Posts by _LS_

    It does stray a little far from the formula. But the Zelda games have worked themselves into such a weird, stagnant corner. I'd love to see a game really upend the conventions of the series.

    And not the dumb, poorly-concieved kind of upending we got in Skyward Sword.

    Not to mention the Timeline weirdly recontextualizes A Link to the Past's story.

    Supposedly it takes place in a time when Gannon killed Link, and ran amok.

    So...why does Hyrule have a normal ruling family in LttP? Why is Gannon only now causing trouble, supposedly long after he won the battle for control of Hyrule?

    That shit makes no sense.

    I haven't played Twilight Princess, and I don't really like most of what I've heard about it. But I'd have to agree that it probably has the best Zelda design. They took the great design from OoT and gave Zelda an edge.
    Certainly there was an element of "Oh, you didn't like Wind Waker's cartoon style? Well then you must want us to be SUPER DARK AND GRITTY AND SERIOUS." which, yeah, was dumb. But Zelda herself looks a little less naive in the TP design. She seems to have more focus and agency, which I appreciate.

    Low-effort creative work collaborations could be fun.

    A 1-page fanfic, a 10-minute pencil sketch. These are the kinds of things that adults can fit into their busy lives.

    I'm not very interested, personally, in the idea of a contest. Contests have winners and losers. If someone thinks they're going to lose no matter what, because they don't know how to write or how to draw, then they're going to be less motivated to participate. If we did, for example, a 1-page fanfic collaboration. I'd be more interested in seeing a pdf with all the contributions, than I would in seeing a single entry raised above the others for no real reason.

    That's just my two cents, of course.

    A Link to the Past is also my favorite!

    Tell us some things about yourself. How did you get into the zelda series? What are some other hobbies or pursuits of yours, aside from playing Zelda games?

    I think there are too many subforums.

    The primary advantage of splitting a forum up into subsections is that it prevents threads from being buried. If there was only a single "General Discussion" area, then a thread posted at noon would be on the 2nd page if it didn't get any responses by the end of the day. That, of course, would be a problem.

    But this forum isn't that active. At least, not currently. Most of the subforums have 2-3 threads in them, many of which haven't been posted in in months. Which creates problems of its own. It takes longer for people to find a thread they can participate in, because they have to click through a bunch of different subforums looking. Plus, when they see that the newest thread in a given section hasn't bee updated since April, they might think this forum is dead. When people think a forum is dead, they often leave.

    Honestly, Nintendo's decisions have been questionable going all the way back to the Super Nintendo, where they steered hard away from "adult" material like blood and violence. Since the growth of the VG market was mostly among teens and young adults, that meant Nintendo was starting from a position of weakness all the way back in the mid 90s. It only got worse from there. The N64 insisted on using cartridges and had that god-awful controller. And the gamecube was a joke. And all the while, third party support was dropping off.

    And yes, the constant stream of Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon games is not doing Nintendo any favors. They've been alienating third party developers for years, and they don't seem to care that their game library is quickly becoming an inbred mess of iconic characters from 25 years ago.

    I wish they would focus seriously on developing some new IPs.

    Nintendo is doing a lot of fucky shit right now that may or may not lead to them eventually falling out of the gaming market.

    But from a technical standpoint, they're currently the only company that actually offers anything of unique value to the consumer. For the most part, any decent PC can almost completely replace a PS4 or XBox One. Those two consoles are just PCs in fancy cases with proprietary operating systems. For 90% of releases, pick one of those three platforms and you're good to go.

    Nintendo tends to have more exclusive games, and experiment with hardware in a way that nobody else does. As much as I hate to play games with the wiimote, it's a different kind of experience that nobody else can match.

    My parents still live in the house that they bought shortly before I was born, so I've only ever moved as an adult. And I've never moved quite so far that I couldn't move all my junk with me.

    After my parent's place, I move into a small apartment about 2 hours drive North of where I grew up. The apartment was small, and my financial situation wasn't very good, but I enjoyed being out on my own. I spent most of 2010 living back with my parents trying to put my life back together, then I moved into a really shitty apartment about 20 minutes away from there. It was close to the job I was working at the time, and as shitty as it was, it was also really big and really cheap. So that kinda offset the fact that my neighbors were assholes and the plumbing kept breaking down. That's also where my ladyfriend moved in with me.

    About a year ago now I moved an hour South of the shitty apartment into a pretty nice, secluded apartment.

    I've been living more or less on my own since late 2007, and I've lived in 3 different places during that time (not counting the time I spent at my parent's place). I don't like moving much, but I do always enjoy exploring a new town.

    The guy who writes Dresden Codak posted these on his tumblr a few years back. Personally, this outline is cool enough that I could actually see myself picking up a Zelda game for the first time in years.

    What are your thoughts?

    tumblr_ml3zfsJvde1qcbajko1_1280.jpg tumblr_ml3zfsJvde1qcbajko2_1280.jpg tumblr_ml3zfsJvde1qcbajko3_r1_1280.jpg tumblr_ml3zfsJvde1qcbajko4_1280.jpg tumblr_ml3zfsJvde1qcbajko5_1280.jpgtumblr_ml3zfsJvde1qcbajko6_r1_1280.jpg tumblr_ml3zfsJvde1qcbajko7_r1_1280.jpg

    I assume all of us have a copy of Hyrule Historia, or at least have seen the Timeline somewhere. If not, here you go:

    Hyrule-Historia-Timeline-translated-Graphics1.jpg

    Does anyone actually like this timeline?

    I'm of a mind that trying to fit all of the games into a single timeline is a bad idea. Some of them have relationships with one another (OoT clearly comes before MM, and WW clearly comes long after OoT) but I don't see any reason to try and force A Link to the Past to exist within the same space time continuum as Skyward Sword.

    The games are variations on a theme. They don't need to have narrative connection.

    I understand. It's been basically the same for me, except that even with ToH I wasn't too active or in contact. I left that post there hoping to reach someone so I am glad you found it!
    It is also alright if you're not into like back in the day. I hope you enjoy interacting in this space. I would love if I could device some neat contests or activities for people to enjoy themselves here. Maybe even have awards like TSR. Those were fun back in the day.

    I probably only peek in at ToH once a year or so. It's good luck that I happened to look only a month or so after you posted the link. I'm looking forward to some good discussions here.

    Have fun around bud.

    Thank you. It's nice to meet you.

    The other day I was watching some dumb videos online, and someone mentioned that Max Payne 2 was their favorite game in the series. It made me realize that while I do own MP2, I've never actually played it. So I decided to do that. But it'd been a few years since I played the original, so I figured I should start with that. And that's what I've been doing over this weekend: sitting in front of a fan and playing my old PS2 copy of Max Payne.

    This fuckin' game holds up surprisingly well. The loading screens are atrocious, and there are maybe 2-3 platforming segments that can just go fuck off and die in a fire. But aside from that, everything about the game is still great after 14 years. The graphics are dated for sure, but they're confident in their own style, and they're clearer than a lot of PS2 graphics are. So they never really bother me. The fact that the cutscenes are comic panels, rather than animations, helps a lot.

    The gameplay is simple and functional. Walk around, and kill people. The level design is completely linear, and the controls are simple. But within that framework, they manage to work in a lot of really engaging variety.

    Though what really makes the game so worthwhile to play is the writing. The writing is pitch-perfect, self-aware, "gritty noir" in neon quotation marks. But the writing never crosses the line to being cynical about what it is. It knows what it is, it loves what it is, and if you pretend you're too classy to love what it is, then the game thinks you're a loser.

    I've still got a little ways to go, but I'm eager to move on to the second game and see how things grew from there.

    Depending on whether I currently have a game that's grabbing my attention, I normally try to make time for it on the Weekends, and possibly a little bit in the evenings. I really only play games on the PC, unless I'm going back to revisit something from the old days.