It's a thread! (Games discussion, etc.)

[Moge]

I prefer big Directs, only cuz i keep forgetting to tune in to these smalls ones.

Good showcase by Sony. Miles and Demon's Souls are clearly the banner titles in the launch line up. Given the situation the world is in, it's fine, and is leagues ahead of Microsoft's offerings (which is.... hm, not sure what their launch line up is). Although the XB Series having a phenomenal backwards compatible library is nothing to scoff at, especially during the launch period.

Not sure what to make of Final Fantasy XVI's unorthodox art direction. It's very plain-looking, but i can't say i hate it after so many years of Nomura FFs since '97. It very much looks like FF 11 or 14.

[JG]

Not sure what to make of Final Fantasy XVI...

When I was writing my post I very nearly said something to the effect that Square Enix needs to stop scattershotting so many projects and get existing projects across the finish line before starting the next one.
a) Their development timeline is much longer than other companies - DQ11 and FF7 Remake both took 5+ years.
b) They've had way too many titles of insignificance in the last 10 years (theatrythm games for example)
c) They've had very obvious flaws discovered by users that should have been caught in playtesting in some recent games. (DQB2 and FF7 Remake)
d) Support for existing games currently on the shelf is exceptionally poor. (DQB2 for example which didn't even get a full month of support following its PC release, and is still being sold despite not working for 10-20% of buyers. Also, lots of Japan-specific content.)

Now, I'll concede that a mainline Final Fantasy is a key project for them, but if its coming in 2021, then they need to get their 2020 act together. Offhand I would anticipate it no earlier than November 2021, and if I had to put money on it, I'd say Spring 2022 is more likely. It just feels like they've made too many announcements of late to have confidence in meeting release dates. Even before Covid-19 they had games like FF7 Remake and Trials of Mana slip.

[Moge]

You're not wrong when you say their support for existing games has been disappointing. The Steam release of Nier Automata for example never got a patch to fix its most glaring issues despite being a financial success on the platform. Thankfully, those issues have been more or less been fixed by the fan community. I don't mind they're pushing out so many "titles of insignificance"; that's a sign the company is in a healthy state to take risks. Some of those risks end up paying big time, as in the case of Nier and Octopath. DQB could probably be lumped in there too. Very disappointing however they flubbed up the Crystal Chronicles remaster.

Aquiring Bethesda is a very huge and unexpected catch for Microsoft. Considering so much of Bethesda's IPs propelled to stardom on the various Xboxes, it makes sense for them to be aligned with Microsoft.

[JG]

Bethesda brings some heavy hitters to potentially exclusive Xbox and PC platforms.  That's a big deal.

But Microsoft's history of buying up gaming companies has generally backfired. Too many of them get bought up and then stop releasing anything, or slow to one release every several years as opposed to every other year before being bought. See Fasa Interactive, who by my count published 8 games between 1997 and 2003, then got bought and published one more game 4 years later, and no Microsoft-produced games from that IP (Battletech, Mechwarrior, and Shadowrun) in the last 13 years since. That's horrible mismanagement of the investment. And they've done it to several other companies in the last few years, who have yet to release anything since being bought.  I don't expect Bethesda to suddenly stop releasing games but I wouldn't be surprised if Fallouts and Elder Scrolls and Wolvensteins/Dooms stop coming out every other year and slow to every 3 to 4 years.

So I put it as great move for Microsoft, maybe not so great for Bethesda fans.


Speaking of remasters... some Super Mario 3d All-Stars thoughts:

Super Mario 64: Ugh. This was fine for its day, and good on the small 3DS screen, but its looks awful in HD.  They've rounded the corners so things like Mario's pants and gloves look lumpy rather than sharp, and improved some textures so the Toads have discernible faces and the trees look a little more natural, but overall this game badly needed some graphics remastering, not just curvature and texture enhancements. And the camera, while great for 1996 is terrible for 2020. Inclusion of this game sours me greatly that the better looking Super Mario 3D Land isn't part of the set. It looks and plays bad compared to its other 1990s counterparts getting remasters (Crash Bandicoot for example)

Super Mario Sunshine: This does look better. The sunrays and shadows seem more natural, as does water and the goopy oil you have to clean up. Suprisingly its not as difficult to play as I feared, as the original controls were custom designed around the Gamecube's unique button layout. But I do still wish for the option to invert spray direction. Only pilots press down to aim up and pull back to aim down. Even shooting games don't do this nonsense anymore by default but apparently Nintendo demands that it remain the hardest Mario game by a wide margin. And the camera still ends up on the other side of walls too often without the ability to see where Mario or obstacles are, nearly ensuring death or reset. (It even got me on the very first Bianca Hills level with the red coin near the waterwheel - took me over two minutes to guess my way into the correct triple jump to get out of the spot.)

Super Mario Galaxy: Being the newest they didn't need to tweak the graphics as much but what they did though looks great. Very easy to play though two controller differences make the original Wii game more natural to control. In the original you had to point the Wiimote at screen to capture star bits and shake the Wiimote to shoot though star catapults. You can still aim with the Switch controllers or Pro Controller but its harder, or touch them on screen in tablet mode though this removes your hand from buttons. Y button can also be used to shoot through the catapults though, which is a helpful change to those of us that don't want to be shaking things all the time. Of the three I'm enjoying this one the most despite the unconnected nature involved in picking up star bits. Galaxy 2 is coming as DLC. (Which gives me real hope for 3D Land as DLC as well. Don't know if I'd pay for Galaxy 2 DLC but would for 3D Land.)

Rumor is next Nintendo Direct comes October 8, covering the Mario and Pokemon DLC, and will feature some more details on the Breath of the Wild sequel.  Someone has leaked name as "Breath of Evil' but c'mon, that's worse than 'Dark Tombs' that was proffered months ago. Given the confusion between Wii and Wii U (and now Xbox One X and Xbox Series X) I can't imagine Nintendo repeating the same mistake again and naming two things so similarly, or using such simple terms like "evil" when there are far better ones available (malice, wickedness, corruption, etc.)

[JG]

Rumor is next Nintendo Direct comes October 8, covering the Mario and Pokemon DLC, and will feature some more details on the Breath of the Wild sequel.

Actually came a day early, and as Treehouse Live video drops for Pikmin 3 Deluxe (who cares) and Age of Calamity (joy!)  Unless they're doing a Direct today after all.

See live.nintendo.com, and these Youtube videos: Champions Unite! and Untold Chronicles from 100 Years Past

It looks amazing. These two in particular have me very excited:

[Rai]

I wasn't expecting to see Purah. BotW made it seem like it would be a thing that her past appearance would be left to the audience imagination (the secret photo item that's only described from the inventory screen, the way her voice comes from off camera in the Champion's Ballad ending). With the previous set of teasers, I was so sure that the tiny Guardian drone traveling with the party would be Purah's proxy. I guessed that they would keep the gimmick going by having Purah only interact with the other characters remotely through that thing, teasing having her on camera sometimes, but she would always be covered up by something the foreground, making a real running gag out of it.

So much for that. Glad to see her, but I guess that means the only reason she wouldn't be shown in BotW was because they didn't feel like designing her back then. They went to the trouble of adding a young Sidon model for the Champion's Ballad flashbacks, so it seems like they certainly could have shown young/old Purah as well.

[JG]

Well I suppose you can still fascinate about what old Purah looked like before her experiment went wrong and she reverted to child form.

And I guess the developers had to do a little bit of designing. They're locked into how Link, the Princess, the King, and the Champions all look, so the only freedom they had was with the Sheikah.  Impa needed to (and does) look a lot like Paya, and except for being taller and with a fuller head of hair Robbie looks pretty much the same - Purah offered the most flexibility, and except for the three pointed glasses and hairpins she looks least like her BOTW version.  Compare to first Hyrule Warriors where many of the characters got some rather unique design elements (Link's blue scarf, Impa's breastplate and cumberbund, Ruto's bracelets, etc.) or even the Dragon Quest Heroes series where the characters didn't change as much but had finer details (Jessica's dress for example)

But I wonder why she's not wearing the glasses on her eyes in any of the three scenes. Why does child Purah need them but young adult Purah does not? Did her eyes not revert to younger form in her experiment? (I.e. 6 year old body but 120 year old eyes?)

[Rai]

I'd bet there are some younger elder Zora designs that are likely to pop up as part of this game too. There's also bound to be a Yiga commander that may just be a younger Koga, or else a predecessor that references his appearance. There's also some room in the cast for a few all-new characters that would have been "forgotten" by the history we know. Either way, I'm sure we haven't seen all the new designs just yet.

I never thought much about what aged Purah would have looked like, since if Impa and Robbie are any indication, it would just be the same proportions as her child form but more wrinkly.

[Munemune]

The latest livestream did show the mission objective of the Urbosa mission they played had a win condition of "defeat Master Kohga", and the one art book said that the Kohga we face in BotW inherited the name.

[Moge]

Gonna have to echo the rest of the internet's sentiment that Young Impa's design is pretty disappointing given her legacy. Young Purah and Robbie's designs are absolutely fantastic. Didn't even noticed Young Purah should be wearing some lenses.

Anyone planning on getting nextgen hardware next month? I'm not too interested personally, but i absolutely will nab an Xbox Series controller. Everything i've read and heard about the dpad on that controller makes it sound it could potentially be the greatest dpad ever. As someone who's playing an awful lot of King of Fighters and retro games at the moment, a good dpad is absolutely priceless to me.

[Rai]

So, Kohga confirmed. I'm not a fan of him looking/acting exactly like his successor 100 years apart, but then again that kind of cross-generational parallelism is par for the course in the Zelda series, so I guess they get away with it. It's just a bit underwhelming that the answer to "What were the Yiga like in the Age of Calamity?" would just be "exactly like they are in BotW".

The mysterious Ganon herald at the end of the trailer is probably going to be a new character. Nonetheless I want to shotgun guess that it could be Agahnim, because he's due.

[JG]

Mipha's father and the elder of the Rito should certainly return. They were both around during the calamity.  The Goron elder might have been young then, but I don't recall him saying he witnessed the calamity.  There's an old grandpa at the farm east of Hateno village halfway up the path to the Tech Lab who could be old enough but I'm not sure if there's away to casually link the two characters without dropping massive hints that they are one and the same. Hestu the giant Korok could be around and fight with his maracas ("Expand-a-band-band... Weapon SMASH!")

Zelda's white stallion should certainly make an appearance. Its long dead by BOTW but the pure white horse is described as its descendent. Epona is one of Link's "weapons" in Hyrule Warriors, so giving the horse to Zelda as an alternate weapon in Age of Calamity would be a nice change from the first game.

I'd like to see Kass's mentor in the game (which Champions Ballad establishes as a Shiekah, not a Rito.) Another musician would be interesting, especially if he plays a different instrument than the accordion (or several - a one-man band ensemble would be fascinating.) He'd also make an excellent playable character using music-based attacks like Zelda's Wind Waker/baton weapons from Hyrule Warriors.

The Great Fairies might return, but its got to be worked in such a way that they get sealed before the end. Whether the dragons do or not is questionable. They could be worked as alternate weapons in similar fashion to Link's Great Fairies from Hyrule Warriors.

Not sure what people were expecting of Impa. She'd look like Paya and does. And she's got that straw hat hanging on her back. If people were expecting her to be short and squat then they aren't only ignoring the change we see in Robbie, but the Impa of Skyward Sword as well. Shiekah apparently change quite a bit as they age.  (And I rather like her cloning attack - that's a nice nod to the Sheikah elder fight at the end of the DLC bonus temple.)

I like the fact that the Yiga dropped Bananas as crafting materials.  I don't mind one bit that this detail is the same in both eras.

Given the loading screen shows only the seven main characters (Zelda, Link, Impa, and the four champions), plus the Mystery Guardian, I have doubts there will be more playable characters than that.  Maybe it only shows the characters you have unlocked, but it seemed to me to be the standard loading graphic.  Still seven is s small number for one of these games. Hyrule Warriors came with 16 in the base game and 13 more in DLC for a full roster of 27.  Dragon Quest Heroes had 12+1 DLC and its sequel had 15. Fire Emblem heroes has 25 base and another 9 via DLC.  So a cast of seven is remarkably small. It looks like at least Link will have multiple weapons (one-handed and two-handed) but remains to be seen if the others have more than one weapon, which would help mix things up a bit. DQH had it about right at 15 choices between Warriors/Weapons (with each character having a single weapon type) while Hyrule Warriors has way too many (about 40 total choices, with Link having a whopping seven)

A few characters I thought would make excellent DLC are the Castle Chef, who throws pies and cakes at enemies, and Kilton Senior, who uses a Fang in one hand and Bone in the other, giving inspiration to his future son's monster shop (named "Fang & Bone" if you don't remember.) Both would have fairly remarkable outfits/designs. Some Hyrulean characters/roles form earlier games could return as well, like the Mailman and Bombchu shop operator, who become playable characters or provide alternate weapon choices.

[Moge]

I'm flabbergasted NOA is publishing the first two Fire Emblems.

It's not every day you see the Big N localize their Japan exclusive retro games. Sure, there was Earthbound Zero, but that was already finished many decades ago, and then there's Sin & Punishment. A good chunk of that game was already in English anyway.

[JG]

But wasn't the first Fire Emblem translated for DS back in 2008/2009? So its not exactly groundbreaking.

And I'd forgotten how buggy, unbalanced, and poorly playtested the later maps (Twilight and Termina) of Hyrule Warriors can be. Ugh. The main campaign and both the Adventure and Master Quest maps are pretty well balanced, but beyond that the stages are either far too easy, or ridiculously too hard, without enough of them in the middle. Nothing worse than rolling along in a game at normal progression (by this point, between level 60 and 80 for most characters, and approaching 100 for Link) and suddenly reaching a steep cliff where a single hit ruins your chance of further advancement. If one hit does 8-10 hearts of damage and I need to remain under 4 to advance, then I need to roughly double my level, and jumping from level 60-80 to 140-150ish is easily a 15-20 hour investment. And that's for one character - it has to be repeated for a good 15 more characters at minimum to ensure it doesn't happen a few stages later. Maybe this flaw is fixed in Definitive Edition for Switch, but both the Wii U and 3DS versions are spoiled by it.

As a result I'm suddenly less enthused about Age of Calamity. Seems like all the Omega Force games I own have some serious flaw in them that are evident in playtesting. Either they're rushing development, not doing thorough enough testing (or testing only at max levels and making poor guesses on how to scale enemy strength), or abandoning the software without ever fixing fatal bugs (Hyrule Warriors can and does crash a Wii U, DQB2 can and does crash a PS4, and DQB2 for PC has a critical flaw in its save state routine that causes it to be nonfunctional for way too many players.) On the bright side Wikipedia says the Zelda Team from Nintendo worked a lot more closely with Omega Force this time than with Hyrule Warriors. Hopefully this means a Nintendo level of quality and playtesting.

[JG]

The Age of Calamity demo is out and answers a few questions about how they're going to make the story work when the outcome is known. Seems to be a time-travel alternate-history avoid-fate scenario. Someone data-mined the demo code though to reveal the four BotW era champion-adjacents (Prince Sidon, Yunobo, Teba, and Riju) are playable characters though so there seems to be some back-and-forth time travel involved. If the data-mine is right it indicates Master Kohga and Ganon are both playable, too, which means you either get to play as bad guys in some chapters (like original Hyrule Warriors) or the alternate history is even worse than the Calamity and the bad guys help out to prevent their own destruction, too. King Rhoam and a Sheikah Monk are also apparently playable, but not Robbie or Purah. You may also get to pilot the Champion vehicles, too, but not in the demo.

Demo is a little short in my opinion. Two field battles and two short target battles, with about a half dozen supply-the-items quests. About an hour tops, about 8-10 minutes of which are video. It shows the gameplay, but there doesn't seem to be a strong hook in the demo other than the see how the story pans out. Very easy - allies won't even die against strong monsters like Moblins (though they won't defeat them alone either) and it adopts the ability to direct your allies to certain locations on the field from Hyrule Warriors Legends than the original left out (and made some scenarios exceedingly hard for the need to constantly rescue your allies instead of moving them to safer locations.)  Its got some problems though. It has the typical "important dialogue while you're busy" problem most games of this genre don't solve very well but at least it updates your quest markers so you aren't stuck or confused by later dialogue. And sometimes the loot bounces out of the play area and becomes uncollectible if monster is defeated on the edge. Its also got some crates, gates, and arches that look like they're destructible or can be walked though but aren't, so its sometimes hard to tell what is fixed terrain and what is destructible or allows mobility. The outposts aren't square like in the original though and are more naturally shaped (sometimes being a Bokoblin tree fort.)

Nice touch: The little companion guardian speaks in toots and beeps remeniscient of R2-D2.

Second nice touch: Robbie's description is "Genius Eccentric." Purah's is "Eccentric Genius"

Not so nice touch: Impa wears too much blush. Her cheeks are extreme pink to the point of being distracting in the videos.

[JG]

My grades for the Black Friday* game sale offerings, now that the major game retailer's ads are out.

For foreigners, Black Friday is typically the last Friday in November, falling a day after national Thanksgiving holiday, and the somewhat-official start to Christmas shopping season. As such, retailers seek to put out their very best deals of the year to snap up as much money from consumers as they can. As the season goes on, consumers usually have less and less money to spend (having spent it already) so maximizing deals on the opening weekend is the goal to achieving maximum profit. The end result is an effort to one-up each other, with some retailers getting burned by advertising sale prices that aren't very impressive when compared to their competitors. Why is it called Black? Because of the somewhat false impression that retailers operate "in the red" (losing money) for most of the year, and then finally start operating "in the black" (making profit) during the Christmas shopping season. Red and black are the colors of ink used in the past for ledgers to indicate expenses and income - i.e., loss and profit.


Best Buy: A-. Not as stellar as years past but leading the pack with the most deals this year. Trials of Mana for Switch at $19.99 is my #1 game item deal of the season.

Walmart: B. The prices for what we see is fine, especially some fantastic Switch game deals. But unlike most years where they show us the side panels of all the stuff they'll have for sale, all we see is front covers and notes that more will be available online. So its hard to tell exactly what deals can be found until next next week.

Target: D+. Good prices for the PS4 and Xbox, but its a small selection. Since Toys R Us went out of business, Target's ad last year and again this year has gone heavier into other toys to try to grab that share of the market, with less focus on video games. This means what they do show needs to be great. And unfortunately they've blown it. They've been badly burnt on the Switch deals, where they priced things for $39.99 that Best Buy and Gamestop offer for $34.99 and Walmart for $30.

Gamestop: F. Hoo boy. There's really not much to salvage here, as their prices across all three widely available platforms are consistently being bested by the other three by $5 (and some by $10), except Switch where they are even with Target or in a few cases better. They do beat Walmart and Best Buy by $3 on the new Avengers game (at $26.99), but its an in-store only discount. This year, its probably worth $3 to avoid a crowd and order it online with free shipping, unless you're taking stuff to trade. But unfortunately, this is not the year to trade: most years they offer an extra 10 or 15% in trade value, but that's not stated in the ad this year. There may be another deal or two in their ad that bests the other three, but none of them caught my eye.


Besides the Trials of Mana that I'll be getting, other attractive deals (to me) are Death Stranding PS4 for $20, Ghost of Tsushima for $40, and Bioshock Collection for $20, but these three are available multiple places. And if you're a Switch fan, those Walmart $30 deals are quite juicy, with some decent games like Luigi's Mansion 3, Link's Awakening, Mario Maker 2, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses amongst the selection.

[JG]

Sounds like Sony may have dropped the ball on the PS5 and built it with an inferior heating design such that it can never achieve its maximum rated performance. The lack of sufficient fan vents on the sides or rear, a centrally placed fan as opposed against an edge, and apparent heat-trapping ability of the plastic panels was noted months ago, but now that people have taken them apart they are surprised to see no heatsink over or even near the memory chips and a big steel plate covering the motherboard rather than aluminum. The poor design of cooling for the memory may be the Achilles's heel and cause a lot of games to run short of 120fps (that otherwise go 120 on Xbox Series X)  It has an excellent fan, but its on the opposite end of chassis from the memory. I'm sure Sony isn't planning to release a PS5 Pro or PS5 Slim anytime soon, but they may need a small hardware revision to fix some novice issues. This is shaping up to be on par with the disastrous decision Microsoft made with early Xbox 360s to bend (bend!) a riser board under the CD tray because designers didn't measure component sizes appropriately, resulting in the well-known Red Ring of Death once thermal expansion eventually caused the riser board's PCB to wear out (my first 360 died for the same problem.)  There will probably be some aftermarket kits appear soon to modify PS5s to run cooler with some kind of heatsink over the memory that is cooled through the expansion bay port, but hardcore gamers may need to choose between hard drive expansion and cooling.

[Moge]

Not sure about the PS4, but back in the PS3 days, Sony continuously improved the internals of their hardware without telling anyone. I fully expect them to do the same thing with the PS5.

Can't believe Age of Calamity has sold 3 million already, which is very astounding for a Musou title

Probably gonna pick up the Steam version of Trials of Mana down the line. Can't pass up the mod support.

[JG]

Can't believe Age of Calamity has sold 3 million already, which is very astounding for a Musou title

I think people want to see the story more than the game.  On the story front, its very good. As far as a game, even a musou, its rather disappointing. Worse than Hyrule Warriors and either Dragon Quest Heroes games. Most enemies are way too easy and the goals are either defeat some boss monster or navigate to certain location, without the variety the original Hyrule Warriors gave you. Second story battle against the Guardian (in the demo) was pretty hard, but since then its been rather smooth sailing. I'm about level 26 or 27 now, 5 or 6 levels below "Recommended Level" for each stage and easily passing them, except one for which I got careless exploring and simply ran out of time rather than being bested by an enemy. Some of the enemies (like the extremely predictable Molduga) should have been much harder. There is a difficulty setting (Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard), but Normal is proving to be too easy. And frankly I haven't seen much to indicate Hard would be more difficult except enemies having higher HP and doing more damage, or maybe some more of them, but unless they coordinate better I can't see how they'd be any more difficult to dodge and attack. The only challenge I'm getting so far is when I get two or three Moblins attacking at the same time and no super attack to thin them out. Two simultaneous Hinoxes or two Lynels I could foresee being a serious problem though.

[Rai]

I haven't had a lot of time with AoC yet and I'm taking it a little slow. I did try the first stage with each of the difficulties to get a feel for which is right, and the only difference seems to be relative damage values. I think Normal is fine for getting through the story, and I'll think about replaying at the higher difficulties afterwards. I wasn't really expecting the gameplay to be all that engaging, and the promotional stuff mostly focusing on the story and characters backs that up.

Korok hunting feels like a bad fit for this game. In BotW, it was a reward for exploring at your own pace, but in a game that's all about urgently pushing you from one objective to the next, breaking off to comb every obscure corner of the map feels uncomfortable.

On a more positive note, I appreciate the way sidequests were implemented. It's basically the same menu-based character management, but presented in a way that helps flesh out the world nicely. The world-building is really what I'm here for. Enough so that it does bug me when they're a little careless with the details, like depicting pre-ruined map areas as the same flooded swampland, and presenting stables as if they were the same thing in both eras.