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Movies & TV / Re: All Things Netflix! Coming Soon: The Netflix Experience, Live and In Person!??

« on: October 26, 2025, 09:47:15 PM »

Alright, let's cross off 2 more Netflix shows off the never-ending list, starting with an anime, Delicious in Dungeon.

This one had some Anime of the Year talk going around about a year ago, and having watched all 24 episodes of the current season I just have to ask..."really?" This show is repetitive as hell, with Every. Single. Episode. of the show's first half having your standard D&D crew discovering a monster, killing it easily, and then eating it. It's always an easy kill, and the food is always great. Nothing ever goes wrong.

At the halfway point in the season, the show tries to change things up and introduce a longer ongoing story, but IMO it's just too little too late. I'm not into food porn, so this show really isn't for me. I need some actual stakes.


Speaking of, I'm now fully caught up on Stranger Things, having completed the 4th season. This season got a lot of hype as the one that "saved the show" after how "terrible season 3 was", and while I don't agree with the sentiment towards Season 3 I do think this is the best season since the first...mostly. It's certainly the most creatively-shot of all 4 seasons. I think the show completely fumbled the ball at the end, but for the most part this was a good season. Once again, all the characters had something to do, though the basketball team and Russian subplots wore on my patience. Aside from attempting to retcon Hopper back into the plot, I just didn't see the point of the Russian subplot. We didn't learn anything we didn't already know from Season 3, and it makes ABSOLUTELY no sense how Hopper got where we was considering we saw the US army storm the mall at the end of Season 3. SOMEONE would have seen him.

Something I really appreciated about this season is that the individual characters got to actually make major contributions to the plot. Eleven wasn't used as just the usual instant-win button. Characters live and die based on the actions of normal characters, as it should be. Eleven even got a bit of a "training arc" so she could jump in to contribute when it was appropriate for her to do so.

And wow, they really wanted to get their money's worth out of licensing Kate Bush's "Keep Running Up that Hill." Funny...despite being a child of the 80s, her version of that song isn't the one I'm familiar with and honestly I don't care for it all that much. It's just too..."pop" for my taste. I first heard the song when the band Track & Field covered it for an extremely memorable season finale of Warehouse 13:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xGbi6lYFO8

Minor quibbles about song preference aside (I understand the Kate Bush version is the original and is the only one that makes sense in this time period), I really liked how that song was used...the first time they did a big epic climax with it. Then the writers got greedy and tried to perform the same trick twice in the finale, and it just didn't hit the same way.

But yeah...that ending. Not a fan. I see that Eleven continues to only need a sensory deprivation tank when the plot decides she does. Let's just disregard all the hand-waiving the show's done with her mental location powers the entire show. And hey, I guess we're just going to throw out altogether the fact that the atmosphere in the Upside Down is supposedly to be so incredibly toxic that characters in earlier seasons were running around in Hazmat suits. I don't like what they did with Eddie, who is an extremely likeable character who just turns into a dumbass at the last minute...because they wanted to give Dustin some pathos. And what they did with Max was a total cheat. And HOW is anyone even ALLOWED to still live in Hawkins by the end of the season considering what happened? The military should be quarantining the **** out of that city.

Overall, yes it was good, but man does it drop the ball in that last episode. I still think Season 2 is by far the worst season so far. The show wasn't originally supposed to use the same cast from season to season, and you can VERY much see that with Season 2, where characters just wander around in circles making stupid decisions to pad out the plot while recycling most of the general concept from Season 1. It's boring, and aside from introducing Max very little of Season 2 had ripple effects on later seasons. Season 3 at least attempted to change the status quo, even if it did have to introduce the incredibly idiotic Secret Russian Base plot line, something Season 4 would have to spend a considerable amount of time resolving.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 17, 2025, 07:51:25 PM »

Good to know since I did have some interest in this game.  I've never played a Silent Hill game so the lack of connection to the rest of the series wouldn't bother me, but weapon degradation/breaking is one of my biggest gaming turnoffs.

What's weird is that Silent Hill keeps trying to make weapon degradation a "thing", despite players universally hating it, and yet the series keeps doing it. It was a thing in Silent Hill 4; Origins; Book of Memories; and Downpour, and now it's a thing in f as well. We didn't like it then, we still don't like it now, and yet I expect we'll continue to see it in future games...because. 

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 16, 2025, 10:17:35 PM »

Alright, let's talk about Silent Hill f. I've completed 2 of the game's 5 endings (the 1 ending you have to get on your first playthrough + the UFO ending), and...I find this game incredibly frustrating, and in the end I think it's a game I respect for its boldness more than I actually like. In fact, I kind of hate the game as an overall package.

Let's start with a familiar issue to anyone who played the Silent Hill 2 remake from last year: the combat is incredibly annoying and way too prevalent for how kind of bad it is, especially as the game nears its end. Even on the game's lowest difficulty, enemies hit like a truck and take way too many hits to down considering how fond the late game is of siccing 2-4 of them on you at once. The combat system, like those of the Souls games, is very much designed for one-on-one encounters with an emphasis on watching for enemy tells and countering. Unfortunately, enemies move extremely erratically and each type only has one move you can actually parry (and the parry indicator only appears if you are actively not doing anything), which to me made waiting for the parry an extremely unreliable strategy. Enjoy getting stun-locked and losing half your health when you misjudge an attack. I ended up just sticking to charging up a heavy swing on the axe and bashing enemies from a distance, but even that stopped being effective halfway through. There is a Witch Time-esque "perfect dodge" mechanic, but because enemies move so randomly I usually found myself activating it more by accident than by intention.

And all your weapons are breakable, so you're heavily encouraged to not even engage in combat until the game forces you to, as it pretty much does the entire second half of the game. And the game's 2nd half introduces an (I kid you not) honest to god Devil Trigger/Rage of the Gods mechanic that feels REALLY out of place in a horror game like this.

The game's atmosphere and exploration are truly exceptional (and the puzzles can be downright evil), but hampered by your character having an absolutely pathetically low inventory limit, which you can expand over the course of 2 playthroughs but still feels way too low even at max carrying capacity (especially since Med Kits take up an entire slot and you WANT those). What this leads to are many, MANY runs back to the nearest save shrine to sacrifice what you can spare to free up space and up your Faith currency.

By far the most frustrating thing about the game, though, is its story. Without getting into details, this game was written by an author that loves time loop stories, and accordingly you are only allowed to hear part of the story on a first playthrough. You HAVE to play the game AT LEAST 3 full times before the game will allow you to actually experience the full story with all the context left in. Other games like Nier have done this, but in Nier's case the gameplay didn't require nearly as much sheer commitment as this game, and even Nier only made you replay the 2nd half of the game multiple times (you literally skip the first half on NG+ runs).

To be frank, the way this story is setup and executed made me feel absolutely no emotional connection to the characters, especially with the story events set in this game's take on the traditional Silent Hill "Otherworld". As a first time player, you'll watch your character do some really bizarre, stupid **** in these Otherworld segments in a really cold, detached way. Yes, as someone who's beaten the game and knows what the game is doing, I get the message  they're delivering. I still think those segments are cold and incredibly boring, and I don't give a damn about the player character.

Many people have and will complain about the overall message delivered in the first playthrough as a prohibitive strike against the game. Between the story beats and the monster designs, this may be one of the least subtle games in the series. I personally find the message of the game incredibly offensive, but if I found the story engaging and the characters compelling, I would be willing to meet the game on its own terms. But with the way the game plays keep away with its plot for the sheer purpose of padding out the lifespan of the game via multiple playthroughs, I just can't recommend it. Game developers are asking a lot these days for players to even finish one playthrough of their game. Not just expecting but demanding 3-4 playthroughs of a long game like this is just pure arrogance, especially when the player has exactly zero agency in that first playthrough.

That said, I kind of have to respect the commitment to the bit, and that first ending ends in a really unexpected way.

I'll pick away at the game just so I can see the full story, but I'm finding this game extremely unsatisfying to experience and frustrating to play. I also have severe doubts that this game was originally conceived as a Silent Hill game. The links to past games are tenuous at best.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 12, 2025, 03:28:56 PM »

I quite liked Bug Fables, though it got a bit long in the tooth as it got near its end. Regarding the shoetage of party members, it was a crowd funded game working on a shoestring budget. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bug-fables-an-exploration-rpg-full-of-bugs#/

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 12, 2025, 01:23:26 PM »

Dana Gould is also probably his most annoying in the entire series in this entry.

I only know Dana Gould from writing on the Simpsons. I haven't actually seen his stand up or know his voice that well. Is it a case of bad writing, bad performance, or both?

It's the Bubsy problem, a typical issue with platformers of the day. He just never shuts up. As for the performance, I find it hit or miss in all the games.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 12, 2025, 10:21:19 AM »

Well, I completed Gex; Gex: Enter the Gecko; and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko from the Gex Trilogy release, and after some consideration I decided to count them as Shocktober games. For one, a huge chunk of all 3 games are taken up by the Horror Channel (or horror-adjacent 3's Egypt and ghost cowboy-filled Western Channels), probably at least 1/5 the content if not 1/3. For another, in Gex 2 and 3 Gex is wearing costumes themed to the channel, so it's in the Halloween spirit.

I never played Gex 1 before now, and it fucking sucks. It's an absolutely wretched experience, between the gotcha deaths; slippery controls; the long, labyrinthine levels (with no indication of where to go, naturally); and the hidden bonus stages you HAVE to perfectly complete in order to unlock the final world. This game is basically unplayble without save states and rewind, which this collection has. It is kinda neat that Gex can stick to walls and ceilings both in the foreground and back, but it's just not enough to make this game remotely enjoyable to play. Dana Gould is also probably his most annoying in the entire series in this entry. How? How in the world did this spawn a franchise?

Gex 2 was a game I played a ton of back on the N64, and it's still a pretty enjoyable game now. By far the game's biggest issues are a stubborn camera (typical of the era) and repetition. There are 6 themes spread out across 13 levels, each level having up to 5 remotes to find (3 of which will send you out of the level), and that's not counting the bonus levels. You just see way too much similar content, but what is here is still fun.

And no, this release is based on the PS version, so you don't get the N64-exclusive levels, though they are present in the collection in video form so they weren't forgotten.

I never played Gex 3 back in the day, and playing it now I'm torn on whether I like it more than Gex 2, as it does some things better and some worse. On the bright side, there are 11 levels, and they're each a unique theme. No theme gets re-used, outside of the bonus stages. The game also adopts a bit of the Banjo-Kazooie hub world structure, with levels accessed from themed areas instead of just generic TVs in a generic hub.

On the downside, the levels are surprisingly long for what they are, and while hidden remotes are gone this time the collectible remotes have gotten more annoying than they should be. You could just blast through levels in Gex 2 if you knew where you were going, but Gex 3 is a very plodding game by comparison. Instead of collecting just a set number of collectables (but not all of them) for a remote, there are 100 fly coins in each level and you have to find them all. This includes coins dropped by enemies, and there is no wiggle room. They're basically the notes from Banjo now, because everyone loved collecting those. -_-

If you're going for all the remotes, it just makes the game a slog. I ended up just giving up at one point after the particularly awful Mythology level (which is different than the N64 version that came later) and just skipping the final 4 levels, going straight to the final boss.

Overall, Gex 2 and 3 aren't the most amazing games, but I had a decent enough time with them.

Currently playing through Silent Hill f, which is...different. I'm not sure yet whether I like it.

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Movies & TV / Re: All Things Netflix! Coming Soon: The Netflix Experience, Live and In Person!??

« on: October 09, 2025, 08:36:46 PM »

Had a lot of family stuff going on lately so haven't had the energy to play much since finishing Xenoblade 2 earlier this week. Figured i might as well go on and continue with Stranger Things: Season 3.

...Really? THIS is the season of the show that's universally hated? THIS one, the one where **** actually happens; everyone actually contributes to the story; there are actual consequences to the things the characters do; and Eleven isn't just an instant win button for once? Really? 

Yeah, I thought this season was pretty alright. Granted, it had a bit of a slow start with teenage love bullshit and you have to accept some really stupid plot contrivances (i.e. everything about the Russians, *redacted* not getting dissolved into meat several times throughout the season when so many others were; etc.), but in general i thought it was well-paced. Refreshingly, while characters would act recklessly, they weren't generally weren't acting STUPIDLY like they were in Season 2. Yeah, the nostalgia key jangling was a bit excessive both at the start of the season and the end, but in general I thought that was a decent watch. I'm not sure why people hate this season so much.

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TalkBack / Re: Yooka-Replaylee (Switch 2) Review

« on: October 08, 2025, 10:32:50 PM »

I'm surprised to read that someone actually used that World Expansion system in the original game for its intended purpose. In my original playthrough of Yooka-Laylee, I always expanded the worlds before I went in for the first time, so for me they were ALWAYS way too big for what little there was to do in them. I was hoping this remake would have fixed that problem.

My biggest concern with this remake from everything I've read and what I saw in the demo was where the sense of progression was going to be when all of your moves (minus Flight) were unlocked from the beginning. Kinda removes the mystique of a puzzle if you know going into every single one of them that you already have the solution.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 03, 2025, 06:34:07 PM »

OK, change of plans: Yooka-Re-Playlee got delayed to December, and I won the local Silent Hill f GameStop preorder 2nd round lottery and got a steelbook. Also, my copy of the Gex Remaster Trilogy arrives tomorrow, though that most likely wouldn't qualify for this despite the obligatory Horror levels.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober VI: Curse of NWR

« on: October 02, 2025, 05:42:03 PM »

Probably not much from me this month. I was planning on playing Silent Hill f, but Gamestop utterly failed when it came to securing the Steelbooks they promised so I'm inclined to just wait till Black Friday to pick that game up. I am picking up Tormented Souls 2 later this month, but that comes out on the 23rd so it's possible I might not be done with that game by the end of the month. The other stuff I'm playing this month isn't horror-themed, like Yooka-Replaylee; Xenoblade 2; and TMNT: Splintered Fate (which I've been playing since the physical copy arrived a few days ago).

Might be a good time to play that port of Fear Effect that came out a month or so ago, or to do a proper replay of RE6.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Of America Executes Executive Shuffle: Bowser To Retire, New CEO, First Female Presiden

« on: September 26, 2025, 06:44:11 PM »

Broodwars has clearly just spent too much time watching rage bait YouTubers make mountains out of molehills..

Well, I wouldn't call YouTubers like ScottTheWoz or Arlo "Rage Bait"-ers, but yeah actually. It's been a slow news week and my office job gets very dull without something playing in my ear. It is helpful to know what people are complaining about, though. I don't GAF about Mario Kart, so I wouldn't have known about the outrage about Nintendo forcing players to play intermissions instead of actual races without it.

I originally intended to post this in the Switch 2 thread, but since we're here, why not:

I bought my Switch to play Switch 1 games with the performance they should have had at launch and to play the rare Switch 2 1st party exclusive, so from my perspective buying a Switch has been worth it so far. DK Bananza was extremely overhyped, but it was an enjoyable game, and I've made more progress in Xenoblade 2 in the last month than I did the last 8 years. The handheld experience is much better this time, and because I buy my games physically I have plenty of storage for all my old Switch 1 games. Apparently, Deadly Premonition 2 is actually in a playable state for the first time ever on Switch 2.

It is a console worth owning for my very particular use case, having a large backlog of games I either gave up on or never got around to, mainly due to very few games on the Switch even hitting 30 FPS, let alone 60. Fire Emblem 3 Houses was just infuriating at its sub-20 FPS. I don't intend to ever purchase anything other than the odd 1st party Switch 2 exclusive, so many of the Nintendo's decisions with the Switch 2 simply don't affect me. That said, there's a lot of small stuff about the Switch 2 that just bugs me, like my Switch 1 Pro Controller being unable to turn the Switch 2 on by itself and the home menu STILL not having themes of any sort (an issue I have with every console these days)

That said, I can't imagine ever using my Switch 2 as my dominant platform. The 1st party games are just too scarce and many just don't appeal to me, the pricing of absolutely everything is way out of hand, and as a physical game purchaser 3rd party games are a COMPLETE wash since they're almost all Key Cards. And Nintendo is burning a lot of goodwill with some of their decisions lately. For example, that DK Bananza DLC is blatantly cut content, and in no way earns that $20 price tag.

And nothing good has ever come of game mechanics being patented. I don't care how specific the use case is. We shouldn't have patents on game mechanics, as it just stifles innovation. Nintendo wasn't the first to invent a lot of what Pokemon does. They just did it better than anyone else at the time with extremely marketable execution, ending in 30 years of Game Freak just doing the bare minimum.

The Switch 2 has sold well out of the gate because there was ample stock, but we'll see how that momentum keeps up. I'm satisfied with my purchase for its very limited use case, but I absolutely understand why so many seem to be unhappy with it.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Of America Executes Executive Shuffle: Bowser To Retire, New CEO, First Female Presiden

« on: September 26, 2025, 07:45:11 AM »

What bad press and what was deserved about it?

My guess is Mario Kart World’s MSRP or merely Nintendo Switch 2 pricing in general.

Also, most people aren’t happy with Litigious Nintendo® though to be fair, the reporting on those stories is often thoroughly irresponsible and largely misleading. It’s easier to get mad about a sensationalized headline than it is to do even a minimal amount of reading.

The pricing, the Key Cards, the lack of 1st party announcements, the patent nonsense, locking VB games you can't even own behind expensive peripherals, bricking people's Switch 2's because they inadvertently bought Used Games that had been copied, etc.

And apparently a lot of Mario Kart fans are pissed that Nintendo patched World to remove their ability to guarantee 3 lap races in online matches. World in general got a rapid negative re-evaluation shortly after launch.

Some (especially YouTube channels and social media accounts) would say Nintendo has been rather "mask off" since the Switch 2 unveil, that the business side of Nintendo finally supplanted the creative one. In light of that, I can't say I'm going to miss the former EA executive leaving NoA.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Of America Executes Executive Shuffle: Bowser To Retire, New CEO, First Female Presiden

« on: September 25, 2025, 06:58:30 PM »

Considering all the bad press Nintendo has (deservedly) earned this year, I hope that this new President is much better at reigning in Corporate's worst impulses. Probably not, but one can hope.

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Movies & TV / Re: All Things Netflix! Coming Soon: The Netflix Experience, Live and In Person!??

« on: September 23, 2025, 09:55:15 PM »

So...Stranger Things: Season 2...well that was excruciating, and somehow Season 3 is supposed to be worse than this boring slog where nothing happened for long spans of time and all the characters are morons? And oh look...everyone has to save Will again, and Eleven continues to be an overpowered, walking plot device. Yawn.

Yeah, definitely taking a break before watching any more of this show. I've heard Season 4 is a return to form, but I'd have to get through Season 3 and I'm just done with this show for a while.

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Movies & TV / Re: All Things Netflix! Coming Soon: The Netflix Experience, Live and In Person!??

« on: September 21, 2025, 10:50:55 PM »

Well, I recently revived one topic that had been left dead for much of a year, so how about another?

Taking a bit of a break from gaming after some more stressful sessions of late, so finally got around to watching Stranger Things: Season 1. Heard a lot about this show over the years, but just never felt like getting into it. That said, I had picked up the Seasons 1 & 2 Target BluRays when they were on sale years ago (for, like, $15 each IIRC), so now seemed as good a time as any.

Overall, it's a good show so far. I'd heard a lot about "key jangling" and " 'member-berries" when hearing criticism of it, but I didn't really see that with this first season. Aside from a really out of place vintage coke ad, I didn't think the nostalgia-baiting was particularly egregious.

I'm somewhat amused at how much this show rips off of Twin Peaks and Silent Hill, between the "tragedy in a small town gradually rips a town apart" angle and the "dark parallel universe full of monsters that can invade the real world".

That said, I didn't like Eleven as a character. For one thing, her character is a Sci-Fi cliche, being the "psychic child raised by the government on the run and fleeing recapture". For another, she's just too damn powerful way too quickly. She's basically an instant-win button in every scene she appears in, and it just annihilates any stakes. She goes from basic telekinesis to popping a dozen soldier heads in the span of a handful of episodes. It's just too much, and I'd have appreciated at least in this first season a bigger focus on the core boys. Maybe she could have been introduced later, but right from the start it's just too much.

I could have also done without the love triangle, but I've seen far worse from Netflix in recent years (oh hi Locke & Key). I thought Winona Ryder was excellent in her role, and the Jack Nicholson impersonator playing the Sheriff did well also.

On a side note, as I mentioned I'm watching these 1st few seasons from my BluRays. Yes. I have Netflix, but I bought these once upon a time so I might as well watch them. Well, some genius decided that before you are allowed to watch a single episode of the first disc of the 1st season BluRay, you need to sit through 5 minutes of unskippable Netflix trailers...including a very spoiler-iffic trailer for Season 2 of Stranger Things.

What the actual ****, Netflix? 

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Movies & TV / Re: Rate the last movie you've seen

« on: September 13, 2025, 12:41:35 AM »

Eh...what the hell...

Haven't been to a movie in years, but my local theater was showing a 1 night only run of the Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle movie, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Anime movies never come to theaters this close to me. It's usually Disney and Universal picking those up.

This movie is the direct continuation of the 4th season of the show, and is the first of 3 movies concluding the series. It's also 2.5 hours long, with an extra half hour tacked on for the usual set of trailers. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got out of the theater. While we didn't have a packed house, we didn't have an extremely receptive audience who were absolutely captivated.

In general, this was an excellent popcorn action movie, though unfortunately it carries both the strengths and the low...low weaknesses of the series. The animation is absolutely amazing...mostly, per Ufotable standards, with extremely fast and detailed fight choreography just jam-packed with elemental effects and constantly moving backgrounds. This is a gorgeous movie to watch, and I look forward to seeing the completed version on home video considering you can see the exact moment when the money ran out and the still frames came in.

Sony made a big deal about stunt casting Channing Tatum as a somewhat major flashback character, and I found him just passable in that role. Sony could have saved a lot of money and gotten the same or better performance out of one of Bang Zoom's other legendary performers.

The big issue with the film, as is usual for Demon Slayer, is with the writing. It's a Shounen series, so you have the usual array of ass-pulls when fights are getting too one-sided, but an issue that's always bugged me with Demon Slayer (and Bleach too, for that matter) is the formula:

*character fights villain*
*villain gets upper hand*
*villain monologues about how powerful they are*
*character has a flashback that inspires them to suddenly develop a new power*
*character kills villain*
*villain gets lengthy backstory as they die*

Not counting multiple times this happens in a single fight (I swear, Tanjiro's fight has at least 3 runs of this cycle*, I counted at least 3 times throughout the film that this happens, and it gets increasingly grating as the fights drag on. It all culminates in a demon backstory that I swear to god had to be at least a half hour long, if not an hour long. All this, right in the middle of a fight, and the demon wasn't even dead afterwards.

And when the final fight is over, the movie just...stops. It has to. There are 2 more of these things, and they all take place in this castle.

It's just an exhausting movie to watch, though the audience did a lot to make it a fun watch, particularly with Zenitsu's gratifyingly short fight.

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TalkBack / Re: Switch Online Expansion Pack Breaks Glass, Unleashes Virtual Boy

« on: September 12, 2025, 01:03:11 PM »

I was interested right up until they announced you'd have to buy more plastic cardboard crap to actually play them.

Pity...I remember Warioland VB being decent.

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TalkBack / Re: Next Nintendo Direct To Air September 12

« on: September 12, 2025, 11:34:30 AM »

Yeah, that Danganronpa 2 remake was rather strange.  That game is already available on the Switch and by extension Switch 2.  And if they're going to remake the series why wouldn't they start with the first one?

I don't get it, because Danganronpa 2 makes somehow even less sense if you haven't played the 1st game.

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TalkBack / Re: Next Nintendo Direct To Air September 12

« on: September 12, 2025, 11:04:52 AM »

They could have easily cut a half hour from this Direct and missed nothing.

Really concerned about seeing ANOTHER generic open world from Nintendo with Prime 4.

Fatal Frame 2 gets yet another remake.

Danganronpa 2 gets a remake...why?

Jumping to Galaxy already with the Mario movie sequel feels like creative desperation.

The new Yoshi looks cool.

That bored Mii in the Tamadochi Life trailer sums up my thoughts on this Direct.

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TalkBack / Re: Next Nintendo Direct To Air September 12

« on: September 12, 2025, 07:28:30 AM »

Anyone else find themselves in an odd state of contentment?

I don't think I would describe it as "contentment", but I bought the Switch 2 to play my neglected Switch 1 games with the performance they should have had on Switch 1, and so far that's what I've gotten. Apparently even Deadly Premonition 2 is actually in a playable state now.

My Switch 2 is my secondary console. While yes I do want Nintendo to step up in terms of exclusives, I do have probably years of Switch 1 baclog to get through while I wait.

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TalkBack / Re: Next Nintendo Direct To Air September 12

« on: September 10, 2025, 08:58:32 AM »

You have to imagine this is Prime 4's last chance to be a 2025 game.

As for anything else they could show, I don't care about Pokemon anymore and I'm somewhat ambivalent about the usual faces that could show up here. Switch 2 is my Switch 1 machine with better performance so far.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2025 - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition

« on: September 05, 2025, 06:17:47 PM »

As Mop it up mentioned that is a wrap on Backlaugust 2025. I am happy to report we surpassed last years total and ended up with a decent list of 30 games removed from our backlogs. That's about one game per day!

Congrats to broodwars for taking the lead spot with an impressive 8 games!

Thanks. Think I might leave next year to someone else. I usually play lengthy RPGs, but as I'd just finished one (Metaphor Refantazio) I was looking to clear out a bunch of shorter games. Had a lot of family stuff come up this month. Still, made a lot of progress on my personal goal to hit 400 Platinums by the end of the year. Currently at 397 thanks to this month, so with 4 months left to go I can afford to take my time and play some longer games again. Plus, you know...Xenoblade 2 still lurks in the shadows (up to Chapter 6, btw).

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2025 - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition

« on: August 31, 2025, 02:36:39 PM »

Finished Stray just in time for the end of August. Thats now the third time I have played through it since it originally launched on PC. I love it. The Switch version obviously doesnt look as good as the Series X version, but on Switch 2, it runs great.

Besides the cute cat, I just really like the world design of the game. Its kind of post apocalyptic, but things look cool with neon lights in the city, or creepily lit underground sections, or gross infected parts you have to run through.
It has interesting characters too with all the robots you meet. Its a good story too. Overall great adventure of making your way to the outside of the bunker.

Yeah, I'd like to get back to Stray at some point. Got really frustrated trying to do a challenge on that first level where you try to complete it without getting hit, and ended up just putting the game on the backburner.

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General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2025 - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition

« on: August 31, 2025, 10:37:16 AM »

Might as well add one last game, myself. Haven't 100%ed it yet (and I don't know if I will), but I have rolled credits on it: Tamarin.

To be blunt, this is a spiritual successor to Jet Force Gemini, one of my favorite N64 games, made by former Rare devs (including David Wise on the music) so however bad it may be I needed to try it myself. I took interest in this game after it made an appearance on Rerez's Just Bad Games series:

http://youtu.be/DtG8QNC5DiQ

This game feels like 2 badly mismatched games forced together: something akin to a Banjo game and Jet Force Gemini. You spend half the game running around fairly generic open areas collecting Fireflies and completing challenges in order to power doors that take you to other areas. Aside from some absolutely infuriating coin-collecting challenges, these sections are generic but not too bad. The most annoying thing is if you die, you lose any collectibles obtained since your last checkpoint. This makes the later areas absolutely infuriating since there's some pinpoint platforming required over instant-death pits.

Then there's the other half of the game, where Tamarin gets handed an arsenal of guns and you run through a series of corridors shooting ant soldiers ripped right out of JFG. In these sections, you lose all your 3D platform movement abilities, which gets really annoying when the game hides collectibles behind obstacle sections that you can't use jumping dives or crouch jumps to clear.

And because it seems every spiritual successor to a Rare game is determined to not learn one major lesson from their predecessors, let's talk about Birds. Remember how much everyone loved the Tribals system in JFG, where shooting sections would contain lots of little furry hostages you had to save before the Ants killed them, forcing you to leave the area altogether and reload it all? Yeah, the Birds are Tribals, and they work the exact same way, but with the added bonus of also occasionally picking up and flying across the room to new lethal perches. and yes, the ant soldiers absolutely will gun them down if you don't kill them quickly, and you DO have to leave the entire area and reload it if you fail (or die, which resets back to your last checkpoint). Unlike JFG, you don't have to save ALL of them, but every 3 you save can be planeted in a birdhouse in the platforming areas for a Firefly and you need 40 out of 60 Fireflies to clear the game so yeah...you need most of them.

And yes, if you don't reach a checkpoint before you die, you lose any birds you've saved since your last one, which is all sorts of fun when the later areas are full of ants sporting shields and hand grenades.

I actually had a decent time with the platforming sections, but the shooting sections just got incredibly monotonous towards the end, despite there only being 3 of them, and the end of the game has you backtracking through all 3 of them in 1 sequence so that's just wonderful. Nintendo's playtesting is sorely missed here, as the shooting sections become utter mazes where it's hard to tell where to go to progress, and several times I ran into the end of the area before I was ready.  And while Wise's music is pleasant enough, it doesn't even come close to the quality of the worst track in the JFG soundtrack.

25

General Gaming / Re: Backlaugust 2025 - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition

« on: August 25, 2025, 11:53:05 PM »

OK, so that's Robocop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business in the can now, my 397th Platinum btw. I'm aiming to hit 400 by the end of the year (partially because it's an excuse to finally get serious on Valkyria Chronicles 4 to be #400), so I made some good progress on that this month.

As a standalone expansion, Unfinished Business reminds me a lot of that Wolfenstein: The Old Blood expansion from last generation, in that it takes a game that was kinda open and brings it back to basics with a corridor shooter filled with monster closets and big guns. I was actually kinda taken aback by how hard the game was at first, as you start the game basically fighting the End Game armored mercenaries from the main game, but with only a handful of upgrades and your basic gun. But it didn't take long for the balance to flip in the opposite direction as I obtained upgrades and levels.

Frankly, I think the game could have used even more paring back, as this game still includes small side quests despite its already shorter length, and they're pretty forgettable in general. I would have rather the time spent on these basic fetch quests be used on maybe another level with 1-2 more enemy types, but the experience overall is still very solid. In fact, with the addition of the flying drones; the rolling explosive drones; (prototype versions of) the Otomo ninja robots; the flying troopers; and the new heavy weapons, I'd say there's a lot more variety in combat now than in the base game. The Cryo Gun in particular is a delight to play with, and the late game is more than happy to give you encounters setup to turn into a winter wonderland. You even get to play a level controlling an ED-209, which is very cathartic (and yes, they remembered the vulnerability to stairs).

Storywise, what's here is solid but not particularly noteworthy, though it is an amusing lead-in to Robocop 3. Teyon seemed to care more about setting up a well-developed villain, but they just didn't seem to have the time to really make him truly memorable. In fact, everything ends super abruptly with a sub-30 second villain death cutscene leading immediately to credits, making me think Teyon ran out of time and money when designing the last 1/3 of the game.

Overall, I had a great time with Unfinished Business, but the game definitely feels rushed and a little buggy. I had to reload a checkpoint a few times because the game would bug out and refuse to unlock a door I needed to proceed. Gotta wonder what 80s franchise Teyon will do next, as they've already (badly) done Rambo and (excellently) done Terminator and Robocop. Die Hard, perhaps?