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So, with the remakes of Front Mission 1 & 2 announced I went back to Front Mission 3 on the PlayStation and while mechanically it's still solid (if slow with all that loading inbetween scenes and what not), the story is just awful. I guess I had forgotten. Is this known to be badly translated or something? The protagonist is a) a complete asshat and b) a moron, coerced by a foreign agent (posing as a foreign scientist?!) into betraying his own country and getting hunted by its military. Not that it makes sense she'd be looking for local help (even assuming they had seen his skills from his job for the Wanzer corp that is contracted by the military he hates so much) for that since she already had such organization for information, wanzers, air support, etc. Maybe the nuance of the situation is lost because of a bad translation and he's actually meant to be more weary and/or have more reasons to be worried enough about his sister to go this far? I dunno.


I get it's justified as the story goes on (possibly, I would think someone would want a lot more evidence and proof before writing off their whole country as nazi evil or something and agree to help search for a superweapon they allegedly stole and so agree to help return it to an actual enemy country rather than pursue to destroy it or something, yikes) but, it's so unrealistically dumb all the way through. Even e-mailing or calling his sister doesn't seem to have crossed his mind before accepting to infiltrate a base with a foreign chick in wanzers/kill folks doing their guard duty, do the same for police searching for them etc., I just hope other games in the series are more sensible on that front because I'm certainly looking for the full package deal and won't be looking past such writing just to enjoy decent battles. Googling it seems like most agree about 3 and there's not much story hate for most of the other games so, fingers crossed.
 
There's no denying the visual quality of this (or the original) but the pop in here looks so bad, even on PS5 going by these videos despite people overlooking it in the results. Who really thinks it's good to change lod levels/add objects relatively close to the players as they move? I'd prefer lower overall detail if it smoothly switched in way in the distance. We see this a lot since Crysis (with its rocks, branches and other terrain clutter) and it sucks, even on PC detail options never go far enough (I guess even a top of the line system could have trouble rendering that stuff too far) or at least offer the ability to just reduce or disable all these clutter objects altogether and avoid having the game world constatly pop as it gets gradually populated with them, leaving changing lod levels just for terrain, characters and bigger structures and objects where it's less noticable/more distant. Things changing detail levels on the fly is acceptable and needed, things popping up out of thin air or changing altogether close to you, I don't get why they still design games this way. Pretty in screenshots I guess, like ~30fps is, and you have to be able to beat screenshots of other/older games that employ this tactic by a landslide if you want your game to be considered top of the line 🤷‍♂️
 
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Re: Breath of the Wild Master Mode

Took back Vah Naboris. The beginning fight to enter Naboris and the dungeon itself also reminded me how awesome the music are in Zelda. I really like how the music changed when more terminals were activated.

 
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I am playing Super Mario 64 for the first time ever.

Yes lttp doesn't even begin to cover it, but I'mma say it

star-wars-past.gif


This camera SUUUUUUUCKS
Precision platforming is more of a guess or a suggestion than anything else. This is rough going man :cautious:
 
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I don't know. I hated and insta-rejected Mario 64 on release due to the godforsaken N64 controller, but I loved it on the Wii Virtual Console. So much so that it shits on Odyssey from an great height in my mind.
But I'm talking about the game design, not the graphics or the horrible camera.
 
I am gonna vent for a moment

www.resetera.com

YouTuber HM: “Microsoft’s Preservation Problems”

I can’t say I’ve heard of this guy before looks like he covers a lot of Japanese stuff specifically, but it’s a really good and comprehensive summary of everything that’s been talked about up until this point on the online necessities of the series x and the preservation concerns that come from...
www.resetera.com www.resetera.com

Maybe I am just shouting into the void here and I'm an old man who just needs to get over it and get with the times but I am utterly f*cking sick of the gaslighting on the concerns with the rise in digital distribution and decline in physical media, most especially in the console space (truth be told I still have some concern with PC too but it's much less so and frankly too late anyway).
There is this constant shifting of the goal posts I've notice now
"you're being paranoid it'll never happen"
"well it won't happen now, the services that got shut down were old and not integrated, and/or were unsuccessful"
"I won't care about these games by the time they're taken down"
"you're talking about preservation but what you really mean is accessibility"

The ironic thing is I started this new gen with a Series X before knowing any of this stuff and I was intending for it to be my main system for the length of the gen, using the PS5 just for exclusives et al
Now I'm very likely going to trade it in for a Series S and pocket the difference in change, and now use the PS5 as my main.

"but if you're concerned about digital why would you buy a digital only console??"
Easy; Game Pass.
I'd just use it as a Game Pass box and my PS5 as my main will catch the rest. At least with GP there is no ambiguity of "ownership" after all.

"but aren't you just playing into MS hands with getting a digital only console and subbing to GP?"
Maybe, but like I said I intended to use Xbox as my main for this gen, and they've pushed me away from that position now by their own actions, so I doubt this is a "win" position really overall compared with what it would have been.
 
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Great memories. Still the best moment for me with Switch and Breath of the Wild on Day 1, especially as someone who went from 3DS to Switch. It was a game-changer.
 
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I didn't get my Switch until June of that year and played Breath of the Wild on my Wii U. I didn't care about the Switch until the E3 presentation where they showed Mario Odyssey in depth. None of my local stores had it in stock, so I drove about 40 miles out of town and went to three separate stores until I was able to find one.
 
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NarohDethan said:
I only buy physical for the Switch. They more or less keep their value.

Discs might as well be drink coasters though.
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Not really; I got several hundred $$ for games traded in at Gamestop last fall. It was a large pile to be sure, but it's better than a digital library that eventually becomes unplayable due to consoles not doing backward compatibility. I hope physical stays around, but the writing is probably on the wall.
 
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I finished the Kirby demo. As expected, it's fantastic. If you have played a Kirby game before, this is pretty much the old formula in 3D. Stages are linear so it's more Mario 3D World instead of Odyssey.

Music is great, and I was very impressed by the animation. Ice Kirby always moved like ice skating in previous entries, but this time when Ice Kirby jumps, he spins in mid-air like a performer. Detail like this makes me grin like a child.

Edit: Also, it runs really well on handheld!
 
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AHA-Lambda said:

I really hate seeing the death of physical media
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I feel you. Back in the PS4 days, I was hardcore physical games only, and swore I'd quit gaming altogether if digital only ever became a thing... but then I got back into PC gaming, and Steam started accounting for the lion's share of my library.

I still bought console games mostly physical after that... but then I got my first Xbox (XSX). The combination of MS BC being outstanding, and Xbox physical discs being glorified CD keys really pushed me into digital on the console side of things as well.

Now just Nintendo and PlayStation remain as the last bastions of physical game purchases at my house. But since games run better 99% of the time on either the Xbox or the PC, its pretty much exclusives only on those two, or rare CEs.

It's astounding how much my position on digital games changed within the past decade honestly. I've seen your posts on the subject on Era, and I've come to terms with the fact that the next generation of consoles are very unlikely to have a disc drive.
 
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Does anyone have thoughts or better yet experience with playing Switch, 1080p Blu-Rays and PS4 or any other sub-4K content machines on a 4K TV, specifically the LG C1. I'm still on a 1080p set. I'm sensitive to upscaling being done poorly. I had a 65" Hisense U8G 4K set for a few weeks but returned it with the extended policy because everything sub-4K looked really bad. However, the AI upscaling on my Nvidia Shield did a good job with sub-4K streaming stuff. Anything that was left to the TV's upscaler was quite nasty looking. On Switch, only really stylized games like Mario Kart looked decent. Even 1080p Blu-Rays were noticeablly soft.

At a guess, I think the U8G did not have fancy upscaling but the C1 does, so maybe with some sharpening, Switch can look passable on it. The Shield's AI upscaling gives me hope that upscaled non-4K content can look decent. I'm thinking of going with 55" on the C1. 65" was too big.

What does anyone here think?
 
I was watching some Japanese reaction videos of the last Nintendo direct. Very entertaining.

This one recognized Live A Live even before the title was shown.


This vtuber kept delaying her excitement ("not so fast!", "we are not certain yet!"), then she completely lost it at the Nopon scene.


This one can recite a famous line of Live A Live and chant "WAIT IS THAT MELIA? HIGH ENTIA? WHAT IS HAPPENING" in Xenoblade 3 reveal.
 
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Played a bit of GTA V on PS5. It looks fine, it's supposedly 1440p / 60fps in performance and 4K/30fps in Fidelity. Dualsense stuff is good enough.

And yep, it's just GTAV.
 


I am one of the 800,000, but I haven't even took the game out of the box yet. I plan to start it after I finish Elden Ring and Final Fantasy Origin, so maybe before the Steam version is announced. 🙃

Also I played the Mario Kart DLC. Ninja Hideaway is the standout track for me since I love all the alternate routes you can take. Paris Promenade is also really fun too.
 
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Apparently they don’t work on the Home Screen. And apparently they are abstracted as a filter in the Library screen.

Useless.

What they should do is put the groups as tabs along the top of the Home Screen that users can scroll through with L and R buttons.
 
These sound more like tags rather than something like folders. I like tags so that's cool but it's a shame that there's no shortcut from the Home Screen. Even a simple shortcut to get to the Groups section would be something - map it to an unused button.

They've added this after like 5 years so who knows when we'll see the next update. Nintendo must have a skeleton crew to work on the OS or even less than that.
 
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Nice week for Switch. If I hadn’t already blown my budget with the Deck I would be seriously tempted by Kirby. And Rune Factory but if I understood correctly perf on this one are only satisfactory when emulated.
Still a very tempting combo of releases.
 
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If Apple is serious they are gonna need to make a big purchase like a publisher or several devs. They need ip power and talent to help them sell new gaming hardware. Without them they will wind up being like Stadia.

And you know they want to make TV shows/movies for their streaming service using game ip since all these other services are finding success with it (Witcher, Halo, Uncharted, GOW, TLOU, etc).
 

Giveaway

Restrictions & Conditions:

Hello, I'm the Giveaway Bot! Kvik is giving away 1 gift(s).

This giveaway is a raffle and will be closed after Apr 12, 2022 at 8:31 AM. A winner is chosen randomly with the key delivered via a PM.

This code is from Discord promo. Not sure if this is restricted to my own Discord account. If so, my apologies.
Redeem before 27 May 2022.
Click to expand...

The raffle has ended.

The following games are being given away:

 
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Arc said:
blog.playstation.com

UPDATE: All-new PlayStation Plus launches in June with 700+ games and more value than ever

PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now come together; players can choose from three flexible options.
blog.playstation.com blog.playstation.com

Looks like it's just a combination of the current PS+ and PS Now. The old Playstation games are in the most expensive tier and PS3 games are cloud streaming only. $120/year is an insane asking price.
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Absolute rip off. They will try to inflate its value by gating content behind the sub exclusively too. Just you watch.
 
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