Well, my dad works at Nintendo and~: Console Wars Horseshit Megathread

[Pagz]

I keep reading Xbone as 'X-bone', the same way I read schild as 's-child'.

[Margalis]

I keep reading Xbone as 'X-bone', the same way I read schild as 's-child'.

Is there another way to read these things?

[Cyrrex]

I, too, read it as "x-bone".

I have two different pronunciations of schild in my head, neither of them correct I think.  On the other hand, I know how to say Signe's name, even though she doesn't herself.

[Rendakor]

I say Xbone, schild sounds like shilled, and I have no idea how to pronounce Signe. See-nay?

[Phildo]

S-child?

[Soulflame]

Isn't Signe pronouced "Will-knife-you"?

[Merusk]

Zombie.

[Yegolev]

This must be the horseshit section of the thread.  Did we all decide to get PS4s at this point?

[Jeff Kelly]

I pronounce Schild like it was the German noun (Schild = Shield) short vowel.Don't know if that's correct.

[Soulflame]

We have a WiiU.  It doesn't get used much.

At the moment, I have no plans to get a console.  I'd be more tempted by a PS3 than a PS4 at this point, honestly.  Larger library, bunch of games I kind of wanted to play, etc.

[Rendakor]

I'll probably get a PS4 once they come out with a decent JRPG for it.

[Merusk]

This must be the horseshit section of the thread.  Did we all decide to get PS4s at this point?

Son bought himself a WiiU because there was some game on it he wanted to play, so I let him.  No plans to buy anything but the PS4 and that won't happen until/ unless Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out, because the wife and daughter want to play it.

I'm just about done with games entirely, myself so I won't be buying any more consoles for me.  I barely used the PS3 beyond that Turn Based game where the teenagers drove tanks. Never finished GOW or any of the other games I bought so I realized it's a waste.  Hell I'm barely playing PC games these days.  I'm gettin' old and want to do more than sit on my ass in front of the computer so I'm finding other hobbies.

[Ingmar]

The 'il' in schild is pronounced ill, like his rhymes.

[schild]

Wordlyfe.

[Phildo]

This must be the horseshit section of the thread.  Did we all decide to get PS4s at this point?

Can't a man make a Parliament Funkadelic joke from time to time?

re: the topic, still not going to touch one of these consoles until they're either backwards compatible.  So probably never.

[Trippy]

I pronounce Schild like it was the German noun (Schild = Shield) short vowel.Don't know if that's correct.

That is correct.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I've been reading s-child in my head since WT, it's too late to turn back now.

[Cyrrex]

I do have my PS4 now.  I sorta feel like talking about it, but I doubt most of you want to hear about it.

[Merusk]

That's never stopped the rest of us, don't let it stop you.

[Soulflame]

I don't mind hearing about it!  I don't really have controll of my TV, so I don't buy a console.  I kind of wish I could.

[Cyrrex]

It probably deserves a bit of a write-up, so I will come back later and do that.

BUT FIRST!  I feel like I need to say something about a certain Wii U game, and that is Super Mario 3D World.  If you think I am about to go on and gush about this thing, well, think again.  The game somehow managed to receive pretty rave reviews, but my disappointment in it is profound.  PROFOUND.  If this is the flagship Mario game for this generation of Nintendo (and it is supposed to be), then they are beyond fucked.  The game is gorgeous to look at, and from a distance it seems to check all the right boxes.  In reality, it is a soulless disaster of a game.  It suffers from the fatal flaw that it isn't fun to play.  It is also easier than fuck.  The only challenge provided at all is in the sloppy controls.  Forget the pixel perfect Mario games of the past.  The whole game feels like you are sloshing through mud.  Aside from that terrible sin in a Mario game, there seems to be absolutely no incentive to unlock any of the secrets or go after all the stars.  The levels are stupidly easy (sloppy controls aside), the bosses are even easier (I have not failed to beat each boss on the first try, even with zero powerups available), and you never lack stars to move on to the next area.  The game is possibly loaded with secret places and stars that are hard to get, but you'll never feel any reason to go after them.

They finally get into the HD world, and then they shit out this paint-by-numbers Mario game.  Super Mario 64 is a far better game in every way but the graphics.  So are Galaxy 1 and 2.  The one for the game boy advance was better.  Fucking NES Mario was better.  I mean I would literally rather play any of those games right now, this isn't just nostalgia talking.  Neither of my older boys (9 and 12) have played more than 2 minutes of this game.  My 2 year-old makes me fire it up because he loves watching Luigi fly around, and I dread every minute of it. 

DO NOT WANT.  I can only assume they are secretly investing a lot of time into a Galaxy 3 game or something, because they sleepwalked through the making of this turd.

[Samprimary]

I kinda just think xbox is kinda done as a thing but has a potential for (off in the future) rebound.

Nintendo I'm less ... optimistic about?

I dunno. My general sense of it is that xbox gambled on kinect and just admitted defeat, and that's that. And that wii u was terribly designed/marketed and sort of indicates that nintendo is lost, company culture wise.

[Samprimary]

I've been reading s-child in my head since WT, it's too late to turn back now.

I have done that habitually despite knowing what it actually is supposed to sound like and what it means it's always s-child in my head

in fact it got so ingrained that the username Scold always reads "s-cold" in my head. through habitual association.

[schild]

Ya'll weird. Especially you, s-amprimary.

[Samprimary]

that's actually spot on pronunciation in my native protoss

[Margalis]

3D World gets pretty hard in the later levels. Also getting all the stuff on the stages is part of the challenge. If you choose not to do that you are choosing to make the game easier.

It is very easy though until the last couple words. (And then the post-game stuff)

[Cyrrex]

First, none of it is compelling enough for me to give enough of a shit to go after it.  It doesn't seem to reward you in any meaningful way.

Second, the challenge should be inherent to the experience.  I shouldn't have to go way out of my way to get it.  One thing they could have done would be to make the star requirements for unlocking world and bosses more stringent.  Or secret/alternate paths totally worth exploring.  As it is, it seems you can simply sleepwalk your way through it.

[dusematic]

First, none of it is compelling enough for me to give enough of a shit to go after it.  It doesn't seem to reward you in any meaningful way.

Second, the challenge should be inherent to the experience.  I shouldn't have to go way out of my way to get it.  One thing they could have done would be to make the star requirements for unlocking world and bosses more stringent.  Or secret/alternate paths totally worth exploring.  As it is, it seems you can simply sleepwalk your way through it.

Sounds like you just don't like the game.  I think it's a good idea to make simply getting through the game of easy or moderate difficulty.  It allows casuals to enjoy the game as well as hardcores.

Personally, I always try to collect all the stars, I don't consider I've truly beaten the level until I do. 

[Margalis]

It's pretty fashionable now in game design to essentially allow players to choose their own difficulty on the fly based on what they do and how they play. Dark Souls 2 is a good example of this - you can make the game pretty easy by constantly summoning and being summoned, or really hard by playing solo.

I have mixed feelings about it. Mario is supposed to be an all-ages game, so I think it makes more sense there than in some other titles. and collecting the optional stuff feels more concrete to me than just trying to get a certain score or time.

[Yegolev]

Since we are on this, I dislike "Cat Mario" quite a bit for various reasons, but my son loves it.  He is ten, and his other interests are Minecraft, Terraria, PvZ, and PvZ Garden Warfare.

I have to say that Garden Warfare is a lot of fun.

[Bunk]

Seeing a few little changes on the XBone front. They've dropped the Gold requirement for apps completely - no longer need to pay a surcharge for the right to pay for Netflix.
To "make up for it" they're putting free games on to Gold starting next month. I fully suspect I'll get free offers for games I already bought.

[Yegolev]

I fully suspect I'll get free offers for games I already bought.

This has been a constant for me since the inception of the program, as well as the PSPlus service.  Although very recently I've gotten caught up on PSN and have downloaded/purchase-marked some free items which weren't terrible and that I didn't already own.

[Fabricated]

how do you fuck a system up this bad

[Job601]

First, none of it is compelling enough for me to give enough of a shit to go after it.  It doesn't seem to reward you in any meaningful way.

Second, the challenge should be inherent to the experience.  I shouldn't have to go way out of my way to get it.  One thing they could have done would be to make the star requirements for unlocking world and bosses more stringent.  Or secret/alternate paths totally worth exploring.  As it is, it seems you can simply sleepwalk your way through it.

There's a set of extra levels at the end of the game which you unlock by getting all the stars, all the stamps, and by landing on the top of the flag at the end of every level.  Unfortunately most of the stars are hidden rather than being tricky to get, and there's no equivalent of the more difficult purple coin levels from Mario Galaxy.  I like the game, but I know what you mean about the characters moving like they're stuck in molasses -- I find Mario and Toad to be ok but the Princess and Rosalina's lower speed is a real drawback to make up for their better jumps and I don't like  playing them.

[Cyrrex]

Well, sure...it's good and fine that there is bonus stuff at the end for the 100% ers out there, but I doubt most of us want to get EVERY thing unlocked in order to do that.  Maybe this will explain it better:  I have clear memories of Mario 64 where I would walk up a door that I really needed to go into, only to find I did not have enough stars, and then had to go back and find more stars.  And by find more stars, I mean they weren't always trivial to find.  It felt like an accomplishment.  The world itself was also a bit more mysterious, with interesting secrets all over the place.  The secrets in this version seem neither interesting nor important.  Even the GBA Super Mario World Whatever did ALL of these things better. 

I could forgive a lot of that if the platforming was fun, but it fucking isn't.  It is sloppy, and most of what you see on the screen you can safely bypass or ignore.  Lame. 

I am not a Mario hater.  I don't even really hate this one, I'm just ambivalent.  My nine year-old won't play it, my twelve year-old won't play it.  The 2.5 year-old wants ME to play it, because admittedly, it looks pretty as hell and he loves him some Luigi Time.