Lurker > Kenri

I never really figured out SMO's movement. It felt very finicky and unpredictable to me in a way Mario usually isn't (though I didn't bother to really research how it works which maybe would have solved those problems if I had). The Galaxy games (and BotW, for that matter) felt way better and more immediately intuitive to move around in IMO.

Kenri has beaten Star Wars: Dark Forces

Okay so I pretty much marathoned the rest of the game today, until I hit the final level which is a rather brutal difficulty spike, mostly just because it's so long. I probably should have just gone to sleep and tried it again fresh tomorrow but instead I powered through and beat it on like the sixth-ish try, not counting ones where I reset because I lost a life too early. My hot tip is to get really really good at fighting the Dark Troopers, and also to play very conservatively. (Also, make sure your alt-fire works -- apparently it's a known issue that a lot of control schemes fail to set it correctly, including the one I was using for Steam Deck, and you'll really, really want the final gun's alt-fire.)

Overall I liked this game a lot. The objective-based nature of the level design means it's not as mindless as some of the other Doom clones/boomer shooters are, and there are definitely areas that need polish (and small frustrations that add up over time, like the respawning enemies), but I had a really good time with it despite all that. And the Star Wars flavor is on point, if you're the kind of person who cares about that -- it's hard for me to remember the last time I really cared about any Star Wars media beyond just thinking "yeah that was good I guess" but this definitely brought out the old Star Wars fan in me.

Breath of the Wild and it isn't even remotely close for me

Safety bump, probably nothing for me this month though :/

Played through mission 6 of Dark Forces. Still liking it (aside from the goddamn sewer level) but I do wish there were either quicksaves or objective markers, because it's very easy to not know where to go and lose a bunch of lives experimenting. I appreciate being refilled on lives each mission though, that's a QOL feature I don't typically expect, especially from older games.

Lopen posted...

Enjoy your $20 carton of eggs as people still work 4 jobs

incredible indictment of our economic system

masterplum posted...

... You think Developers should be paid 5-$600,000 a year?

Nope, but I do think it would be an effective way to stop someone from working multiple jobs.

masterplum posted...

Unfortunately bringing in people once a week or so is probably necessary to make sure people don't have 4 jobs going on at the same time. The alternative would be upping surveillance but I would much rather come in once a week than have my company spying on me all of the time

Maybe they should just each pay 4x as much so there's no incentive to work 4 jobs? But I'm also not really sure why this is a problem that needs solving, who cares what people are doing if it's not affecting their work?

BlackMageJawa posted...

I think part of the reason for this is that "We toppled the evil ruler and installed a good one in their place" makes for a neater resolution than "We toppled our entire system of government, I'm sure this new one will work out better".

You can establish that the new king/queen is good by having them be a good character. It's much harder for an RPG to establish the relative benefits of a democracy in the middle of a dungeon crawl. Sure, most of the audience probably would consider it to be an improvement, but if it's not part of the story, it's still going to feel like a loose end.

You could always replace the bad monarch with a good president or something. But generally speaking I think you're right that it makes for a neater story not to go down that road unless it's the entire crux of the plot.

Leonhart4 posted...

Which is still kind of the other end of the spectrum of most RPGs...!

In practice not really because 3/4ths of the routes are still explicitly about a good-ish kingdom fighting an evil empire.

All of 3 Houses' stories are basically "monarchy bad but empire good" which might technically fit this topic but definitely feels wrong.

I've been wondering this myself for a while and I can't really think of one, though that doesn't mean none exist.

Fire Emblem was what got me to start thinking about this since that series very often does "monarchies are bad" but then tacks on "with some exceptions" or "in practice only" or whatever to avoid actually committing to a hard-line stance.

tazzyboyishere posted...

Simultaneous dual releases were disallowed (PS4/PS5, XBONE/XSX, and WII U/Switch), which didn't allow BotW, and MK8 was determined to be eligible for both gens 8 and 9 since it is still being heavily updated. Nominators had the option of nominating MK8 but the majority seemed to feel it would be a better fit in the next tournament, and games aren't allowed to appear in multiple contests.

Makes sense, thanks!

tazzyboyishere posted...

I think some are upset because I didn't allow Switch exclusives, but we probably got a much more interesting contest because of it

I didn't really follow this contest so sorry if this is a dumb question, but were Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 also disallowed despite being on WiiU? Seem like weird omissions otherwise.

ChichiriMuyo posted...

The one 15 years ago . . . created a massive new flood of (mostly bad) reality tv shows.

I don't think this is true? Reality TV as a genre was popular already anyway and my instinct is that it wouldn't have been practical to scramble to produce a bunch of new, otherwise unplanned shows in such a short amount of time. Reality TV doesn't mean "you can just crap it out" even if the results feel like they should indicate that.

I started Dark Forces and proceeded to spend like an hour trying to get it to work on Steam Deck. It booted but the controls didn't work. Anyway it turns out the problem was that I'm a dummy because after trying to edit the DOSBox config and etc to no effect it turned out they did work with essentially default settings and I was just having issues because ???

I did the first two levels and this game is super fun so far. The presentation values are way higher than I expected and the game just feels very Star Wars-y. Even the weapon bloom feels like Star Wars.

Also I appreciate how shooty Kyle Katarn is.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/1/5/AACm-yAAEcxP.jpg

Honestly I think Kid Icarus could work fine, maybe even better than things like Kirby and Metroid. You don't need to play Kid Icarus to enjoy a movie about wacky takes on Greek mythology.

That being said it would have to actually be a good movie, you definitely can't lean on name recognition to make 40 billion dollars with Kid Icarus the same way you can with Mario or Pokemon.

Oh yeah Drapion is a good pick for this. Eternal mystery.

I didn't realize Dark Forces was a Doom clone. For $2 I might give that one a shot too.

Ponyta is such a good shiny. Yeah Legends kinda devalues it but oh well.

Solid Pokemon for in-game too, I overlooked it for a long time but Rapidash really came through in my SoulSilver run.

ChichiriMuyo posted...

Yeah, they will not even give you free shipping next time. Without insuring the package all the risk is on you even if it's their screwup. I have a hard time thinking of any other business that operates in such a fashion

airlines

Probably none of these in May but Zelda eventually