I played the new black mirror movie with my girlfriend. We took turns on the decisions. It was 80% enjoyable and we spent three and a half hours with it. It’s supposed to be one and a half hours long.
Someone here mentioned it was generic and that you don’t have to watch/play it but I think that’s a bit harsh. It’s not the most novel of ideas but it’s executed well. I’d give it a try if you like black mirror.
There was one ending I really wanted to have and it doesn’t exist, which is too bad. (I checked the reddit flow chart and confirmed we saw all the endings)
They are all timed. I guess 10 seconds? It wasn’t that stressful… Well, for me. My girlfriend was stressed too! She enjoyed it anyway but yeah, I guess that could ruin it for some
PS, I’m not sure how interested the rest of you are in “oh my god, someone actually made the dark souls of pac-man as a joke except it’s a real game and it’s 15 hours long and it has incredibly level geometry and it’s beautiful” but it’s 75% off until tomorrow
I still think the core gameplay loop is a little Too Damn Much for it to be a solid rec but it’s definitely my favourite “didn’t want to put it on a top ten list” game of the year
i decided to play some mario kart 64 after not touching the game or series in 20 years because
i thought it was bullshit. it’s still bullshit, but it wasn’t that bad, so i tried some of the other games. the lightning bolt is the worst item in mario kart and for some reason they’ve decided to increase the likelihood of opponent racers receiving this item (going by 64 > Double Dash > Wii), meaning i get hit with it several times a race and frequently get hit again immediately after recovering from a previous lightning bolt. and then i get blinded by the goddamn ink. there’s nothing fun about that – the race grinding almost to a fucking halt based on an item you can’t avoid. fuck mario kart wii.
i’ll just stick with double dash, at least it has daisy. daisy is the best. when you toss an item at another racer she goes, “YO!” and when it connects, she cheers ecstatically. it’s my favorite part of the game.
This is definitely true, but they reduce it significantly after Wii. MK Wii is a terrible, awful, very bad no good game. I think that they increased the number of racers to 12, but didn’t adjust the item handouts appropriately so it’s just Lightning and Blue Shells all fucking day.
DS tones it down significantly, and MK8 has, I think, a hard limit on both Lightning and Blue shells per race. I have never seen more than 2 blue shells and 3 lightnings in a single race, and never more than one per lap. At least, in my recollection.
The item distribution in MK8 is wacky by the way. GP has a different, more stingy distribution than Vs. does, even if you leave Vs. on normal. You will never, ever get a bob-omb if you’re in first doing GP, but it happens in about 50% of races in Vs., even with all the computers active. Also much more likely to get red shells in 2nd, and even 1st. I think the distribution of lightning and blue shells is the same though.
I just ran through pre-8 Mario Kart games with my wife as she’d never played them.
I always liked Double Dash and in comparison I can see what it’s doing – items are crazy in Double Dash and there’s an emphasis on littering the track with leftover items. Get hit while carrying an item in reserve and you’ll leave it on the track; a lot of the unique character items (DK’s big banana that splits into three bananas, for instance) are built around this. Some of the best courses take advantage of this. For example, Baby Park (tiny oval, 8 laps), which debuted here and is in 8, really only makes sense in Double Dash because the course fill up with items over the race and it naturally gets more harrowing.
The last normal circuit is also fantastic looking; Wario’s Thunderdome and my favorite Rainbow Road design feel like tracks borrowed from F-Zero.
Compared to 7 and then 8, though, you can see Nintendo looking to tone down the items and random nature; Double Dash is way more volatile and respects racing less, and the 7/8 blend is much more aligned with, say, Sonic Kart.
MK64 is a terrible starting point because Nintendo gave up in making CPU racers interesting in any way and almost rely solely on rubberbaning on one racer for any given cup
Double Dash is Nintendo going “you know, Sega makes good racing games” and then dropping items into that
I have no opinion on Wii other than that video of Daisy getting hit by every single goddamn item at the end of a track
8 is two games mixed together, with 50cc-Mirror being a very good kart racer and 200cc is Nintendo whipping their dicks out onto the table and waiting for anyone to say anything
the greatest failure of Smash Ultimate is that Daisy doesn’t have “Hi I’m Daisy” as a taunt
I probably played more hours of Mario Kart Wii than any other game in history. It might be the worst one as everyone always says but I sure as heck didn’t notice from 2006 to 2010 when I was flipping those Whiil controllers and having a good ol’ time
Julie will 1000% always prefer MKWii for the simple fact that failing the GP circuit results in a screen with your racer sitting forlornly on an escarpment, gazing with wistful regret into the sunset as the most hangdog rendition of the Mario Kart theme plays. Nothing else matters compared to the inclusion of this scene.
The worst thing about Wii Mario Kart is how it looks like they smeared vaseline over the camera in a poor attempt to make it look nicer than Double Dash. I played through the whole series with my girlfriend recently, her least favourite is the GBA game, which I’m also not a fan of. It’s basically the SNES one but with added BS and boring courses.
Speaking of which, 64 was my favourite for a long time because I liked the items behaviour in it the most and it has some of my favourite tracks, but it just doesn’t feel as good as later ones. I actually think the DS might be my favourite with how it feels and how the items work, though 7 is also good. I have mixed feelings about 8, especially how items are based on how far you’re from first place, but overall I have a very good time with it. And it’s easier to counter the blue shell than in most of the previous games.
ALSO, we played Bandersnatch last night! It’s basically I’m Your Man (which I recommend if you like bad movies) but darker. I really loved our first playthough, and noticed lots of clever little things, but was less impressed on repeat playthroughs because the story goes in very different, less interesting directions. I think it would have been better if it focused on one of the major paths and went deeper into it.
BUT, on the other hand, we did enjoy going down all the different routes. It’s also a great period piece! Also, Jeff Minter!
