrelated to your biological sex, or your sexuality, or anything else. People just like what they like, its personal taste like what food or music you enjoy. Why police it?
I'm sorry that you struggled with certain things that were hard to deal with when you were a child. I'm very happy you seem content and at peace with yourself now, and I think its wonderful you share your story and help others. 💜
@HeadPirate Thank you for sharing all of that. You sound like a lovely person and someone I'd really get on with. With my current position in the media I really do try and help share these kinds of talking points as much as possible, as well as being open about mental healtrh, my autism, anything that can help normalise things which society has previously not talked about but which are normal parts of life, which has previously lead to people growing up feeling different, or even alienated and alone. While I personally am cis-het I'm very passionate about supporting and helping the LGBT+ communities, especially vocally trans and non-binary people who seem to be the current punching bag of certain sections of the media. I have servearl friends and family members in that comunity who are some of the most lovely people you could ever meet, demonising them makes ZERO sense to me.
Forgive me if I wrote about this in the other thread or if you've seen me mention it elsewhere, but I actually wrote a superhero movie about a male superhero who is quite right leaning, and a non-binary female coded superhero who is left leaning. They both have entirely different ideas of what it means to be a "hero", have their own ill judged predudices against people they disagree with, and also both have their own mental health issues and insecurities based on different struggles they had in their childhood, but also their fixed ideas about what a real "man" or "woman" should be and how they should present to society. Thats all subtlesubtext to a fairly standard but exciting action movie, the crux of which is of course they are antagonists to each other in the begining but by the end have realised that they should team up despite their differences, and can actually learn and grow from each other.
Fairly famously I was offered $30 million budget to make the movie. But they wanted me to implement many changes, not least of all making the non-binary identifying character female, and having them fall in love and kiss at the end of the movie. They also wanted to change some of the racial, sexual/gender, age and body type diverse casting choices that I suggested, and remove some of the jokes and political commentary (mostly anti capitalist sentiment from some characters). All of this was to ensure it would sell to more countries worldwide and make a higher box office return. I refused, and now its a $1.2 million budget indie film instead of $30 million from a major studio. (and yet people on the right think hollywood is "woke". Not at all, they just chase whatever trends they think will be most profitable in specific markets - and "full woke" is not something that sells worldwide).
As it was my first chance to helm a "blockbuster" that is being translated into many languages and shown worldwide, and will have a decent marketing budget so it might get seen by millions of people, I truly feel its really important to make a film that might positively impact people's lives by seeing representation of them on screen. Whether representation of actual minorities and underrepresented or disempowered groups, people on the extremes of the right or left with toxic views, or just people with internalised self hatred for not living up to what society has told them they should be, I hope I'm going to be giving some comfort and perhaps food for thought for some people, while helping them to see others as fellow humans that are a valid and useful part of society.
You remember Sonic? Well now he's back! In LEGO FORM.
I'm biased, but Amy (and especially her cutscene interactions with Trip) are the absolute highlight of Superstars for me. She's animated so wonderfully with the way her facial expressions and anime-esque emotion signifiers change to fit the circumstances. Its all perfectly in character for her. The same can be said of the 2d animated parts. I love the fact we have the choice of the two dresses for her too, both look great! ...However!
I really was hoping that there would be unlockable costumes or accessories to customise all characters... but so far the medals you collect can only be spent on customising your robot avatar thingy for the battle mode, which I really don't care about and it's all a bit half baked anyway.
I expect we'll eventually get different outfits, skins and looks for the main characters that we'll have to buy, like there were for the recent Monkeyball game. And like a sucker, I'll buy them all. Yes, I'm aware I'm a part of the problem. Sorry.
While I'm really looking forward to Mario Wonder, I know that immediately upon booting I will turn off the talking flowers. I was hugely relieved when it was revealed that you could do so. Even from the very first reveal in the Direct I thought to myself "if I can't turn those off, that will severely grate on me". Personally, I find the fact that the modders made the flowers self aware and angry that everyone calls them annoying a stroke of creative genius 😂
@Woderwick Yes, Bladerunner and Fight Club are rare but textbook examples where I prefer the take of the films to the original novels. As at least somewhat of a comic book guy, I find the attempts to adapt Alan Moore's work are often very hit and miss, more often than not make a pretty decent film, but miss the point of the graphic novels. Though I really like how V for Vendetta came out, even if its not too faithful. The movie version of Watchmen was visually interesting and action heavy but I feel like it missed the point entirely.
I feel directors putting their own politics into movies can be great, but flat out should not be a thing in movies based on novels written by otehr people. It feels a violation. It does occasionally produce great results though!
Theres been a somewhat heated debate in the Hogwarts thread on this site today, but one thing that I will say in favour of Rowling (even though I strongly dislike her recent heel turn) is that I know from many discussions with people who were privvy to the deals that she was SO ADAMENT on being involved with EVERY decision in both the movies and the theme park adaptations of her work. She turned down enormous amounts of money for both from Disney because they wouldn't let her have creative control. They even tried to outright buy the IP at one point and she flatly refused. BAre in mind, when the first movie deal was being negotiated, she was not a rich woman by any standards and Disney were offering VASTLY more money than what was basically the mid budget indie taht the first film was. She turned down serveral million because she had faith that she was the best person to make sure her ideas were reproduced faithfully.
@HammerGalladeBro Thanks for this info, I was hoping this would be the case. I felt sure it would be, but glad to have confirmation.
@JohnnyMind Thanks! Yes I'm still really enjoyign it so far. I can see me getting a lot of replay value from it for years to come, which is what I was really hoping for. 😀
@HeadPirate Aww thank you again for sharing, that is a really good version, Kitty playing the piano and dancing was so cute!
I wasn't sure of your gender before and wouldn't have deemed to guess, but as is probably obvious by my username, I'm a male. Not that it should really matter, but for context, a cis-het male, who grew up in the 80s and early 90s. Your story about your parents feeling Hello Kitty wasn't gender appropriate really hits home for me, I don't know if you saw it but we had a long discussion about similar experiences when I was young and how this has lead to changes in my adult life and the media that I now create in my day job to try and counter balance these issues here: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/10/nintendos-new-animal-crossing-new-horizons-themed-switch-lites-are-out-now my comments start at #63 and were prompted by the ongoing conversation people were having about the pink vs blue Switch Lites and if it was gender coding by putting the pink one as Isabelle's and the blue one as Timmy & Tommy's.
I'm autistic and to me, characters that I love become "real", so the thought of Kitty having genuine regrets about alienating people by being advertised towards girls is quite sad! But I think its really good that Sanrio nowadays embraces everyone who loves Kitty. She was always meant to be a symbol for happiness and kindness towards others. Those shouldn't be seen as only "feminine" traits, and neither should "cuteness" or "appreciating nature - flowers, animals etc". Though, often all of those things are used that way to gender code characters, which leads to many of my favourite characters in franchises being the girls - for example my favourite Sonic character is Amy, precisely because in the wider canon she is so loving and caring of all the little animals that Sonic rescues from the badniks, and looking after the plants and flowers in their world. But that doesn't mean she doesn't also kick butt when she needs to protect her friends! She's the perfect character to me. But she's the pink hedgehog, not the blue one, so some people think I'm weird for liking her. Thats so nonsensible. Ah well.
@Lilligant562 "Starfield could have been Epic, but invisible walls, sparse planets, lack of Free-flight and diluted gameplay in general was a humble lesson I feel" I definitely feel the same way. The emphasis on fast travel ruined any feeling of "epic space exploration" for me, and the vastness was ruined by blandness in the same way the launch version of No Mans Sky was. However, that game has massively improved in recent years, I don't feel Starfield will/can change much. Maybe I'll be proved wrong, we'll see.
I try and stay away from BOTW and TOTK discourse as I'm not sure I can confidently state an opinion - I bought both, they are obviously high qualiy products, but neither was really "for me" and I'm nowhere near finishing either of them. For me, the most fun Zelda games are the more linear puzzle/dungeon based games. Links Awakening is actually my favourite but I like all the 2d ones, and only about half of the 3d ones. Its all a matter of taste of course though, and I totally understand why to some people BOTW or TOTK are "the best game ever". With a few notable exceptions, I tend to gravitate more to smaller but more clearly focused games that I can replay many times.
That said, certain open world games that are set in areas that I actually want to cosplay as living in do appeal to me - such as what I wanted Starfield to be, and how I hope I will find Hogwarts Legacy when I eventually play it.
@HeadPirate Oh wow thank you for sharing that, I was grinning from ear to ear! What a perfect rendition of the song and I love how they animated her to be "3d 2d"... its perfect! 😻 In my headcanon, thats how Kitty looks and moves IRL, simple circle shadow and all! 😹
When I was little, I didn't know much about Hello Kitty but I loved the Miffy books and always felt the two were similar. Becoming a fan of Japanese culture through reading early Super NES magazines which covered the importing scene, and getting into manga and anime through them, I became aware of Hello Kitty as a brand and thought it was cute, but never saw any of the related media. "Hello Kitty Paradise" was on TV when my kids were growing up and we watched it together and always loved the theme song. Its the first thing that comes to mind when I see Kitty. But of course I know the Popcorn song too from absorbing more Japanese media over time.
@Rykdrew @NeonPizza Its very interesting to me to read the constant stream of polar opposite feelings on things like lives systems, having to restart entire levels, and permadeaths in games. Also of course, difficulty levels in general being made easier.
I can see both sides. I'm certainly a little put off by the comments about Mario Wonder being purposefully made easier than the classics, which I still hold in extremely high regard. Im my opinion, no Mario game since has managed to top Mario 3 or Mario World. The NSMB games felt easy, formulaic and uninteresting by comparison to me. High quality products, but none of them made me feel like I was being rewarded for practice or skill. I walked through all of them and felt little reason to go back... whereas I still regularly replay the older titles.
Playing Sonic Superstars the other day for the first time, which has infinite lives, and just kicks you back to the last respawn point upon dying. I really enjoyed it, died a TONNE but kept plowing through til I'd completed the game in one sitting. It took embarassingly more hours than a flawless playthrough would, but I enjoyed it a lot and left with a great impression, and knowing that I'd want to return to try and improve my run.
I've been reflecting since then about certain moments in the game that if I'd have been thrown back to the begining of the first act after losing at a boss, I might have rage quit or called it a night, and came back later... but maybe I wouldn't have ad the patience to feel compelled to return. I don't have as much free time as when I was a kid, and there are far more options for games and other media to take my attention. I think I would have enjoyed the first experience less and had a worse opinion of it. So a difficult game with infinite lives and respawns isn't necessarily a bad thing imo - Meatboy, Celeste, etc spring to mind.
These exact thoughts and considerations are things that myself and my partner have been hugely mindful of with our Hazel game - we want it to literally be accessible for kids or people that have never played a retro style platformer before, to hopefully get more people into the genre. But its important to us for it to also be really challenging and rewarding for long term fans of the genre, not "just a kids game".
In the end, we reached the conclusion that the only real way to do this and 100% satisfy all caps was to have several difficulty settings with different levels of safety and things that help you. The most difficult setting just gives you 3 lives, permadeath, and no way to earn more. The easiest has instant respawns, infinite lives, plus hints, tutorials for even the most basic of actions, extra platforms to make the harder jumps more forgiving... and of course, theres a range of more reasonable difficulty settings in the middle which do have lives, continues etc and you can earn more through good play or buying them with ingame currency (earnable not microtransations!), or give the option to earn continues where you can keep going from the begining of the most recent area but your score is reset to 0. Highscore tables for all difficulty modes, and both completion time and pointts scored are saved, as well as noting how many lives were used etc, all to hopefully give a reson to come back and play again, challenging yourself to beat past performance, rather than just walking through story mode on easy and never coming back.
Balancing all of this, and planning the level designs to encompass it all has been a big challenge. I think it will help it appeal to a braoder range of people though, and maybe some of the first timers who start with the easiest mode will feel motivated to play again with a harder difficulty once they are comfortable - and of course there are unlockable rewards for doing so. 😀
@umbreon_sylveon Sure, but Wii, DS and Switch all had enormously bigger user bases than the N64 or Gamecube did. You didn't include the numbers for Colour Splash, which was on Wii U - I bet that one had numbers closer (or very likely less than) the N64 and GC entries?
That said, I agree with you. Its very important that both TTYD and SMRPG remakes sell big numbers to show Nintendo these types of games are popular and will be accepted by the casual Mario audiences as well as a hardcore vocal niche audience. I think they will both do well, and possibly out-sell Origami King, despite being remakes towards the end of the life of the console.
Looking at the title, as a Brit living in France and trying to learn as much of French culture as I can, I joked to myself "an RPG about bread? This has got to be French!". Not actually being serious.
(For context, where I live there is an annual competition to find the best baker in the city, and the prize is for them to bring their fresh baked bread to the President every morning for a year. Its widely covered in the national media, and seen as the highest honour. Bread is srs-bizniz round these parts, naturellement.)
Opened the article, looked at the art style - those are the most French looking character designs I've seen in a while. By the way, that's not a bad thing, the graphics look beautiful. A cut above others in this genre. I really love Manfra (French Manga) and BD (French graphic novels), and grew up with Franco/Japonais collaborative anime, and the Franco/Belge equivalents. Its just a very distinctive style that you can see a mile off if you are experienced in it.
I read the article, watched the video, it looks wonderful. I'm really hyped to play this game, more traditional paper mario style games are always welcome, and this looks top tier.
But, no mention of its origins. It was bug-(fable)-ing me. (or "pain-ing me" ?! ) so I looked up the studio, making a bet with myself that it was from French designers. Turns out... Français-Canadien. Bien sûr! 😅
I work in Canada a lot, all over - from Vancouver to Toronto and even deep into Alberta. The only part of Canada I haven't been to, nor do I know any people from, is the French speaking part. And when I ever mention to my Canadian friends that I want to go there, and it will be good because I speak French and live in France so I have things to talk about with locals... they respond to me that French-Canadians are "far more French than French people" 😂
I'm very excited to play this game. I hope there is a French language option with as many equivalent puns as the English. If so, I'll play it twice!
"Keeps things relatively gentle in terms of challenge" concerns me as well, especially with the borderline sacriligious comments from the devs in the other thread basically saying they looked to the challenge old games as something to avoid and looked more to Odyssey. Um.
I've been assuming this would be an obvious 10/10 for me, but perhaps it won't. Still, I'm excited to play when it arrives, I'm sure it will be at least an 8/10 for me, probably a 9, if I enjoy it at least as much as I'm enjoying Sonic (which again is great but not quite perfect) then I'll be more than happy.
Who loves flowers in the sun? Or a party just for one?
It's Kitty ... Kitty, Kitty! 😻
Who'll invite her friends along? They could hear her play a song!
It's Kitty ... Kitty, Kitty! 😻
If you don't know where she lives you've might of missed her, and her papa and her mama, and there's Mimmy, that's her sister. They're an itty bitty pretty kitty family, but even though they're kitties they're like you and me. Rainy days turn sunny funny wait and see!
This looks adorable. If it gets a physical release, I'm in.
I am still very much in a "I want to enjoy Sonic as much as possible before moving onto Mario" state of mind, but I'm glad its getting good reviews, I never doubted that it would. I'm looking forward to playing it. A good 2d Sonic and Mario in the same month is just a mindblowing treat for me. Its the 90s again baybeeee
So they were inspired by the 2d Mario games... to make it not like them at all? I hope those quotes lost something in translation as they somewhat dampen my hype for the game. I'm wanting something that feels like an extension of Mario 3 and Mario World... not side scrolling Odyssey. Oh well, I've bought it regardless and get my own opinion when it arrives.
@Lilligant562 Oh trust me the R/U conflict is another area where I'm disgusted in the conduct of both left and right media. I have vast first hand knowledge of gang violence in America (I first started off my career as a ghost writer for some really big American hiphop artists) but again I think we are both now trying to stop political discourse in this videogame thread, so I won't give my 2 cents. or 50 cents. Badumtish.
I agree the Switch is on its last legs. Most 3d third party games severely struggle to the point of farce. This was why I've been so delighted and outspoken about the Switch port of Sonic Superstars - sure it doesn't look QUITE as nice as the PS5 version but its beautiful and importantly runs at 60fps and a locked 720p resolution (the max res of the portable mode anyway) with no dymnamic resolution changes.
For Hogwarts Legacy, I feel that it could run ok, being the PC version has many detail options that can be lowered etc, assuming they do a good job of optimising it and don't rush. I actually fear that the load times may be the biggest issue. It will quite obviously be the "worst" version but for people who only own a Switch, or prioritise portability, I hope its as good as it can possibly be. Again, prioritising a fixed resolution and framerate would be the ideal goal rather than making it extra pretty for screenshots but a dog in the hand.
Of course, these problems are short term. We know that the follow up to the Switch is coming soon and is bound to be more powerful. My sincere wish is that its backwards compatible, and that the mirriad of games that have framerate and dynamic resolution problems will be able to use the extra power to run better, without needing "new versions" to be programmed and sold. Even some first party Nintendo games have trouble running on the Switch. Thats just a sad state of affairs. Its a good console with a great library, but the hardware refresh is long overdue.
@Not_Soos Thank you for your highly considered post, I agree with much of the sentiment. Sorry for taking so long to reply, my above post explains that!
As for choosing who or what to support to fit our own moral compass and/or chosen belief system. I agree that in a Western capitalist society we can never really live entirely ethically to our highest standards... unless we go off the grid and start our own comunes I suppose. And because these almost always either fail, or grow to the point where "some animals are more equal than others" and you get insular cults that grow to become dangerous for those within them. There are no easy / quick fix answers.
The reason I tend to take very strong hard line stances on certain things while letting others slide is because for 25+ years now I've been in the entertainment industry, right from the start dealing with some of the largest corporations, and richest individuals in the world. I have seen SO. MUCH. DARKNESS. Money and power corrupt absolutely, and the people who are the most drawn to it are often the most prone to low moral standards. And yes, this absolutely also applies in large religious organisations, especially the ones that get a lot of media attention or even run their own tv channels or buy out "news" groups etc. To me, thats not really a problem with religion per se, as it happens just as much with non-religious people. Its more a universal problem with elevating any one individual in society above a certain level of power and status, and also allowing any one particular corporation to gather too much power and influence.
As someone in the media, who works with large corporations, who has strong political and social beliefs, I'm absolutely disgusted by the current state of democracy, politics, religious discourse, social movements, and how all facets of the entertainment industry have allowed themselves to be used as pawns in this game of polaristaion, us vs them, turn the masses against each other, splinter them into little rival groups so that they won't realise whats causing the the actual problems, and even if they do, won't be strong enough to fight back. Bluergh.
Quite famously, I've turned down literally tens of millions of dollars in recent years either refusing to work on projects or change the nature of my own projects because I wouldn't feed into this ideology. I'm in the media because I love being creative, and I love collaborating with other creative people. But I'm not going to work on a film or make money for a company thats actively profiting from making the world a worse place for my children's children. No thanks. Sadly, even the people around me that I trust are slowly falling in numbers when its revealed they have dark secrets or have misused their power, and I become damaged by association. Its like a bingo card of which of my friends and colleagues will turn out to be a secret monster next. Its very painful. Perhaps I'm too trusting, but I also think its that they were good people that rose to a position of power and were tempted / believed their own hype. This is why I'm very happy to turn down huge monetary contracts that I feel would damage my personal integrity, I don't want to slip down that slope.
And when I said I "wrote the book on it" ( @gaga64 Thank you for your kind comment! ) I literally have written a book about this very subject, part autobiography, part whistleblowing every single little corruption and nasty systematic problems in the current media landscape, part manifesto of how I am trying to use my own power to change things and how I suggest others can do so as well, should they value the longterm future over short term dirty cash. It was meant to come out in August but I delayed it on purpose because of the ongoing Hollywood strikes and media revelations about another of my long term colleagues... to have released the book without going into these in depth would have been farcical. Should be out before the end of the year, and you'll see me promoting it a lot. Its called "Just Let the Girl Speak" - the line that I wrote for Rogue One which gave a voice to the underdog and saved the entire galaxy in the Star Wars universe. I am but a small voice in a massive hollywood machine. But by giving a voice to the under represented, minority groups, disempowered masses and equalling the playing fields of art rather than creating false idols of a handful, I believe we in the media can turn things around and actually have a net positive impact, rather than negative. [edit] I should note also that I'm not profiting a cent from the book, its all going to good causes and projects that I know are doing good. I never accept profit from anything Star Wars related, even my pay on Rogue One was donated.
And yes. "posted from my smartphone" 😂 my compromise there is that I always buy last year's model second hand, refurbished from a mom and pop shop.
And doubly... yes I did just go on a rant about why overly large corporations are the problem, whilst stating that I worked on a Disney movie. As I said above, we are all hypocrits... you just have to pick your battles. I also worked on the last 2 Harry Potter movies in a very minor capacity.
Wow, I managed to bring us back on topic! I'll try not to go on any more big political rants now, I feel somewhat of a sense of closure on what was previously said.
Sorry that I dipped out of this conversion earlier, it was like 8am and I hadn't gone to bed. Eventually I somewhat passed out! The below post does eventually come back round to having a point about Harry Potter, I promise. I also don't intend on continuing that particular subject as its far to explosive for a gaming website. But I think its important to state.
@Lilligant562 Well... without wanting to delve down that road too deeply, I think history would tell us a large proportion of that time was centered around one person's obsessive dislike for a certain religion... and those exact same sentiments still exist and within left v right discourse to this day, even being "debates" on "news" television channels at the moment, and are causing huge problems in the West and literal religious wars and terrorist oversees right now, which are bleeding heavily into my two dearly loved homes of London and Paris.
I wouldn't rise to Godwin's law to even mention this other than to say that the very issues of "us vs them" and polarisation of groups whether around religion, race, gender, political stance, idealogical views on any particular stance being made to feel like teams battling against the other side of "enemies" who are "not one of us" that has been rapidlily increasing in recent years is exactly the reason we are seeing the very same sentiments of the 1940s rearing their ugly heads right now throughout the world. I find it all so sad, and very scary. I'm in the media, and the media are complicit. Many of my colleagues have, or will have blood on their hands. It needs to stop. They don't even believe in half of what they say, its just that hate and outrage drives clicks, views and advertising revenue.
As for religion itself, rather than "religious devotion" sticking to a particular political or social belief... "Religious wars" aren't only between rival religion, they can just as easily be between people who dislike a certain faith or belief system through hatred, or who feel driven to wars by the extreme beliefs and actions of one religious group. What I'm saying is that hating someone because they are different to you is the problem, not religion itself. BUT many religions at least encourage distain towards non-believers. And that is dangerous. But being an atheist who calls out fundemental problems in religions is also dangerous. Argh.
The best thing to do, as many of us have repeatedly said is to work together to co exist, tolerate, and preferably even understand and help each other, despite our differences.
Ironically, the Harry Poter books are quite good at pushing this exact message. Are the Slytherin bad? No, they just think and act in very different ways to the others. In fact, each of the four houses represents different types of people vey well, and the overall balance bewteen the four is always even, for a reason. Slytherine are often suspected as being the "bad guys" but they are a vital part of the wizarding world and often turn out to be the secret good guys who save the day at the last minute. Harry and friends initially hate the Slytherin in the first book because they are different and they have a bad experience with one member of teh clan being a bit of a rude bully, and a Slytherin teacher is strict and "mean". When they think something evil and bad is afoot, they instantly blame the Slytherines. Of course its them. Its obvious. But it wasn't and infact the very person they acuse of doing harm was actually trying to protect them.
These ideas are delved into heavily as the books progress, as well as ideas of fairness, pushing ones own beliefs on other people, the dangers of assuming whats best for others and stepping in where you aren't invited and causing problems. Much of it reads like a centre left warning the left of not demonising the right, and even also as far as for the west not starting "freedom wars" that they don't understand the long term ramifications of. The fact Rowling went from understanding and expressing these nuances to slowly devolving into the very things she warned about is fascinating, but sad.
@LikelySatan Haha thats the second time one of your posts has made me laugh far more than it should do! Thats been my exact same experience. I've not logged into either FB or Twitter for probably a year now. Both are equally awful but for completely opposite politically toxic reasons. 😅
2016 certainly was a year that things started to fall apart both in USA and Britain, but I actually kinda think both Trump and Brexit were made possible by the existing conditions that allowed discourse around polarisation and "us vs them" mentalities that started before that. I'm NO fan of Trump, however part of me is very glad Hilary Clinton didn't gain any more power than she currently has, given the corporations funding her. Ugh the world is a messy place. Again, as per my above post, I can see the appeal in cosplaying as a teenage witch, fighting evil and creating unlimited abundance through magic that harnesses the power of the good in the universe that ultimately connects us all, once we get past petty differences, or ego and selfishness.
@Fangleman32 I hope your kids enjoy it! I've not played it yet, yes, for political reasons, but I definitely will at some point and I do not even remotely judge anyone who bought the game. The people who worked hard on it deserved to get paid and have it be a success. I wish someone would 100% buy out Rowling so she no longer profits from teh sale of merch etc, like Disney buying Lucasfim.
@Not_Soos I don't think this is the place to discuss that kind of stuff, but I completely agree with what you said about the real problem not being Rowling's original beliefs or concerns, but the way she's slowly morphed into someone spreading actual inflamatory and dangerous statements and poetntially inciting huge amounts hate or violence. Discussing nuanced points, finding the places we agree and disagree, trying to understand the concerns of the other side, and trying to find solutions so we can all live together peacefully and happily should be the first priority. Not "they diasgree with us, we should shun and stone them!" Both the right and left do this far too much, creating both echo chambers, and actual dangerous hatred.
Both my kids and my partner and many of my close friends are HP obsessives and for the longest time, even up until as recently as 2021 I was buying copius amounts of HP merch for them, taking them to the theme parks etc. Recently though, Rowling went from "someone who's opinions on one subject I strongly disagree with, but otherwise respect and at least understand why she believes what she is saying even if I think she's wrong" to "Oh no, she's actually leaned further into it and become someone I can't even think about supporting". Its sad. People should be able to disagree with someone without hating them. I don't hate Rowling, I just wish she didn't hate a significant portion of my friends and family.
That said, I still love Harry Potter and while I personally didn't feel comfortable to buy the game, I will one day pick up a second hand copy and play through it to cosplay as a teenage witch in a world that I and many people I love have enjoyed to the point its a part of their identity. They shouldn't feel ashamed about that, and for those of them that chose to by the game, all power to them. It doesn't really make them any more of a hypocrite than any of us are in one way or another. He who is without sin, cast the first stone... says the aethist who lives in a glass house.
@LikelySatan You are correct. The right pandering media is very very willing to suddenly get into bed with people they usually would usually be extremely hostile towards, as soon as they express just one opinion that they can jump on and say "SEE even the lefties agree with us!" or "This person we used to hate is now on our side!" Its just a circus.
However, the left pandering media does exactly the same just as blatantly. Its transparent, non-sensical, hypocritical and it shows that they all believe the general public to be stupid and manipulatable. I personally hate what all "news" media has become, regardless of the political agenda of the people and corporations funding it. I won't plug it here but I quite litearlly just "wrote the book on this". Its a subject I know depressingly well.
No-one is 100% right or left everyone will have different degrees of agreement or disagreement with individual topics. Turning the entire world into us vs them is never a good idea and as someone in the media msyelf I'm very, very careful about not fanning the flames of backing both the extreme right and extreme left into a corner, as all it does is create tribalism, extremism, and hatred. With that said... I love Harry Potter. But Rowling is absolutely a bigot. Screw her! 😂 I'm a hypocrite too! Grab the ukelele! All aboard the toxic gossip train!
@Not_Soos Again, the topic of your last one wasn't on my bingo card either! 😬 Its crazy what Harry Potter has come to be in this day and age, and what extreme topics suddenly jump up when young millenials just want to relive their childhoods, put on a pointy hat and pretend to be magic for a bit. You and I probably disagree on many things but you seem like we'd get on irl despite that. I am also very prone to disrailing comments sections accidentally by giving a personal annecdote that is tangeantally related to the topic, so I understand 😂
To attempt bring things back on topic, although I want to be clear I'm not trying to start a left vs right flame war and am posting this because I personally think its an amusing piece of writing regardless of your opinion one way or another, I literally randomly stumbled into this article about Hogwarts Legacy yesterday when searching google for something Sonic Superstars related. Its quite witty if you, like me, are a leftie liberal who can can take a joke at yourself: https://www.thegamer.com/hogwarts-legaxy-throw-people-under-the-bus-childhood-harry-potter-jk-rowling/
And again, to be clear, without wanting to start a war. I am a leftie liberal. Loud and proud. So its mildly poking fun at myself and my friend group, not trying to point score by dunking on the other side. For me, there is no "other side" we are all human beings deserving of respect and capable of calm, measured conversation.
This is not the heated political or philosophical dicussion I thought I'd experience under this article, but I'm impressed with below the line's ability to still surprise after all these years.
The comment section works in mysterious ways.
"sent from my iphone" 😂 I solemly swear that its up to no good.
@GalaxicGlobe Yes, assuming you want to explore each of the levels a bit and aren't a gaming god that can complete the entire game with no lives lost on the first run. My first run took about 7 hours (admittedly I was sleep deprived and forcing myself to stay awake so I think I died more than I usually may have! lol) but theres a whole other new game plus after than to finish the campaign properly and get the whole story. I'm sure with practice I could get it down to about 2 hours though, don't expect it to be unreasonably huge for a retro 2d platformer or anything. Its 12 zones of (mostly) 2 acts + bosses and mini bosses, and 3 types of special/bonus stages per act... then the same again if you do the 2nd capaign.
The acts are quite a lot longer than the average Sonic zone, but not long enough to overstay their welcome. I'd say 5 mins per act average is a reasonable expectation your first time. Bosses are another 2-3 minutes per zone, so if no deaths, 3 hrs for the first campaign, 6 for the full one. Add multiple deaths and attempts, and trying to find the portals for the emeralds, bonus levels & hidden medals, and 10 hours seems a reasonable expectation of value.
@somnambulance Yes I could tell that right from the start of the demo, when I first entered an area with two of the hedghog enemies, tried to attack them, and instead found out they were sat at a tabel havign diner together, and instead I just hear their conversation. Very neat. The world building just in that first section is brilliant.
@Woderwick Yes thats often the case with novels - I've actually been approached to write screenplays based on several novels and its often near to impossible because so much of the work is either completely impractical to film dues to overly ambitious visual effects or descriptions that work better in your imagination rather than on screen... or more often, impossible to film in a non-hackneyed way due to much of it being inner dialogue...
"as he looked at her, she reminded him of someone he previously knew. That kind of person was impossible to trust. Or perhaps his vision was clouded by the way things had ended. God he missed her. The light caught the woman's eye in a way that returned him back to earth with a bang. He had no idea what words had been coming from her mouth for the past minute - but boy what a mouth. He focused on her lips. No. Focus on the job. You're here for business not pleasure."
I meant that to be a terrible off the cuff example, but actually thats not too bad lol. Impossible to film without making a noir-esque voiceover or annoying inconsequential flashbacks though.
The reason I was semi-conspiratorial about the book being optioned then allowed to expire twice is because this commonly happens on purpose, with no real intention to ever make the movie, just to stop the movie being made by a rival company. If you have a major publishing deal for a novel, its extremely common to have multiple movie option deals offered to you even before the book is published. They buy the rights early for a small retainer FAR cheaper than they would pay if it was a successful property already, in the hope that one of the countless books they do this to will become a hit, and they have those rights for if they choose to use them. But for books that expose or allude to real life events that make the us governments, armed forces or establishment heads look bad, I have often felt that they buy the rights then sit on them to prevent the contents of the book becoming more accessible to the great unwashed masses.
While the difference in resolution may look noticable in side by side comparissons, especially in still pictures, its worth noting that the Switch version runs at 720p, the exact pixel for pixel resolution of the screen. It couldn't look any sharper if it tried, its as sharp as the hardware allows. The only "downgrade" that really matters is the lower resolution textures, but its so sharp and smooth in movement that it isn't noticable at all to me. I think its the perfect port and I'm very relieved that it plays so well. 60fps, 720p, no frame drops, no uneven frame pacing, no dynamic resolution changes. There aren't many multiplatform 3rd party Switch games you can say that about these days. Kudos to Arzest!
@HaileySheridon There is only one underwater level and if you take the upper path (ie are good at platforming and don't fall off) you avoid going into the water for almost all of it. Its definitely the best Sonic water level I've played and actually was a surprise highlight for me when I played it! it has some really great ideas and gimmicks that made it very fun and visually interesting.
For the character you mentioned that you want to play as, Amy has Sonic's ability that if she runs fast enough she can run accross the surface of the water, and she also has a double jump to make the tricky platforming easier... and of course Tails can fly. So if my memory is correct you should be able to basically avoid the water altogether except for the boss of that zone, which is quite fast as its a "jump up the platforms to get to the surface and hit Robitnik" type deal for the first half, and in the second half, the missiles he fires at you create slipstreams in the water behind them, which you can ride to move really quickly. Tails can actually swim in some Sonic games - I've not tested if he can in Superstars yet!
@Clyde_Radcliffe @betterman @Serpenterror I personally like depth of field effects for backgrounds, like selective focus in films or portrait photography, to bring the forground into focus and add realism as if it was shot with a real high quality camera with a low f/t stop lens. Its an impressive but pretty gpu intensive shader thats put on, the reason Switch doesn't have it is it would slow it down to a near halt, like the framerate in Links Awakening in certain outside areas.
However I have seen many many people moaning about the "fuzzy" backgrounds in the PS5 version and prefering the Switch version for this exact reason, which makes me laugh as I'm aware its meant to be a selling point, but I can totally understand why people would want everything to be tack sharp. For me, any time Shallow DOF is in a game it should have an accessibility option to turn it off, as not only do some people dislike it, for others it even gives them motion sickness or headaches, similar to VR, because its tryign to trick the brain into percieving genuine depth on a 2d image.
@abbyhitter Honestly, for the first half of the game I was genuinely feeling like it was a 10/10 and considering could it be my favourite Sonic game ever! Which I never would have expected I would feel. The second half was a little rockier though, but possibly because I felt some of teh experiments and gimmicks switched up the playstyle a little too much, and I just wanted "more sonic please" instead... and I dislike the very last boss. So I came down from a 10 to an 8.5. Its still extremely solid as a single player classic Sonic game though, best we've had at elast since Mania, maybe even since the 16bit days for some of the stages.
I left my own personal review in the comments here: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/10/sonic-superstars-gets-a-day-one-update-on-switch but I wanted to just say here that I asbolutely agree with this review, sounds like
@Olliemar28 and I had the same experience and opinions, pretty much beat for beat. As a classic Sonic fan wanting a single player experience akin to the Megadrive games, this nails it and I have very few gripes. There are flaws, sure, but the majority of egrigious ones are the lack of extras and the weak multiplayer and battle modes.
For me its an 8.5/10, so being kind I've rounded it to a 9 for this site's star system. I've bought Switch, PS5 and PC but so far have only played Switch portably, and it looks and runs great. Very, very happy Sonic fan right here.
This goes right up there with Sonic 2, 3&K, SMS 1+Chaos and Mania in the "games I will keep revisiting all the time for many years to come to try and improve my runs or Time Attack specific levels" staple, and while I enjoyed them, none of the handheld 2d sonics, or the sidescrolling parts of Generations, Colours or Forces made it into that rotation. Arzest done good.
@GalaxicGlobe I wasn't exactly going fast, as I was really trying to explore, but I managed to beat the whole thing (including the new game plus stuff) plus explored the battle mode and tried various levels with the other characters in about 11 hours.
You'll die a lot, especially the second time round, but theres infinite lives so you can easily power through it to see and unlock everything without the old "game over" frustrations of having to start all over again.
I'm sure once I get good at it and know the best routes and memorise where everything is, a full playthrough will be a couple of hours max. The bosses people seem to be complaining are "too long" get much faster once you know what you're doing and realise you can attack them more often than you initially think.
BTW for anyone thinking that I'm saying the game is short, I'm really not. The appeal in 2d Sonic games is coming back to replay them over and over, improve your times, use the Time Trial modes, find all teh secrets, etc. This is probably the biggest 2d Sonic game, but the campaign is a satifying length to play in one sitting, and doesn't outstay its welcome. Only exception for me is the end boss, which I find boring, long, and unfair, though there may be a trick to it that I'm missing.
@Gavintendo @halljames Several retailers are selling it for just under £40 physical, for all consoles. [edit] Haha as the post directly above me confirms is also possible for Mario! I got my Switch and PS5 versions of Superstars from Hit, same price.
@MirrorFate2 Yep! She's heckin' adorable and a really good character to play - takes the best features of Amy and Knuckles and mashes them together. And she turns into a dragon, and can then fly, so she's sorta like Tails too... hilariously OP, but great fun to play around with.
@Ristar24 Lookingforward to hearing what you think! I'm definitely more of a classic fan than modern, but I still buy and play every game and see teh ebbs and flos. Obviously excluding Mania, this is the closest I've felt to recreating what made those 8 and 16bit titles so great - far exceeds the sidescrolling areas of Generations, Colours or Forces, or any of the 3d sidescrolling handheld titles, imo.
@JohnnyMind I'm really glad you're enjoying it so far! One thing I guess I should have mentioned above is that while there aren't any real extras to unlock, there is an entire "new game plus" mode. Its not that different, and its basically playing through the same game again with some minor changes that make it arguably worse run (though certainly more challenging...), but there is a very nice surprise that makes it worth it which I won't spoil here.
I think for a full start to finish playthrough, Mania and of course Origins are better, but I think I'll replay many of the stages in Time Attack over and over in Superstars, so I can experience the bits I love, and skip the bits I'm not as keen on. I'll definitely get a tonne of replay value from it.
@Ristar24 Haha thanks. I know I talk too much about this stuff, but some people seem to enjoy my ramblings. Someone actually suggested I do one of those crazy 10 hour long "reviewing everything in a series" YT videos where I cover the entire history of Sonic games. I'm half considering taking a day to do just that, to celebrate Superstars, and why its important. Sonic's come a loooong way, and its been a very bumpy road. While its easy for people to say "oooh another ok-ish Sonic game" there's actually a definite recent uptick in quality, and while there are flaws, it gets the basics right and gives a good, fun, polished Sonic experience. Thats not something you can say about every title, and I want to encourage it... so I hope its a sales success, and being the same week as Mario doesn't hurt it too badly.
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Re: Wowie Zowie! An Elephant Mario Plushie Is On The Way In Early 2024
@Frogspree Haha you hush your mouth Alex is a national treasure!
Re: Wowie Zowie! An Elephant Mario Plushie Is On The Way In Early 2024
@Vexx234 Is that the size of a man with an elephant head? Or an elephant size but with a proportionate giant human body? I don't think I have enough room for the latter.
Re: Wowie Zowie! An Elephant Mario Plushie Is On The Way In Early 2024
The games not even out yet and I'm already starting to flinch everytime I see someone write "Wowie Zowie".
It was cute as a one off! Kinda funny even!
But please stop trying to make fetch happen. I don't want the game ruined by overexposure to cringe!
Re: Site News: So, Where's Our Sonic Superstars Review?
@Woderwick Great reply, really interesting, thanks! Yes sometimes its hard for me to be objective when I know people or am privvy to behind the scenes stuff, or are just more realistic about the business side over the art, because when billions are at stake you sometimes have to make those concessions. Its not just about making endless cynical money for "the man", of course each film is hundreds if not thousands of jobs for normal working class people.
From a personal standpoint I don't love all of JJ's work, though I agree Cloverfield was brilliant. One of my favourites actually. 10 Cloverfield Lane was interesting too, although he only produced that one. Lost is a very interesting case, I actually felt it started very strongly. The real problem was that the writers' strike happened and the tv company insisted they carried on making the show without its writers and showrunners. Absolutely ruined it and killed all momentum or planned continuity. The same thing happened with Heroes. Lots of potential needlessly squandered with both those series and many others. Thankfully, seemingly this lesson was learned and the same didn't happen during this recent writers strike, everything just shut down production rather than arrogantly carrying on with no writers.
Broadly, I agree with all you said about both Tarantino and Ritchie, though you are kinder to Ritchie's later work than I sometimes am. A lot of my friends worked on Rockanrolla and at the time I was dead jealous but I really didn't enjoy it when it came out. Something got lost in translation somewhere along that films journey I think.
Funny you said Lock Stock and Snatch felt like he was doing a British Tarantino. The reason Ritchie trained with Dov is because Tarantino was very vocal about crediting him with his career. Ritchie literally did the course because he hoped to emulate Tarantino and of course the association as a sound bite would be useful when raising funds, or in interviews. And then I did exactly the same a few years later, studying with Dov because of the useful soundbite that I have the same film teacher as them both! 😂 He's genuinely a great teacher though. Spike Lee and Will Smith have subsequently gone to him for advise on various projects they've produced. He knows his stuff.
Rodriguez is someone I admire a lot and yeah of course Rebel without a Crew is a wonderful example of exactly the type of zero budget guerilla indie filmmaking that is the stuff I'm most passionate about. Him and Tarantino work well together, though I agree Grindhouse isn't their strongest work, though I get what they were going for and they got the aethetics mostly right - for me the fake trailers were the best bits though!
Eli Roth is a mixed bag for me but I really liked the first Hostel film, and thought the second one was very interesting in that it essentially entirely remade the first film, but gender swapped which gave and extra layer of interesting social commentary about stereotypes of how women and men are marketed to and manipulated by the media, on top of what was already an interesting piece of social commentary on how Ameraicans opinions of foreigners and otehr cultures are manipulated by the media. The third one was really weak sauce though. A friend of mine recently got cast as one of the leads in a project he's helming so I hope its one of the better ones!
I agree that in an ideal world, parents would sit down and watch the original Star Wars trilogy with their kids before taking them to he cinema, but in Disney's eyes, thats still too big a risk. Many (most?) parents use Disney movies as proxy baby sitters and substitute parents, rather than sitting down and watching them with their children, and of course Disney were also hoping to get kids interested even if their parents weren't existing mega fans. Force Awakens was essentially what it had to be to justify that huge upfront cost to shareholders. Like I said, it was a film by commitee. Given that, I think the fact it was as entertaining, visually interesting and well made as it was (for example using actual practical sets, animatronics, droids etc rather than cheap quick CG, shooting on 35mm film to have better continuity with the look of the old films) its the best we could have realistically hoped for, despite its shortcomings.
Its just a shame that Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker didn't continue the story beats it was so clearly trying to set up for the arc of the trilogy. The three new main actors were great and had good chemistry, only for all that to be somewhat squandered by 2 more films that were absolutely intent on keeping them apart and not playing to their strengths. Again, I'm somewhat biased as Boyega was someone I sort of knew and had worked with before, and liked a lot. But I think him, Ridley and Issac could have made a really nice modern replacement for the "Luke, Leia, Han" dynamic, had the films followed the original plan JJ was trying to set out.
Re: Site News: So, Where's Our Sonic Superstars Review?
@Woderwick Interesting you mention Corman. My film teacher at the Hollywood Film Institute was Dov Simens who was a long serving line producer for Corman and therefore an expert on making films that came in under schedule and under budget to ensure they made a profit for the investors and therefore the next one would be funded. Genius teacher - cares less about the art and more about the business, but really good at being realistic about getting people to have a long running career rather than trying to create one great master piece and getting chewed up and spat out by the machine.
As well as being my film teacher, Simens was also teacher to some far less important names, such as Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie. Both of whom are directors who very liberally "borrow" from other films and shows. I'd be interested to know where you sit on them, but personally I think Tarantino especially is on the right side of "inspired by" and "homages" but joined together in an artful and cohesive way. Ritchie probably less so, but I'm very fond of his first two films at least.
And yeah, Mandy was wonderful but I have a blindspot for anything involving Nick Cage. Even when the films bad, its good because he's in it. 😂
[edit] "I did worry previously that I'd upset you with my previous comments. " Noooo not at all. If you ever did upset or insult me, I'd just tell you! 😄 I felt annoyed that I thought I'd typed a really good response to what you wrote, then wondered why you hadn't replied a week or so later, and when I checked, the post wasn't there. Must have gotten lost in a server update or something. I actually was concerned that you might feel I'd ignored your message, so I was glad when you mentioned Star Wars again and it reminded me.
Re: Site News: So, Where's Our Sonic Superstars Review?
@Woderwick "I don't recall the last time someone pulled an Alan Smithee although I know some people still do walk away from projects". I have done exactly this several times. Was a shame to do as they were projects that would have looked great on my cv too. Though I walked off not because of creative differences (which you expect when working on a studio picture. Always "too many cooks"), but because of extreme ideological differences, or discovering something really awful about one or more of the people funding the projects, so those were bridges I didn't mind burning, and can happily justify if anyone ever questions me about it. As you said, Hollywood can be a "filthy town".
As I've mentioned elsewhere on this site, I did turn down a $30 million budget movie as the changes they wanted me to make to the script were unconscionable to me. That was not an easy thing to do. Perhaps it was foolish. What I do know is if I was offered to direct something that young me would have been excited by - Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Marvel, Muppets and a handful more franchises, I'd gleefully accept knowing full well that studio interferance would absolutely sabotage everything I tried to do and the finished result would probably not be what I wanted. But still, its an honour to be associated and a rite of passage to be chewed up and spat out by the evil corporate machine! lol.
I'm too close to JJ to give any objective opinion on your critique (not that we are friends or anything, he probably wouldn't even remember my name! Might recognise me in person though) but I will say that he's a thoroughly decent bloke who has used his association with Star Wars to do an enormous amount of good. Force For Change was set up by him and I was one of the founder members, it raised many millions for unicef and I felt lucky to be involved with a lot of wonderful fundraising events that made a lot of kids happy, whilst doing genuine good in the world.
Your criticisms of Force Awakens are the most common and are perfectly valid - it very much plays like a "greatest hits" of Star Wars moments. But thats exactly what he was tasked to do by Disney, its barely his fault to follow orders. You've got to remember how long it had been since a Star Wars movie. They knew Force Awakens would be many kids' (and even teens') first experience of Star Wars and they tasked him to make something to instantly show and explain why its cool to a new audience of attention defecit (I say that with love) kids. As a parent it was a moment for me to take my own kids to the cinema to experience their first Star Wars film on the big screen, and see how excited and immediately invested they were. Suddenly it was their favourite new thing, they wanted lightsabers, droids and X Wing / Millenium Falcon toys, and it gave a window for me to explain the older stuff to them, and also for us then to be able to enjoy the theme park stuff together as a family. Force Awakens was never going to be a satisfying "Star Wars" film for long term fans, but as a "quick catch up" establishing the universe and themes for a new audience, it nailed the landing. Its very much a film by commitee, but thats par for the course when Disney had just chucked literal billions into buying Lucasfilm. It had to be a safe bet for the long term - IE onboarding basically 2 generations of kids who had no concept of what a "Star Wars" even was.
Rians film was the follow up, and tried to do a knee jerk to the criticisms you laid out, and instead made an "artsy, indie, subverts your expectations" kind of film, which purposefully shat on a lot of what was set up in Force Awakens, and managed to (in my opinion) actively damage or even disrespect beloved characters, and broke long standing continuity by trying to retcon stuff that to many fans was sacred. It was brave, but felt like a film made by someone who didn't even like Star Wars and was somewhat sneering at the fanbase. Its beautifully shot and edited though! Great cinematography whilst ruining our childhoods!
I'm glad you enjoyed Mandalorian. Boba Fett isn't up to the highs of that series, but I'd say Andor is actually better, and so far Ashoka is great, especially if you know the character already from Clone Wars / Rebels and can get invested in Prequel era lore. If anything, Disney's current Star Wars "problem" is not so much teh quality, but the quantity. There's so much, its hard to keep up, or for it all to feel "special" when there is such an abundance of it. But overall the TV series in both live action and animation are of a good quality, I just think they should slow down a little and pace them out.
I feel even more certain that if you enjoyed Madalorian, then you'll find things to like about Rogue One. Its very similar, but obviously higher budget and adds to the films we grew up enjoying in the same way Mandalorean does.
Re: Site News: So, Where's Our Sonic Superstars Review?
@Woderwick Now. Star Wars. I'm glad you brought that up. I realised the other day that you'd mentioned the Disney Star Wars stuff before and I'd replied, but for whatever reason my reply was lost. Which annoyed me as of course I'm rather tied to that brand in several ways over the last decade. First off, the reason Lucas sold to Disney is because he was sick and tired of the fanbase constantly harassing him because they didn't like the Prequel trilogy and felt he'd "ruined their childhood". Its only in recent years when kids who grew up with the prequels are now adults and very vocal online that people are reassessing them. It can't be overstated how much hate there was towards them and anything to do with them for many years. I was lucky enough to be invited to Celebration this year, and Hayden Christensen (who nearly took his life over the constant hatred) stepping on stage for the first time in over a decade and getting a standing ovation was an absolute moment. He could barely speak and it was so lovely seeing the fans old and young bandying together to make him realise he wasn't hated and it was actually nice to have him back.
The LARP hotel you mentioned was a great idea but excecuted terribly. It was like $5000 for 2 nights, and during that time you couldn't even experience Disney World else you'd have wasted your money. It was an underwhelming claustrophobic 100% indoors experience (not even windows) with a luxury price tag that meant only the richest of fat cats could afford it, and most of those people don't want to be part of "dinner theatre" style crowd interaction. If you weren't aware, it closed after only being open about 6 months.
That said, the Star Wars land ( Galaxy's Edge ) is great and you can full on larp til your heart's content, drinking at the cantina, pilotting the Millenium Falcon, building a droid, getting assigned a Kyber crystal and being given lightsabre training with your custom blade. Its pretty cool. Movie producer friends of mine got married there, it was a trip. If you don't fancy a flight to the States, they are building it in Paris next year - I'll be able to get you in free 😋
You mentioned before that you got a distaste for the Disney Star Wars after watching Episode VII / Force Awakens and didn't watch beyond that, and were somewhat annoyed with Rian Johnson for leaving his indie routes to make Last Jedi. I have many opinions on the Sequel trilogy. They are far from perfect, but I can see merit in all of them. The biggest problem is that they AREN'T a trilogy. They are 3 almost unrelated films. Each one has a miriad of issues, most of which come from trying to please the increasingly fractured fanbase. A single director with an arching vision for all three and the confidence to just make what they wanted to would have been far better. But Disney had so much money riding on it all, I think it was a safer bet in their minds to at least try and appease the fanbase, which meant each film was very different to the last to try and course correct what people complained about in the previous entry, and each time they went too far in the opposite direction.
I'm biased because I know too many people both on camera and behind the scenes, and I know the passion and love that went into creating even the smallest details. I'd be hard pushed to say that I think they are all "good" films but each one has elements that are amazing and absolutely worth experiencing as a Star Wars fan, and they add real value to the canon. You just have to look past all the obvious cringe, mistakes and plot holes. Similar to the prequels, theres really good stuff hidden in there amongst the not so great stuff. I concentrate on the bits I like.
One point I should make is to somewhat stick up for Rian Johnson (even though their film is the one I like the least, by a long margin). Basically what Disney (and all other big studios) do with a franchise picture (ie ones that people will go and watch because of the brand) is look to the indie space to hire talented and well regarded people from lower budget movies and offer them a chance at a step up the ladder. The reason for this is they are much cheaper to hire than a big name director, and that big name (Speilberg or whatever) would have no impact on whether people would pay to see the movie. Every big franchise film will have people from the indie world picked to direct it. I myself am a fiercely independent "starving artist" type who is often head hunted for hollywood stuff nowadays and its very likely that I'll agree at some point if I'm lucky enough to be asked to direct something my inner child would have been excited by. I see nout wrong with it, its not selling out. Hollywood vs indie is often a "one for me, one for them" ethos. If you only make art, you'll fall out of favour and run out of money very quickly.
I completely understand you not feeling like watching any of the sequel trilogy, or even the recent shows (most of which are quite well recieved, comparitively. Andor is especially good).
However, the one that I was the most involved with, and the one I very briefly act in and mentioned that I actually wrote a line which went on to be very famous and a springboard for doing good in the world (and for which I recently went super viral accidentally when I did an AMA about for the official reddit) is Rogue One.
Even without bias, I'd thoroughly recomend you watch Rogue One. Not for me, I'm barely in it. Blink and you miss me, almost all of what I did was chopped out. But instead because its by far and away the best thing Disney have done with Star Wars and the one thing almost all fans universally agree is actually really good.
The reason for this, is its not a "Star Wars" movie, as you'd traditionally expect one to be. And its not part of the new continuity. Its essentially "Episode 3.5" and the film that bridges Revenge of the Sith ( Ep 3 ) to A New Hope ( what we oldies used to call "Star Wars" ). Its a very cleverly written film that very satisfyingly fixes a few of the most egrigious plot holes in both those films, and helps make the continuity between the prequels and the original trilogy make sense.
But its also more than that. I say its "not a Star Wars movie" in that it doesn't start with an exposition crawl. There are no lightsabre battles. Barely any ships or dogfights (exception one super cool one thrown in there which many think is the best in the series). Its a human film, about the ethics of war, global politics, corruption, the fact that in life there are no "good guys" or "bad guys". It humanises the people fighting for the empire. It shows bad eggs in the Rebel alliance. And most importantly, it satisfyingly explains exactly why the Death Star was built with such an obvious flaw of a self destruct button thats just sat there, exposed for Luke to shoot, and how Leia even knew about it in the first fricken place! 😂
Both Gareth Edwards and Tony Gilroy (who essentially co-directed) are huge talented people. Again, Edwards (the named director) is someone who I came up with, him making super low budget indies and making visual effects freelance for the BBC before Hollywood scooped him up.
I think out of everything Disney has done with Star Wars, for better or worse, Rogue One almost justifies everything. And Lucas was never going to make another film anyway. I think overall, its a net positive rather than just letting it die. And likely, just as the prequels are now reasessed as many kids grew up enjoying them, the same will happen with the sequels. They are films made for kids, after all. It just rankles for us adults when stuff doesn't live up to our childhood memories. But its nice that it continues and is contantly reimagined - if a certain incarnation isn't to my taste, another might be - much like the Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Spider-Man et al (and indeed Sonic! See, we're still on topic!) its a mixed mag, but always being refilled and taking another stab at it. And some of the attempts are pretty cool.
Re: Site News: So, Where's Our Sonic Superstars Review?
@Woderwick Yes Alan Moore is certainly somewhat of a prickly character and I definitely don't agree with everything he says or does, though he's someone I greatly admire. I've had the pleasure of attending a few talks by him and briefly spoke to him on one occasion, seemed a thoroughly decent chap. I agree on your assesment of Constantine too.
As for Harry Potter, you know, that was my opinion when the first book came out and everyone was going mad over it, adults included, and I just didn't get it and was quite snobbish about it. I thought the writing wasn't much special and the themes and settings were all thoroughly recycled and played out from a million other teenage witch/wizard school retreads (say the person making a game about a young witch. Oh well. Its a trope I'm fond of). I only paid much attention as my kids were the right age to enjoy the movies and each one improved over the years (I even worked on the last 2 in a tiny capacity).
However, as the books went on and she became more bold with the political and social commentary that she felt she could get away with squeezing in there and I thought it became a lot more interesting. Some of it is quite ambiguous and clearly meant to make young people think of the grey areas of difficult subjects. One example would be Hermione wanting to free the elves from what she percieves as slavery, but actually they were quite happy with the arrangement and when they were free'ed, some of them couldn't handle a life with no purpose, especially when all they had ever experienced until that point was servitude. It can be read all kinds of ways, some of which are not very favourable to Rowling (certain races love to be oppressed! It makes them happy!) but others of which could be percieved as a commentary on the Western "democracies" going to war to "free" certain countries with very different regimes, but leaving them a splintered mess and causing terrorist groups and extremeism to flourish etc... the fact these conversations happen within universe and doesn't give clear direction or easy answers is pretty bold for a kids book. Things like the balacning of the personality traits of the 4 houses is very well done too - would have been very easy to just make Slytherin the bad guys but thats not the case at all, and actually is easy to read as a societal allegory for all different types of people with oposing views and ideologies having their place and being an important part in society regulating itself.
Upcoming rant on Star Wars which I'll type in a separate reply!
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
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Re: Hello Kitty And Friends Happiness Parade Dances Its Way Onto Switch Next Week
@HeadPirate I love the story of your friend's daughter. I think the younger generations are far more switched on to this stuff than we are. Whenever I speak to my own (now adults in early 20s) kids, my younger friends and colleagues, or even just watching younger youtubers who make philosophical or political videos, I always feel I learn something from them and become a better person in the process. I'm a work in progress, as are we all, but I feel the world is in good hands with younger millenials and Gen Z, once the old guard have retired or moved on.
I'm actually a HUGE Peanuts nerd. I have what may be the largest collection of Peanuts books in the world, pretty much everything that exists in multiple languages 😂 Schulz is a hero of mine. Japan's fascination with Snoopy, and the fact he's often associated with Sanrio is very interesting to me. Obviously I can see visual similarities.
Thats also super cool about those Sanrio male characters. I LOVE magical girl anime, my favourite anime and magna of all time are actually Tokyo Mew Mew and its various spinoffs (which included a gender swapped version btw).
My own gender identity is pretty fixed - I think I look like a man, I feel comfortable being a man, I've never felt like I shouldn't be a man. I like being "the man" in my relationships, if I can say that without sounding toxic. But its always been a running joke for close friends and my partners that if I could click my fingers and turn into a woman, I would. Or that I'd like to be reincarnated as a woman. I don't have any kind of gender dysmorphia or feel that I'm trans. Its just that my personal preferences for aesthetics in most media lean more towards things that are gender coded as "for girls" by society.
But frankly, I think many men feel that way. And I think its completely unrelated to your biological sex, or your sexuality, or anything else. People just like what they like, its personal taste like what food or music you enjoy. Why police it?
I'm sorry that you struggled with certain things that were hard to deal with when you were a child. I'm very happy you seem content and at peace with yourself now, and I think its wonderful you share your story and help others. 💜
Re: Hello Kitty And Friends Happiness Parade Dances Its Way Onto Switch Next Week
@HeadPirate Thank you for sharing all of that. You sound like a lovely person and someone I'd really get on with. With my current position in the media I really do try and help share these kinds of talking points as much as possible, as well as being open about mental healtrh, my autism, anything that can help normalise things which society has previously not talked about but which are normal parts of life, which has previously lead to people growing up feeling different, or even alienated and alone. While I personally am cis-het I'm very passionate about supporting and helping the LGBT+ communities, especially vocally trans and non-binary people who seem to be the current punching bag of certain sections of the media. I have servearl friends and family members in that comunity who are some of the most lovely people you could ever meet, demonising them makes ZERO sense to me.
Forgive me if I wrote about this in the other thread or if you've seen me mention it elsewhere, but I actually wrote a superhero movie about a male superhero who is quite right leaning, and a non-binary female coded superhero who is left leaning. They both have entirely different ideas of what it means to be a "hero", have their own ill judged predudices against people they disagree with, and also both have their own mental health issues and insecurities based on different struggles they had in their childhood, but also their fixed ideas about what a real "man" or "woman" should be and how they should present to society. Thats all subtlesubtext to a fairly standard but exciting action movie, the crux of which is of course they are antagonists to each other in the begining but by the end have realised that they should team up despite their differences, and can actually learn and grow from each other.
Fairly famously I was offered $30 million budget to make the movie. But they wanted me to implement many changes, not least of all making the non-binary identifying character female, and having them fall in love and kiss at the end of the movie. They also wanted to change some of the racial, sexual/gender, age and body type diverse casting choices that I suggested, and remove some of the jokes and political commentary (mostly anti capitalist sentiment from some characters). All of this was to ensure it would sell to more countries worldwide and make a higher box office return. I refused, and now its a $1.2 million budget indie film instead of $30 million from a major studio. (and yet people on the right think hollywood is "woke". Not at all, they just chase whatever trends they think will be most profitable in specific markets - and "full woke" is not something that sells worldwide).
As it was my first chance to helm a "blockbuster" that is being translated into many languages and shown worldwide, and will have a decent marketing budget so it might get seen by millions of people, I truly feel its really important to make a film that might positively impact people's lives by seeing representation of them on screen. Whether representation of actual minorities and underrepresented or disempowered groups, people on the extremes of the right or left with toxic views, or just people with internalised self hatred for not living up to what society has told them they should be, I hope I'm going to be giving some comfort and perhaps food for thought for some people, while helping them to see others as fellow humans that are a valid and useful part of society.
Re: Review: Sonic Superstars - A Fine, Authentic-Feeling Return That Runs Great On Switch
@WanzerAce Really nice review, I 100% agree with all your points / opinions. 😀
Re: Reminder: Sonic Superstars Free Amy Rose Outfit And LEGO Sonic Skin Now Available
You remember Sonic? Well now he's back! In LEGO FORM.
I'm biased, but Amy (and especially her cutscene interactions with Trip) are the absolute highlight of Superstars for me. She's animated so wonderfully with the way her facial expressions and anime-esque emotion signifiers change to fit the circumstances. Its all perfectly in character for her. The same can be said of the 2d animated parts. I love the fact we have the choice of the two dresses for her too, both look great! ...However!
I really was hoping that there would be unlockable costumes or accessories to customise all characters... but so far the medals you collect can only be spent on customising your robot avatar thingy for the battle mode, which I really don't care about and it's all a bit half baked anyway.
I expect we'll eventually get different outfits, skins and looks for the main characters that we'll have to buy, like there were for the recent Monkeyball game. And like a sucker, I'll buy them all. Yes, I'm aware I'm a part of the problem. Sorry.
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
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Re: Nintendo Takes Action Against Super Mario Bros. Wonder Mod Videos Featuring "Swearing Flowers"
While I'm really looking forward to Mario Wonder, I know that immediately upon booting I will turn off the talking flowers. I was hugely relieved when it was revealed that you could do so. Even from the very first reveal in the Direct I thought to myself "if I can't turn those off, that will severely grate on me". Personally, I find the fact that the modders made the flowers self aware and angry that everyone calls them annoying a stroke of creative genius 😂
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
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Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
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Re: Site News: So, Where's Our Sonic Superstars Review?
@Woderwick Yes, Bladerunner and Fight Club are rare but textbook examples where I prefer the take of the films to the original novels. As at least somewhat of a comic book guy, I find the attempts to adapt Alan Moore's work are often very hit and miss, more often than not make a pretty decent film, but miss the point of the graphic novels. Though I really like how V for Vendetta came out, even if its not too faithful. The movie version of Watchmen was visually interesting and action heavy but I feel like it missed the point entirely.
I feel directors putting their own politics into movies can be great, but flat out should not be a thing in movies based on novels written by otehr people. It feels a violation. It does occasionally produce great results though!
Theres been a somewhat heated debate in the Hogwarts thread on this site today, but one thing that I will say in favour of Rowling (even though I strongly dislike her recent heel turn) is that I know from many discussions with people who were privvy to the deals that she was SO ADAMENT on being involved with EVERY decision in both the movies and the theme park adaptations of her work. She turned down enormous amounts of money for both from Disney because they wouldn't let her have creative control. They even tried to outright buy the IP at one point and she flatly refused. BAre in mind, when the first movie deal was being negotiated, she was not a rich woman by any standards and Disney were offering VASTLY more money than what was basically the mid budget indie taht the first film was. She turned down serveral million because she had faith that she was the best person to make sure her ideas were reproduced faithfully.
Re: Sonic Superstars Gets A Day One Update On Switch
@HammerGalladeBro Thanks for this info, I was hoping this would be the case. I felt sure it would be, but glad to have confirmation.
@JohnnyMind Thanks! Yes I'm still really enjoyign it so far. I can see me getting a lot of replay value from it for years to come, which is what I was really hoping for. 😀
Re: Hello Kitty And Friends Happiness Parade Dances Its Way Onto Switch Next Week
@HeadPirate Aww thank you again for sharing, that is a really good version, Kitty playing the piano and dancing was so cute!
I wasn't sure of your gender before and wouldn't have deemed to guess, but as is probably obvious by my username, I'm a male. Not that it should really matter, but for context, a cis-het male, who grew up in the 80s and early 90s. Your story about your parents feeling Hello Kitty wasn't gender appropriate really hits home for me, I don't know if you saw it but we had a long discussion about similar experiences when I was young and how this has lead to changes in my adult life and the media that I now create in my day job to try and counter balance these issues here: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/10/nintendos-new-animal-crossing-new-horizons-themed-switch-lites-are-out-now my comments start at #63 and were prompted by the ongoing conversation people were having about the pink vs blue Switch Lites and if it was gender coding by putting the pink one as Isabelle's and the blue one as Timmy & Tommy's.
I'm autistic and to me, characters that I love become "real", so the thought of Kitty having genuine regrets about alienating people by being advertised towards girls is quite sad! But I think its really good that Sanrio nowadays embraces everyone who loves Kitty. She was always meant to be a symbol for happiness and kindness towards others. Those shouldn't be seen as only "feminine" traits, and neither should "cuteness" or "appreciating nature - flowers, animals etc". Though, often all of those things are used that way to gender code characters, which leads to many of my favourite characters in franchises being the girls - for example my favourite Sonic character is Amy, precisely because in the wider canon she is so loving and caring of all the little animals that Sonic rescues from the badniks, and looking after the plants and flowers in their world. But that doesn't mean she doesn't also kick butt when she needs to protect her friends! She's the perfect character to me. But she's the pink hedgehog, not the blue one, so some people think I'm weird for liking her. Thats so nonsensible. Ah well.
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
@Lilligant562 "Starfield could have been Epic, but invisible walls, sparse planets, lack of Free-flight and diluted gameplay in general was a humble lesson I feel" I definitely feel the same way. The emphasis on fast travel ruined any feeling of "epic space exploration" for me, and the vastness was ruined by blandness in the same way the launch version of No Mans Sky was. However, that game has massively improved in recent years, I don't feel Starfield will/can change much. Maybe I'll be proved wrong, we'll see.
I try and stay away from BOTW and TOTK discourse as I'm not sure I can confidently state an opinion - I bought both, they are obviously high qualiy products, but neither was really "for me" and I'm nowhere near finishing either of them. For me, the most fun Zelda games are the more linear puzzle/dungeon based games. Links Awakening is actually my favourite but I like all the 2d ones, and only about half of the 3d ones. Its all a matter of taste of course though, and I totally understand why to some people BOTW or TOTK are "the best game ever". With a few notable exceptions, I tend to gravitate more to smaller but more clearly focused games that I can replay many times.
That said, certain open world games that are set in areas that I actually want to cosplay as living in do appeal to me - such as what I wanted Starfield to be, and how I hope I will find Hogwarts Legacy when I eventually play it.
Re: Hello Kitty And Friends Happiness Parade Dances Its Way Onto Switch Next Week
@HeadPirate Oh wow thank you for sharing that, I was grinning from ear to ear! What a perfect rendition of the song and I love how they animated her to be "3d 2d"... its perfect! 😻 In my headcanon, thats how Kitty looks and moves IRL, simple circle shadow and all! 😹
When I was little, I didn't know much about Hello Kitty but I loved the Miffy books and always felt the two were similar. Becoming a fan of Japanese culture through reading early Super NES magazines which covered the importing scene, and getting into manga and anime through them, I became aware of Hello Kitty as a brand and thought it was cute, but never saw any of the related media. "Hello Kitty Paradise" was on TV when my kids were growing up and we watched it together and always loved the theme song. Its the first thing that comes to mind when I see Kitty. But of course I know the Popcorn song too from absorbing more Japanese media over time.
Re: Review: Super Mario Bros. Wonder - The Best 2D Mario Since The Super NES
@Rykdrew @NeonPizza Its very interesting to me to read the constant stream of polar opposite feelings on things like lives systems, having to restart entire levels, and permadeaths in games. Also of course, difficulty levels in general being made easier.
I can see both sides. I'm certainly a little put off by the comments about Mario Wonder being purposefully made easier than the classics, which I still hold in extremely high regard. Im my opinion, no Mario game since has managed to top Mario 3 or Mario World. The NSMB games felt easy, formulaic and uninteresting by comparison to me. High quality products, but none of them made me feel like I was being rewarded for practice or skill. I walked through all of them and felt little reason to go back... whereas I still regularly replay the older titles.
Playing Sonic Superstars the other day for the first time, which has infinite lives, and just kicks you back to the last respawn point upon dying. I really enjoyed it, died a TONNE but kept plowing through til I'd completed the game in one sitting. It took embarassingly more hours than a flawless playthrough would, but I enjoyed it a lot and left with a great impression, and knowing that I'd want to return to try and improve my run.
I've been reflecting since then about certain moments in the game that if I'd have been thrown back to the begining of the first act after losing at a boss, I might have rage quit or called it a night, and came back later... but maybe I wouldn't have ad the patience to feel compelled to return. I don't have as much free time as when I was a kid, and there are far more options for games and other media to take my attention. I think I would have enjoyed the first experience less and had a worse opinion of it. So a difficult game with infinite lives and respawns isn't necessarily a bad thing imo - Meatboy, Celeste, etc spring to mind.
These exact thoughts and considerations are things that myself and my partner have been hugely mindful of with our Hazel game - we want it to literally be accessible for kids or people that have never played a retro style platformer before, to hopefully get more people into the genre. But its important to us for it to also be really challenging and rewarding for long term fans of the genre, not "just a kids game".
In the end, we reached the conclusion that the only real way to do this and 100% satisfy all caps was to have several difficulty settings with different levels of safety and things that help you. The most difficult setting just gives you 3 lives, permadeath, and no way to earn more. The easiest has instant respawns, infinite lives, plus hints, tutorials for even the most basic of actions, extra platforms to make the harder jumps more forgiving... and of course, theres a range of more reasonable difficulty settings in the middle which do have lives, continues etc and you can earn more through good play or buying them with ingame currency (earnable not microtransations!), or give the option to earn continues where you can keep going from the begining of the most recent area but your score is reset to 0. Highscore tables for all difficulty modes, and both completion time and pointts scored are saved, as well as noting how many lives were used etc, all to hopefully give a reson to come back and play again, challenging yourself to beat past performance, rather than just walking through story mode on easy and never coming back.
Balancing all of this, and planning the level designs to encompass it all has been a big challenge. I think it will help it appeal to a braoder range of people though, and maybe some of the first timers who start with the easiest mode will feel motivated to play again with a harder difficulty once they are comfortable - and of course there are unlockable rewards for doing so. 😀
Re: Hands On: Born Of Bread Is A Cut Above Other Paper Mario-Like RPGs
@umbreon_sylveon Sure, but Wii, DS and Switch all had enormously bigger user bases than the N64 or Gamecube did. You didn't include the numbers for Colour Splash, which was on Wii U - I bet that one had numbers closer (or very likely less than) the N64 and GC entries?
That said, I agree with you. Its very important that both TTYD and SMRPG remakes sell big numbers to show Nintendo these types of games are popular and will be accepted by the casual Mario audiences as well as a hardcore vocal niche audience. I think they will both do well, and possibly out-sell Origami King, despite being remakes towards the end of the life of the console.
Re: Hands On: Born Of Bread Is A Cut Above Other Paper Mario-Like RPGs
Looking at the title, as a Brit living in France and trying to learn as much of French culture as I can, I joked to myself "an RPG about bread? This has got to be French!". Not actually being serious.
(For context, where I live there is an annual competition to find the best baker in the city, and the prize is for them to bring their fresh baked bread to the President every morning for a year. Its widely covered in the national media, and seen as the highest honour. Bread is srs-bizniz round these parts, naturellement.)
Opened the article, looked at the art style - those are the most French looking character designs I've seen in a while. By the way, that's not a bad thing, the graphics look beautiful. A cut above others in this genre. I really love Manfra (French Manga) and BD (French graphic novels), and grew up with Franco/Japonais collaborative anime, and the Franco/Belge equivalents. Its just a very distinctive style that you can see a mile off if you are experienced in it.
I read the article, watched the video, it looks wonderful. I'm really hyped to play this game, more traditional paper mario style games are always welcome, and this looks top tier.
But, no mention of its origins. It was bug-(fable)-ing me. (or "pain-ing me" ?! ) so I looked up the studio, making a bet with myself that it was from French designers. Turns out... Français-Canadien. Bien sûr! 😅
I work in Canada a lot, all over - from Vancouver to Toronto and even deep into Alberta. The only part of Canada I haven't been to, nor do I know any people from, is the French speaking part. And when I ever mention to my Canadian friends that I want to go there, and it will be good because I speak French and live in France so I have things to talk about with locals... they respond to me that French-Canadians are "far more French than French people" 😂
I'm very excited to play this game. I hope there is a French language option with as many equivalent puns as the English. If so, I'll play it twice!
Re: Review: Super Mario Bros. Wonder - The Best 2D Mario Since The Super NES
"Keeps things relatively gentle in terms of challenge" concerns me as well, especially with the borderline sacriligious comments from the devs in the other thread basically saying they looked to the challenge old games as something to avoid and looked more to Odyssey. Um.
I've been assuming this would be an obvious 10/10 for me, but perhaps it won't. Still, I'm excited to play when it arrives, I'm sure it will be at least an 8/10 for me, probably a 9, if I enjoy it at least as much as I'm enjoying Sonic (which again is great but not quite perfect) then I'll be more than happy.
Re: Hello Kitty And Friends Happiness Parade Dances Its Way Onto Switch Next Week
Who loves flowers in the sun? Or a party just for one?
It's Kitty ... Kitty, Kitty! 😻
Who'll invite her friends along? They could hear her play a song!
It's Kitty ... Kitty, Kitty! 😻
If you don't know where she lives you've might of missed her, and her papa and her mama, and there's Mimmy, that's her sister. They're an itty bitty pretty kitty family, but even though they're kitties they're like you and me. Rainy days turn sunny funny wait and see!
This looks adorable. If it gets a physical release, I'm in.
Re: Round Up: The Reviews Are In For Super Mario Bros. Wonder
I am still very much in a "I want to enjoy Sonic as much as possible before moving onto Mario" state of mind, but I'm glad its getting good reviews, I never doubted that it would. I'm looking forward to playing it. A good 2d Sonic and Mario in the same month is just a mindblowing treat for me. Its the 90s again baybeeee
Re: Super Mario Bros. Wonder Devs Used The 3D Mario Games As Inspiration
So they were inspired by the 2d Mario games... to make it not like them at all? I hope those quotes lost something in translation as they somewhat dampen my hype for the game. I'm wanting something that feels like an extension of Mario 3 and Mario World... not side scrolling Odyssey. Oh well, I've bought it regardless and get my own opinion when it arrives.
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
@Lilligant562 Oh trust me the R/U conflict is another area where I'm disgusted in the conduct of both left and right media. I have vast first hand knowledge of gang violence in America (I first started off my career as a ghost writer for some really big American hiphop artists) but again I think we are both now trying to stop political discourse in this videogame thread, so I won't give my 2 cents. or 50 cents. Badumtish.
I agree the Switch is on its last legs. Most 3d third party games severely struggle to the point of farce. This was why I've been so delighted and outspoken about the Switch port of Sonic Superstars - sure it doesn't look QUITE as nice as the PS5 version but its beautiful and importantly runs at 60fps and a locked 720p resolution (the max res of the portable mode anyway) with no dymnamic resolution changes.
For Hogwarts Legacy, I feel that it could run ok, being the PC version has many detail options that can be lowered etc, assuming they do a good job of optimising it and don't rush. I actually fear that the load times may be the biggest issue. It will quite obviously be the "worst" version but for people who only own a Switch, or prioritise portability, I hope its as good as it can possibly be. Again, prioritising a fixed resolution and framerate would be the ideal goal rather than making it extra pretty for screenshots but a dog in the hand.
Of course, these problems are short term. We know that the follow up to the Switch is coming soon and is bound to be more powerful. My sincere wish is that its backwards compatible, and that the mirriad of games that have framerate and dynamic resolution problems will be able to use the extra power to run better, without needing "new versions" to be programmed and sold. Even some first party Nintendo games have trouble running on the Switch. Thats just a sad state of affairs. Its a good console with a great library, but the hardware refresh is long overdue.
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
@Not_Soos Thank you for your highly considered post, I agree with much of the sentiment. Sorry for taking so long to reply, my above post explains that!
As for choosing who or what to support to fit our own moral compass and/or chosen belief system. I agree that in a Western capitalist society we can never really live entirely ethically to our highest standards... unless we go off the grid and start our own comunes I suppose. And because these almost always either fail, or grow to the point where "some animals are more equal than others" and you get insular cults that grow to become dangerous for those within them. There are no easy / quick fix answers.
The reason I tend to take very strong hard line stances on certain things while letting others slide is because for 25+ years now I've been in the entertainment industry, right from the start dealing with some of the largest corporations, and richest individuals in the world. I have seen SO. MUCH. DARKNESS. Money and power corrupt absolutely, and the people who are the most drawn to it are often the most prone to low moral standards. And yes, this absolutely also applies in large religious organisations, especially the ones that get a lot of media attention or even run their own tv channels or buy out "news" groups etc. To me, thats not really a problem with religion per se, as it happens just as much with non-religious people. Its more a universal problem with elevating any one individual in society above a certain level of power and status, and also allowing any one particular corporation to gather too much power and influence.
As someone in the media, who works with large corporations, who has strong political and social beliefs, I'm absolutely disgusted by the current state of democracy, politics, religious discourse, social movements, and how all facets of the entertainment industry have allowed themselves to be used as pawns in this game of polaristaion, us vs them, turn the masses against each other, splinter them into little rival groups so that they won't realise whats causing the the actual problems, and even if they do, won't be strong enough to fight back. Bluergh.
Quite famously, I've turned down literally tens of millions of dollars in recent years either refusing to work on projects or change the nature of my own projects because I wouldn't feed into this ideology. I'm in the media because I love being creative, and I love collaborating with other creative people. But I'm not going to work on a film or make money for a company thats actively profiting from making the world a worse place for my children's children. No thanks. Sadly, even the people around me that I trust are slowly falling in numbers when its revealed they have dark secrets or have misused their power, and I become damaged by association. Its like a bingo card of which of my friends and colleagues will turn out to be a secret monster next. Its very painful. Perhaps I'm too trusting, but I also think its that they were good people that rose to a position of power and were tempted / believed their own hype. This is why I'm very happy to turn down huge monetary contracts that I feel would damage my personal integrity, I don't want to slip down that slope.
And when I said I "wrote the book on it" ( @gaga64 Thank you for your kind comment! ) I literally have written a book about this very subject, part autobiography, part whistleblowing every single little corruption and nasty systematic problems in the current media landscape, part manifesto of how I am trying to use my own power to change things and how I suggest others can do so as well, should they value the longterm future over short term dirty cash. It was meant to come out in August but I delayed it on purpose because of the ongoing Hollywood strikes and media revelations about another of my long term colleagues... to have released the book without going into these in depth would have been farcical. Should be out before the end of the year, and you'll see me promoting it a lot. Its called "Just Let the Girl Speak" - the line that I wrote for Rogue One which gave a voice to the underdog and saved the entire galaxy in the Star Wars universe. I am but a small voice in a massive hollywood machine. But by giving a voice to the under represented, minority groups, disempowered masses and equalling the playing fields of art rather than creating false idols of a handful, I believe we in the media can turn things around and actually have a net positive impact, rather than negative. [edit] I should note also that I'm not profiting a cent from the book, its all going to good causes and projects that I know are doing good. I never accept profit from anything Star Wars related, even my pay on Rogue One was donated.
And yes. "posted from my smartphone" 😂 my compromise there is that I always buy last year's model second hand, refurbished from a mom and pop shop.
And doubly... yes I did just go on a rant about why overly large corporations are the problem, whilst stating that I worked on a Disney movie. As I said above, we are all hypocrits... you just have to pick your battles. I also worked on the last 2 Harry Potter movies in a very minor capacity.
Wow, I managed to bring us back on topic! I'll try not to go on any more big political rants now, I feel somewhat of a sense of closure on what was previously said.
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
Sorry that I dipped out of this conversion earlier, it was like 8am and I hadn't gone to bed. Eventually I somewhat passed out! The below post does eventually come back round to having a point about Harry Potter, I promise. I also don't intend on continuing that particular subject as its far to explosive for a gaming website. But I think its important to state.
@Lilligant562 Well... without wanting to delve down that road too deeply, I think history would tell us a large proportion of that time was centered around one person's obsessive dislike for a certain religion... and those exact same sentiments still exist and within left v right discourse to this day, even being "debates" on "news" television channels at the moment, and are causing huge problems in the West and literal religious wars and terrorist oversees right now, which are bleeding heavily into my two dearly loved homes of London and Paris.
I wouldn't rise to Godwin's law to even mention this other than to say that the very issues of "us vs them" and polarisation of groups whether around religion, race, gender, political stance, idealogical views on any particular stance being made to feel like teams battling against the other side of "enemies" who are "not one of us" that has been rapidlily increasing in recent years is exactly the reason we are seeing the very same sentiments of the 1940s rearing their ugly heads right now throughout the world. I find it all so sad, and very scary. I'm in the media, and the media are complicit. Many of my colleagues have, or will have blood on their hands. It needs to stop. They don't even believe in half of what they say, its just that hate and outrage drives clicks, views and advertising revenue.
As for religion itself, rather than "religious devotion" sticking to a particular political or social belief... "Religious wars" aren't only between rival religion, they can just as easily be between people who dislike a certain faith or belief system through hatred, or who feel driven to wars by the extreme beliefs and actions of one religious group. What I'm saying is that hating someone because they are different to you is the problem, not religion itself. BUT many religions at least encourage distain towards non-believers. And that is dangerous. But being an atheist who calls out fundemental problems in religions is also dangerous. Argh.
The best thing to do, as many of us have repeatedly said is to work together to co exist, tolerate, and preferably even understand and help each other, despite our differences.
Ironically, the Harry Poter books are quite good at pushing this exact message. Are the Slytherin bad? No, they just think and act in very different ways to the others. In fact, each of the four houses represents different types of people vey well, and the overall balance bewteen the four is always even, for a reason. Slytherine are often suspected as being the "bad guys" but they are a vital part of the wizarding world and often turn out to be the secret good guys who save the day at the last minute. Harry and friends initially hate the Slytherin in the first book because they are different and they have a bad experience with one member of teh clan being a bit of a rude bully, and a Slytherin teacher is strict and "mean". When they think something evil and bad is afoot, they instantly blame the Slytherines. Of course its them. Its obvious. But it wasn't and infact the very person they acuse of doing harm was actually trying to protect them.
These ideas are delved into heavily as the books progress, as well as ideas of fairness, pushing ones own beliefs on other people, the dangers of assuming whats best for others and stepping in where you aren't invited and causing problems. Much of it reads like a centre left warning the left of not demonising the right, and even also as far as for the west not starting "freedom wars" that they don't understand the long term ramifications of. The fact Rowling went from understanding and expressing these nuances to slowly devolving into the very things she warned about is fascinating, but sad.
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
@LikelySatan Haha thank you my lycanthropic brother in the craft. So mote it be.
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
@LikelySatan Haha thats the second time one of your posts has made me laugh far more than it should do! Thats been my exact same experience. I've not logged into either FB or Twitter for probably a year now. Both are equally awful but for completely opposite politically toxic reasons. 😅
2016 certainly was a year that things started to fall apart both in USA and Britain, but I actually kinda think both Trump and Brexit were made possible by the existing conditions that allowed discourse around polarisation and "us vs them" mentalities that started before that. I'm NO fan of Trump, however part of me is very glad Hilary Clinton didn't gain any more power than she currently has, given the corporations funding her. Ugh the world is a messy place. Again, as per my above post, I can see the appeal in cosplaying as a teenage witch, fighting evil and creating unlimited abundance through magic that harnesses the power of the good in the universe that ultimately connects us all, once we get past petty differences, or ego and selfishness.
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
@Fangleman32 I hope your kids enjoy it! I've not played it yet, yes, for political reasons, but I definitely will at some point and I do not even remotely judge anyone who bought the game. The people who worked hard on it deserved to get paid and have it be a success. I wish someone would 100% buy out Rowling so she no longer profits from teh sale of merch etc, like Disney buying Lucasfim.
@Not_Soos I don't think this is the place to discuss that kind of stuff, but I completely agree with what you said about the real problem not being Rowling's original beliefs or concerns, but the way she's slowly morphed into someone spreading actual inflamatory and dangerous statements and poetntially inciting huge amounts hate or violence. Discussing nuanced points, finding the places we agree and disagree, trying to understand the concerns of the other side, and trying to find solutions so we can all live together peacefully and happily should be the first priority. Not "they diasgree with us, we should shun and stone them!" Both the right and left do this far too much, creating both echo chambers, and actual dangerous hatred.
Both my kids and my partner and many of my close friends are HP obsessives and for the longest time, even up until as recently as 2021 I was buying copius amounts of HP merch for them, taking them to the theme parks etc. Recently though, Rowling went from "someone who's opinions on one subject I strongly disagree with, but otherwise respect and at least understand why she believes what she is saying even if I think she's wrong" to "Oh no, she's actually leaned further into it and become someone I can't even think about supporting". Its sad. People should be able to disagree with someone without hating them. I don't hate Rowling, I just wish she didn't hate a significant portion of my friends and family.
That said, I still love Harry Potter and while I personally didn't feel comfortable to buy the game, I will one day pick up a second hand copy and play through it to cosplay as a teenage witch in a world that I and many people I love have enjoyed to the point its a part of their identity. They shouldn't feel ashamed about that, and for those of them that chose to by the game, all power to them. It doesn't really make them any more of a hypocrite than any of us are in one way or another. He who is without sin, cast the first stone... says the aethist who lives in a glass house.
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
@LikelySatan You are correct. The right pandering media is very very willing to suddenly get into bed with people they usually would usually be extremely hostile towards, as soon as they express just one opinion that they can jump on and say "SEE even the lefties agree with us!" or "This person we used to hate is now on our side!" Its just a circus.
However, the left pandering media does exactly the same just as blatantly. Its transparent, non-sensical, hypocritical and it shows that they all believe the general public to be stupid and manipulatable. I personally hate what all "news" media has become, regardless of the political agenda of the people and corporations funding it. I won't plug it here but I quite litearlly just "wrote the book on this". Its a subject I know depressingly well.
No-one is 100% right or left everyone will have different degrees of agreement or disagreement with individual topics. Turning the entire world into us vs them is never a good idea and as someone in the media msyelf I'm very, very careful about not fanning the flames of backing both the extreme right and extreme left into a corner, as all it does is create tribalism, extremism, and hatred. With that said... I love Harry Potter. But Rowling is absolutely a bigot. Screw her! 😂 I'm a hypocrite too! Grab the ukelele! All aboard the toxic gossip train!
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
@Not_Soos Again, the topic of your last one wasn't on my bingo card either! 😬 Its crazy what Harry Potter has come to be in this day and age, and what extreme topics suddenly jump up when young millenials just want to relive their childhoods, put on a pointy hat and pretend to be magic for a bit. You and I probably disagree on many things but you seem like we'd get on irl despite that. I am also very prone to disrailing comments sections accidentally by giving a personal annecdote that is tangeantally related to the topic, so I understand 😂
To attempt bring things back on topic, although I want to be clear I'm not trying to start a left vs right flame war and am posting this because I personally think its an amusing piece of writing regardless of your opinion one way or another, I literally randomly stumbled into this article about Hogwarts Legacy yesterday when searching google for something Sonic Superstars related. Its quite witty if you, like me, are a leftie liberal who can can take a joke at yourself: https://www.thegamer.com/hogwarts-legaxy-throw-people-under-the-bus-childhood-harry-potter-jk-rowling/
And again, to be clear, without wanting to start a war. I am a leftie liberal. Loud and proud. So its mildly poking fun at myself and my friend group, not trying to point score by dunking on the other side. For me, there is no "other side" we are all human beings deserving of respect and capable of calm, measured conversation.
Re: Nintendo Website Shares First Look At Hogwarts Legacy On Switch
This is not the heated political or philosophical dicussion I thought I'd experience under this article, but I'm impressed with below the line's ability to still surprise after all these years.
The comment section works in mysterious ways.
"sent from my iphone" 😂 I solemly swear that its up to no good.
Re: Review: Sonic Superstars - A Fine, Authentic-Feeling Return That Runs Great On Switch
@GalaxicGlobe Yes, assuming you want to explore each of the levels a bit and aren't a gaming god that can complete the entire game with no lives lost on the first run. My first run took about 7 hours (admittedly I was sleep deprived and forcing myself to stay awake so I think I died more than I usually may have! lol) but theres a whole other new game plus after than to finish the campaign properly and get the whole story. I'm sure with practice I could get it down to about 2 hours though, don't expect it to be unreasonably huge for a retro 2d platformer or anything. Its 12 zones of (mostly) 2 acts + bosses and mini bosses, and 3 types of special/bonus stages per act... then the same again if you do the 2nd capaign.
The acts are quite a lot longer than the average Sonic zone, but not long enough to overstay their welcome. I'd say 5 mins per act average is a reasonable expectation your first time. Bosses are another 2-3 minutes per zone, so if no deaths, 3 hrs for the first campaign, 6 for the full one. Add multiple deaths and attempts, and trying to find the portals for the emeralds, bonus levels & hidden medals, and 10 hours seems a reasonable expectation of value.
Re: Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 Taps Out Of Prior Release Date As Devs Announce Minor Delay
@VideoGameBoy I want a pumpkin spice Garficcino with my lasagna!
Re: Community: 28 Switch Games We Missed, As Recommended By You
@somnambulance Yes I could tell that right from the start of the demo, when I first entered an area with two of the hedghog enemies, tried to attack them, and instead found out they were sat at a tabel havign diner together, and instead I just hear their conversation. Very neat. The world building just in that first section is brilliant.
Re: Site News: So, Where's Our Sonic Superstars Review?
@Woderwick Yes thats often the case with novels - I've actually been approached to write screenplays based on several novels and its often near to impossible because so much of the work is either completely impractical to film dues to overly ambitious visual effects or descriptions that work better in your imagination rather than on screen... or more often, impossible to film in a non-hackneyed way due to much of it being inner dialogue...
"as he looked at her, she reminded him of someone he previously knew. That kind of person was impossible to trust. Or perhaps his vision was clouded by the way things had ended. God he missed her. The light caught the woman's eye in a way that returned him back to earth with a bang. He had no idea what words had been coming from her mouth for the past minute - but boy what a mouth. He focused on her lips. No. Focus on the job. You're here for business not pleasure."
I meant that to be a terrible off the cuff example, but actually thats not too bad lol. Impossible to film without making a noir-esque voiceover or annoying inconsequential flashbacks though.
The reason I was semi-conspiratorial about the book being optioned then allowed to expire twice is because this commonly happens on purpose, with no real intention to ever make the movie, just to stop the movie being made by a rival company. If you have a major publishing deal for a novel, its extremely common to have multiple movie option deals offered to you even before the book is published. They buy the rights early for a small retainer FAR cheaper than they would pay if it was a successful property already, in the hope that one of the countless books they do this to will become a hit, and they have those rights for if they choose to use them. But for books that expose or allude to real life events that make the us governments, armed forces or establishment heads look bad, I have often felt that they buy the rights then sit on them to prevent the contents of the book becoming more accessible to the great unwashed masses.
Re: Video: Sonic Superstars Side-By-Side Graphics Comparison (Switch & PS5)
While the difference in resolution may look noticable in side by side comparissons, especially in still pictures, its worth noting that the Switch version runs at 720p, the exact pixel for pixel resolution of the screen. It couldn't look any sharper if it tried, its as sharp as the hardware allows. The only "downgrade" that really matters is the lower resolution textures, but its so sharp and smooth in movement that it isn't noticable at all to me. I think its the perfect port and I'm very relieved that it plays so well. 60fps, 720p, no frame drops, no uneven frame pacing, no dynamic resolution changes. There aren't many multiplatform 3rd party Switch games you can say that about these days. Kudos to Arzest!
Re: Video: Sonic Superstars Side-By-Side Graphics Comparison (Switch & PS5)
@HaileySheridon There is only one underwater level and if you take the upper path (ie are good at platforming and don't fall off) you avoid going into the water for almost all of it. Its definitely the best Sonic water level I've played and actually was a surprise highlight for me when I played it! it has some really great ideas and gimmicks that made it very fun and visually interesting.
For the character you mentioned that you want to play as, Amy has Sonic's ability that if she runs fast enough she can run accross the surface of the water, and she also has a double jump to make the tricky platforming easier... and of course Tails can fly. So if my memory is correct you should be able to basically avoid the water altogether except for the boss of that zone, which is quite fast as its a "jump up the platforms to get to the surface and hit Robitnik" type deal for the first half, and in the second half, the missiles he fires at you create slipstreams in the water behind them, which you can ride to move really quickly. Tails can actually swim in some Sonic games - I've not tested if he can in Superstars yet!
@Clyde_Radcliffe @betterman @Serpenterror I personally like depth of field effects for backgrounds, like selective focus in films or portrait photography, to bring the forground into focus and add realism as if it was shot with a real high quality camera with a low f/t stop lens. Its an impressive but pretty gpu intensive shader thats put on, the reason Switch doesn't have it is it would slow it down to a near halt, like the framerate in Links Awakening in certain outside areas.
However I have seen many many people moaning about the "fuzzy" backgrounds in the PS5 version and prefering the Switch version for this exact reason, which makes me laugh as I'm aware its meant to be a selling point, but I can totally understand why people would want everything to be tack sharp. For me, any time Shallow DOF is in a game it should have an accessibility option to turn it off, as not only do some people dislike it, for others it even gives them motion sickness or headaches, similar to VR, because its tryign to trick the brain into percieving genuine depth on a 2d image.
Re: Review: Sonic Superstars - A Fine, Authentic-Feeling Return That Runs Great On Switch
@abbyhitter Honestly, for the first half of the game I was genuinely feeling like it was a 10/10 and considering could it be my favourite Sonic game ever! Which I never would have expected I would feel. The second half was a little rockier though, but possibly because I felt some of teh experiments and gimmicks switched up the playstyle a little too much, and I just wanted "more sonic please" instead... and I dislike the very last boss. So I came down from a 10 to an 8.5. Its still extremely solid as a single player classic Sonic game though, best we've had at elast since Mania, maybe even since the 16bit days for some of the stages.
Re: Review: Sonic Superstars - A Fine, Authentic-Feeling Return That Runs Great On Switch
I left my own personal review in the comments here: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/10/sonic-superstars-gets-a-day-one-update-on-switch but I wanted to just say here that I asbolutely agree with this review, sounds like
@Olliemar28 and I had the same experience and opinions, pretty much beat for beat. As a classic Sonic fan wanting a single player experience akin to the Megadrive games, this nails it and I have very few gripes. There are flaws, sure, but the majority of egrigious ones are the lack of extras and the weak multiplayer and battle modes.
For me its an 8.5/10, so being kind I've rounded it to a 9 for this site's star system. I've bought Switch, PS5 and PC but so far have only played Switch portably, and it looks and runs great. Very, very happy Sonic fan right here.
This goes right up there with Sonic 2, 3&K, SMS 1+Chaos and Mania in the "games I will keep revisiting all the time for many years to come to try and improve my runs or Time Attack specific levels" staple, and while I enjoyed them, none of the handheld 2d sonics, or the sidescrolling parts of Generations, Colours or Forces made it into that rotation. Arzest done good.
Re: Review: Sonic Superstars - A Fine, Authentic-Feeling Return That Runs Great On Switch
@GalaxicGlobe I wasn't exactly going fast, as I was really trying to explore, but I managed to beat the whole thing (including the new game plus stuff) plus explored the battle mode and tried various levels with the other characters in about 11 hours.
You'll die a lot, especially the second time round, but theres infinite lives so you can easily power through it to see and unlock everything without the old "game over" frustrations of having to start all over again.
I'm sure once I get good at it and know the best routes and memorise where everything is, a full playthrough will be a couple of hours max. The bosses people seem to be complaining are "too long" get much faster once you know what you're doing and realise you can attack them more often than you initially think.
BTW for anyone thinking that I'm saying the game is short, I'm really not. The appeal in 2d Sonic games is coming back to replay them over and over, improve your times, use the Time Trial modes, find all teh secrets, etc. This is probably the biggest 2d Sonic game, but the campaign is a satifying length to play in one sitting, and doesn't outstay its welcome. Only exception for me is the end boss, which I find boring, long, and unfair, though there may be a trick to it that I'm missing.
@Gavintendo @halljames Several retailers are selling it for just under £40 physical, for all consoles. [edit] Haha as the post directly above me confirms is also possible for Mario! I got my Switch and PS5 versions of Superstars from Hit, same price.
Re: Sonic Superstars: How To Unlock Trip - Movement, Abilities, Super Trip
@MirrorFate2 Yep! She's heckin' adorable and a really good character to play - takes the best features of Amy and Knuckles and mashes them together. And she turns into a dragon, and can then fly, so she's sorta like Tails too... hilariously OP, but great fun to play around with.
Re: Sonic Superstars Gets A Day One Update On Switch
@Ristar24 Lookingforward to hearing what you think! I'm definitely more of a classic fan than modern, but I still buy and play every game and see teh ebbs and flos. Obviously excluding Mania, this is the closest I've felt to recreating what made those 8 and 16bit titles so great - far exceeds the sidescrolling areas of Generations, Colours or Forces, or any of the 3d sidescrolling handheld titles, imo.
@JohnnyMind I'm really glad you're enjoying it so far! One thing I guess I should have mentioned above is that while there aren't any real extras to unlock, there is an entire "new game plus" mode. Its not that different, and its basically playing through the same game again with some minor changes that make it arguably worse run (though certainly more challenging...), but there is a very nice surprise that makes it worth it which I won't spoil here.
I think for a full start to finish playthrough, Mania and of course Origins are better, but I think I'll replay many of the stages in Time Attack over and over in Superstars, so I can experience the bits I love, and skip the bits I'm not as keen on. I'll definitely get a tonne of replay value from it.
Re: Sonic Superstars Gets A Day One Update On Switch
@Ristar24 Haha thanks. I know I talk too much about this stuff, but some people seem to enjoy my ramblings. Someone actually suggested I do one of those crazy 10 hour long "reviewing everything in a series" YT videos where I cover the entire history of Sonic games. I'm half considering taking a day to do just that, to celebrate Superstars, and why its important. Sonic's come a loooong way, and its been a very bumpy road. While its easy for people to say "oooh another ok-ish Sonic game" there's actually a definite recent uptick in quality, and while there are flaws, it gets the basics right and gives a good, fun, polished Sonic experience. Thats not something you can say about every title, and I want to encourage it... so I hope its a sales success, and being the same week as Mario doesn't hurt it too badly.