Now that there are some people actually posting on the forum, I'm looking forward to being more active again. Also my D&D game got canceled because the referee got into a fight in the streets of Toronto.
Like, come on, right? Bro knows we need to finish our quest.
Talk about whatever you're currently reading here. If a conversation about a specific book springs up, the mods can move those posts into a new thread. =D
My sister got me "Mistborn" for my birthday, which I really enjoyed. But now I'm done with it, and I decided I ought to try and read some of the hundreds of books I own that I've never read, so I've been reading Star Trek Voyager: Mosaic by Jerri Taylor. It's...honestly it's a struggle to read it at all. I love Voyager, so you'd think that a book in the Voyager universe written by one of the show's showrunners would be good. But Taylor is an awful writer. Perhaps her skills are better suited to television, which requires a whole different kind of writing. But she seems to be downright incompetent when it comes to writing a novel.
I started playing Tony Hawk 3 on the Gamecube the other day. First time I've played a Tony Hawk game since the original.
It's really fun. I feel like the Tony Hawk games created an entirely new genre of gameplay. The same way Minecraft created a new genre. Unfortunately, the genre Tony Hawk created pretty much died with the Tony Hawk series.
Sonic games could actually learn a lot from the TH franchise, I think.
I beat the game a bit ago, by the by. I eventually got a better handle on the controls, but I maintain that the game is sloppy. Primarily in the way it combines various elements.
The levels are pretty well designed. They're classic mario with new twists, which works for me.
The powerups are also pretty well designed. They feel 'right' for a 2D mario. The right blend of new mechanics that don't sacrifice the simplicity of the gameplay.
But the two elements don't work together at all. I love sliding around on the shell, but never once in the whole game did I ever find an area where I was really able to use the shell. More often than not, I died more easily with the shell than I did without it. And the super giant mushroom thing? Fuck that noise. In the first level, the test level, everything is set up for you to use it. But you almost never get that powerup again, and when you do, what good is it? Half the time I used it I ended up getting completely stuck because there wasn't enough room for giant mario to move around, and he couldn't smash through walls.
It feels like the guy in charge divided the team into groups, shouting "Alright, this is NEW super mario brothers, so we need NEW STUFF! NEW NEW NEW!" But then none of the groups actually talked to each other, so their new pieces don't fit together. It's the kind of mistake I'd expect from someone throwing money at a problem (Mario is stale) rather than coming up with a real solution.
...does using the stylus to control everything ever get less awful as you get used to it?
Agency is a powerful motivator in games. Most games have always had two end states, success and failure. Star Fox added a a third end state to every level: the partial success. It was just enough extra possibility to get us way more engaged than we would have been in a linear progression, BUT, it wasn't so many possibilities that we were affected by choice paralysis (a flaw in many modern games). Nor did it affect the quick-paced, linear nature of the gameplay.
Linear gameplay with nonlinear progression is a really great combination.
So, we all know this game is the best in the series, and that it is damn near perfect. But everything has flaws, and everything can be improved. So what are some issues with Link to the Past?
1. While the game does encourage a sense of exploration, much of what you discover becomes pointless on a second play through. There are caves and holes with nothing better in them than a few rupees or some health. (Although it could be argued that discovery is only fun if exploration sometimes fails to produce anything interesting.)
2. The fairy pools are useless. (See point 1.) Aside from the two who upgrade your items for you, all they do is restore your health. I never really find that I need more health than can be found under bushes and such.
3. The invisibility cloak and the blue cane are pretty much identical, and they both use up MP so fast that they're almost useless.
4. The Skull dungeon (Dark world, 3rd crystal) is one giant "fuck you" to the player. Some parts of it are actually really interesting and well designed, like the fact that it has numerous entrances, or the fact that the final enemy in the dungeon is in a completely separate area. But the constant stream of wallmasters is frustrating. And, worse yet, huge portions of the dungeon have no purpose whatsoever. They're just there to waste your time. If you know what you're doing, you can skip 50% of the dungeon.
5. The dash function is so integral to the experience of the game, that on any replay, it's incredibly frustrating to not have them prior to finishing the first dungeon.
Ho shits bruh!
Twinrova was pretty great.
Arghus because he's just so satisfying to kill.
Moldorm, because even after beating LttP a dozen times he can still challenge me sometimes.
Honestly I like just about every boss in LttP except the giant eye in the pile of slime. That guy is disappointingly easy.
The Iron Knuckle miniboss in OoT is really fun.
@The Inhaling One , @Edward_Stryfe , @Link , @Sardonic Pickle , this contest is still open and you still have a shot at a picture of me as a baby.
I'd like more information on how you expect the "Mature" and "Recurrent" prefix to be used, for clarity's sake.
What kind of threads might be Mature, but not against the rules?
What kind of threads might be Recurrent?
That shits a bummer, yo.
But won't you help out a no-monitor pleb? D:
No I will not.
Also, it's very impressive the way you navigate and interact with the forum without a monitor. That's pretty cool, yo.
It's difficult for me to find any real flaws in A Link to the Past. I can come up with nitpicks, but it's close to being a perfect game from my perspective.
Ocarina of Time interrupts your first attempt to open a door by forcing you to sit through an explanation of door opening by Navi. Navi in general is a pretty damning flaw of the game, often interrupting play at strange times and for no good reason. Then there's Kepora Gaebora who does the same thing, only longer, and with fuckin' annoying tricks to force you to listen to him over again if you weren't paying attention.
Ocarina of Time is great, but its got a lot of problems.
Nice setup @LinkSkywalker do you mind if I steal one of those monitors?
But then I'd be a single-monitor pleb!
Soubds like s plan.
Yeah they are not very loud. I got them for the surround effwct but I want to replace them with proper hometheather speakers at some point. Our current desktop sorakers are worse so I'll probably start by replacing those. :XD:
I bought them a few years ago after I spent months and months saving up to deck out my rig with all the features. (In 2012 I was still using a prebuilt HP from 2006. It was a bummer.) They were the very best speakers on Newegg, so I assumed they'd be pretty great. I really shoulda done more research on speakers at the time. They're not bad or anything. They're just not powerful in the slightest. I'd much rather get a 2.1 setup of really powerful home theater speakers.
If you replace your home theater speakers first, then you can move the home theater set to one of your PCs. Two birds with one stone. yo. =D
It's odd. I tend to disagree with egoraptor about pretty much everything. But his Sequelitis videos have always been *spot on* for me.
I don't think OoT is a bad game, but I generally agree that it is deeply flawed and doesn't deserve to be on the pedestal that people place it on.
I actually kinda regret getting these speakers. It's a 5.1 system, but the sound is pretty weak. I can barely get it loud enough to hear it in the next room without blowing the levels.
Next time I'm buying computer speakers, I'm going to buy them from a speaker store, rather than a computer store.
You're becoming a man. *sniff*.
There's something to be said for the value of work. But perhaps it could be a matter of education and social pressure. We should teach our kids to find something to pursue with all of their effort and drive. A man without a goal has no purpose.
And yeah:
It's disappointing, because a lot of the scripts mentioned in the movie sound really interesting. I'd be curious to read some of them.
The movie itself is bad, for sure. But I get what you're saying. For those of us who lived in that time, the idea of a video game movie was too revolutionary not to leave an impression on us.
