We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Partners in Time isn't awful but I preferred the first & the most recent one to it. It was still good but I think it was the weakest of the series.

The shroobs were probably the most competent villains in a mario game ever, which felt really out of place if half the cutscenes in it are gonna be babies crying and plumbers bumbling their way through shit.

I once tried a no damage run but kept losing at Thwomp Volcano

These are sentiments I tend to repeat whenever the topic is brought up, but the best mario games are always the ones where almost nothing is taken seriously at all.
In the platformers where the plot is really just an excuse and Bowser is played off as some kind of credible enemy he's really boring, but when he's a bumbling narcissistic idiot who can't seem to grasp the fact that he has no idea what he is doing he becomes one of my favourite characters (probably a contributing factor to why I loved BIS). Honestly I think I probably prefer the mario spinoff RPG games in general (paper mario and the other ones) to the platformers.

Also it's long past time they made a tag-team RPG with Wario and Waluigi as the protagonists come on.

Also it's long past time they made a tag-team RPG with Wario and Waluigi as the protagonists come on.

was just discussing this yesterday

agree wholeheartedly

(less succinctly: it'd be kind of cool if they had various combination moves that all abused one slapstickally abusing the other. it seems like the sort of thing that would work in a game with those two)

EDIT: just realized that the thing I described happened in the first mario and luigi game

dammit

Guys my Wii broke. I-I don't know what to do. Should i send it in or something or just try to get a new one?

So let's talk Action Commands for a second.
I am Pretty Good at them, I am not some nigh untouchable master, but I rarely miss them in these games.
Except, oddly enough, the Hammer Action Command.
Every time I had to use it with just the babies I failed. It looked like I was too early or too late. This was incorrect!
I thought this because I was under the impression that the game had two states of "failing an action command" that you were too early or too late. As it turned out, this was wrong!
The babies have a walking to the enemy animation, if you press the button here then you get what I thought was the "too early" operation, the baby falling forward and awkwardly dropping down the hammer.
Then they lift the hammer up, this is where I usually pressed the button and then I got a different animation, that they drop the top bit of the hammer and then they hit the enemy with the handle.
AS IT TURNS OUT, THERE IS ANOTHER ANIMATION AFTER THIS, THAT I NEVER SAW BECAUSE I WAS TOO EARLY EVERY TIME I HAD TO USE THE HAMMER.
In other words, I am a dummy who thought he was SO GOOD at Action Commands that he kept pressing the button too early and then ended up never realizing this until he had the chance to experiment.
What a dummy.

ANYWAY, I am now in a new area from where I first played through this game before stopping, and I got a badge that lets me use special attacks at no cost so that's cool. Luigi is probably never going to just jump or hammer again.

Re: Competency, yea I really love silly incompetent bowser mainly because he makes more sense when you account for things like the games where he races with them or plays tennis or other sports. He's like "OH MAN LOOK THEY ARE HAVING FUN I BETTER GO BEAT EM AT THEIR OWN GAME GRAAAAAAAAR"
The game really does like to make a deal out of the shroobs, from when they beat Adult Mario and Luigi in the first dungeon the less sublte things like how there could only be one of them when other enemies come in packs of four or something.
It's neat.

Aaaaaaa the Mario and Luigi games! Out of them all, I prefer the first one the best, though Bowser's Inside Story is shaping up pretty well (although those obligatory minigames like the revival channel and the pollen dodging require skills that I lack ;-;) in my opinion. The only complaint that I'd have is that the progression of getting special attacks and new environmental things seems a little stilted and unnatural as compared to how it was in the first game. What I'm tryyying to say is that, well, in the first game your special attacks were specifically related to the overworld techniques you learned - Knockback Bros. was Mini Mario, Chopper Bros. was Mole Luigi and so on. In BIS it just becomes contrived and a chore to obtain those puzzle pieces instead of a logical progression.

Another thing I'm not liking too much about BIS is the removal of switching the Bros. order, because it makes things a lot more complex (like the spinning brothers and the digging brothers being 'A' and 'B' of the same option, which makes things way easy to mix up) and also precludes separating the brothers ever, as far as I've played.

And speaking of as far as I've played, I can't get past Bowser and the Fawful Express because blowing flame is hard. >:c

just realized that the thing I described happened in the first mario and luigi game

And this is why i consider it the best of the series, BiS was cool, but the bro's boring team attacks made the experience significantly less fun personally.

Edit: What Agent said.

Also, i've been playing Kirby's Epic Yarn. Rant inside the spoiler:

Show Content

SpoilerI was really disappointed. The internet has lied to me once again, while the game's appearance is pretty creative and ingenious, the gameplay falls flat for me. The fact that you can't die at all makes it extremely boring and redundant, there's zero challenge in regards of completing the game's storyline and while the reviewers say the more "hardcore" gamers may find challenge in the form of collecting every single item in the game it just seems pointless to me. I want to whack shit, dodge obstacles and jump over pitfalls, not go in a pointless scavenge hunt to decorate kirby's apartment. Even if the game is targeted at a young audience, there's no excuse to take every possible ounce of challenge out of it.

The game is more story-driven compared to other kirby games, it introduces some really boring characters and the whole thing is narrated by an awful voice actor. While i wouldn't mind having a cute little nice plot presented in a charming way like the mute cut-scenes from kirby 64, the way it is presented in this game makes me both cringe and yawn at the same time.

A little more extra nitpicking: It takes too goddamn long to beat a level and start playing the next one. First, you gotta wait for the roulette thingie to stop and see if you got extra beads at the end of the level, then you get to see kirby and prince whatever-his-name-is do the classic kirby dance, the score screen pops up, then wait for the score count, then back at the overworld, you gotta press b to automatically throw the obtained "patch" which triggers an overly long and unnecessary animation in the landscape, revealing -or more like just highlighting the pre-existing '???' doors- to the next level. Whatever happened to kirby popping out of the door, placing a flag on the floor and revealing the next stage? With this thing i feel like i'm watching fucking blue's clues.

Me and my brother managed to get a GBA hooked up to the GC so we could connect with the Tingle Tuner. He proceeded to bomb the crap out of me and waste half my rupees. Neither of us really regret it.

Oh man also Mario and Luigi games. I loved Superstar Saga, and Partners in Time only slightly less. I still need to get Bowser's Inside Story. I remember it took me ages to beat the end boss in Superstar Saga because I originally played it before I had really gotten down my current mentality of "never run from a fight unless you are on one hitpoint," so by the time I got to the end boss I was severely underleveled and had mostly survived because of flukes.

Ah yeah, the gba and gc connection dealie. That one final fantasy game was pretty fun to play with friends.

Zelda Four swords adventures was one of the best multiplayer experiences i've ever had. So freaking fun.

Too bad all my friends sold their gbas, cables and gamecubes :C

I assume there's no way it could ever be emulated.

Guys my Wii broke. I-I don't know what to do. Should i send it in or something or just try to get a new one?

If it's still under warranty, you should get it fixed. If it's not, then it's really a question of which option is cheaper, which I have no idea of offhand.

I just realised that I can connect different consoles to different times of my life because I can remember exactly when I got them

e.g. game boy colour - christmas when I was five
xbox 360 - when I started high school because I was so excited I wrote the release date in my year 7 student diary

is that sad

By the way I got one of those backloggery things, and I thought I'd leave the link here because signature space is at a premium and this seems like an appropriate place to put it.

Playing Saints Row 2. Too early for massive opinions, but it's more buggy than I thought it was going to be.

Is it kosher to add games from a moded wii to a backloggery thing

is it considered the same as playing emulators, i'm technically playing the games in the console, although illegally downloading isos.

Also i beat Castlevania Adventures ReBirth yesterday under 3 hours. It was fun.

yea ok i'm probably gpoing to just try and find a cheap used wii since i've had this one since 2006. I wanna play skyward sword so god damn bad

woo beat partners in time
my fingers hurt from button mashing

I really liked Bowser's Inside Story but I think that it wasn't as much as it was a Mario RPG as it was a Bowser RPG if I remember it correctly, which I kinda don't. I do remember that anytime that I wasn't playing as Bowser was sort of difficult or boring.
All I remember was that the last bit where you button mash that one last punch is just awesome.
I might play it again if I can't remember more details :v

Man, Zelda Four Swords Adventures was my game everything involved in it was just so good whenever I got people other than my siblings to play with me. I really hope they make another Four Swords that can be played like that.

Now I'm going to go back to watching medibot and mynameiskaz's Mario Or Luigi LP because that is what made me play Partners in Time again :v

I've said this before, but I'd like to see a Bowser platformer.

I envision the plot as being "a new villain takes over the Mushroom Kingdom, and Bowser isn't going to stand for it because that's his job."

There was kind of platformy bits with Bowser in The Thousand Year Door. I think there's some platforming with Bowser in Super Paper Mario as well but I haven't played it so I'm not too sure about that.

In other news, this makes me so happy.

Super Paper Mario was almost entirely platformer
With Bowser playable
And his motivation is pretty much that

Morality systems in games?

There's the obvious points that most morality systems are 'hug the puppies or burn down the orphanage' (i.e. one extreme versus the other and with the evil option existing simply because you are evil which is not a realistic thing that anybody really behaves like), but those are fairly self-explanatory you don't need someone to argue why they don't work. I'm going to take an example of what I perceive as a better morality system, though still not perfect, and point out what I think is wrong with it.

There are some games where morality choices are at least somewhat realistic. The 'evil' option does not exist solely to be a bastard, but is somewhat grounded in reality. In theory this should work; two valid options and the only difference is your personal morality. Except no. Because of karma meters or Paragon/Renegade whatever. These ways of measuring your choices mean that the creators of the game impose their morality onto you.

There is, for example, one mission in Mass Effect 2 where

Show Content

Spoiler you have to make a choice between killing a bunch of enemies or brainwashing them, forcing them to become friendly to you.

Regardless of which of these is the good choice, this kind of morality cannot be easily categorised into 'evil' or 'good' and getting renegade points for something that seems a lot less awful then the paragon option is sort of annoying/insulting. This mission, which I did like by the way, would be far better served without a karma meter. With the choice just being a choice you have to make without the helpful labels of good or bad to guide you to making a decision.

Karma meters also have the side effect of reducing any choice, no matter how well thought through to a binary 'am i playing a good guy or a bad guy this playthrough' check. It ensures no thought goes into the decision and completely invalidates the point of the choice in the first place. Most egregiously when the karma meter is tied to upgrades or abilities that you can get, it tends to mean that even if you disagree with the morality of the choice as presented, you will likely go through with whichever you have the most points on, simply because you don't want to miss out on these karmabound abilities.

I'm not saying that everyone plays like that, but hell I have done in the past and the way games are made does little to discourage it.

I was discussing this earlier and I personally think that karma meters aren't inherently bad, but I think the problem stems from dividing things to a single axis.

I'm reminded of Ultima IV, which sort of pioneered the concept but did it better than basically everybody since. It had eight virtues, all of which could be increased or reduced via your actions in the game, and some of which would come into direct conflict. It seems to me that if you must track the players decisions, track it as a series of opposed philosophies, each with their own merits-- Justice versus Mercy, say, or Heroism versus Pragmatism, or Tradition versus Independence, that sort of thing. That's just my take on it though.

It does seem a bit like a realism vs gameplay conflict.
A black/white slider isn't really much like real life, but without one you can't really award players with... awards, like the paragon/whatever the other one was slider in Mass Effect does.
Or you can but it becomes a hell of a lot more work for the developer and means less content you will be able to experience without creating multiple save files.

Well personally I don't really think it is necessary to award people for choosing one option or another. I think the best reward for making a choice like this is for the thing you chose to have some impact upon the game. If it's more about the actual impact of the decision you are making rather than what points you will get for making that decision then it is a better decision.

Personally I would do away with the whole morality angle entirely and just have them be choices. There is absolutely no need to attach morality or karma points or whatever to these choices so long as they are well thought through and they have actual perceptible consequences. It will almost definately be more work for games developers and yeah you might need a few different save files to see all the different content, but it will be worth it for more thoughtful choices and more engaging gameplay.

By the way I am not advocating this for all games. Some games have a certain story that they are trying to tell and having to account for this choice and that choice and what-the-fuck-ever would make it damn near impossible to do so. In those cases, I would really not mind if there was not 'the illusion of choice' in the first place.

I mean you could run all the alternate endings, but that's what youtube is for right?

Well, as far as morality goes, have the game track it, and if the player is curious, they can look it up on, say, a Virtues page, Where things like Law/Chaos, Honor/Dishonor, Reknown/Wangtta, melancholy/hotblood or whatever can all have their own separate little messages like "You're known to follow the law" "You tend to be hot-blooded" "You appear to mostly be shy" "Your honor is unimpeachable" etc.

And note here that there are a lot of other possible 'axes' than just your typical "Good Guy/Bad Guy" meter. And the more complex it becomes, in general the more organic the dialogue becomes, altering your speech in little ways can affect how you're viewed, which in turn affects how you view yourself...

And, probably better, you can tie your ending into all or none of these axes, and instead have it be affected by *gasp* actual actions!