Is it today? Is today the day? Wow. Today is the day?
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yes it is, blaze it up with Pocky and Rocky
in Japan, not in America. America gotta wait.
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update: posting from the day
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for personal reference iām compiling a list of all the variables that affect bowling angle (in vs out), length, speed, and ball movement
- runup angle: over the wicket (in) or around the wicket (out)
ā variations = wide (in), mid, close (out) - bowling delivery (4 options + 4 variations)
- seam angle (movement, varies line)
- length
- aftertouch (varies line and length)
- effort ball (faster/slower)
- jump (pace and movement)
- release (line and precision)
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Curious to hear impressions from you, about Demon Turf and follow-up!!
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This is interesting to me - did you get a read that Anodyne had a reputation as a really solid kinesthetic platformer?
Oh, no, I see how the construction gives that impression.
My read of Anodyne and its sequel is that theyāre deliberate in their priorities and Sephonie was marketed with a novel-for-them parkour system.
So when Sephonie felt more or less like the PSX/Saturn handling of Anodyne 2 I was surprised. I expected something weirder and it primarily reminded me of Spyroās feel.
Iām sure itās more interesting in other aspects but the puzzle game layer wasnāt clicking for me either. If I ever wish a story-driven (their words) thing was a VN thereās a problem for me.
Very occasionally cuts the other way ā imagine if Eliza (2019) had a traditional Zachtronics game inside it
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been playing paper mario on the switch on a whim recently since, well, itās there and iād only ever played thousand year door. we never had a 64, my experiences with it were always just with That Kid Who Had More Money, who owned it, and we basically just played pokemon stadium, a game he owned (who even owned video games, man)
anyway i think itās really quite good! its designs for the party members are DEFINITELY not as interesting as its sequel, but i totally get it; here theyāre mostly āmario enemy with accessoryā because they werenāt really thinking about making character designs per se, i have to imagine. and thatās fine! i still like some of em, parakarry is great, i would DIE for bow, and although bombetteās design is frankly pretty lackluster they tried just enough that i love her. her fuse is a ponytail! they did make her key cuter than the default bob-ombs, but they should have made it a cute bow or something. anyway theyāre hardly character designs (especially, again, compared to the likes of āgrizzled bomb captain whose turn-key is a ship wheelā and āgoomba indiana jones kidā)
i levelled basically nothing but badge power because having more cool shit is good because i like to have fun, and then i got to pay a guy to make that shit even HIGHER and he reduced my health and FP down to less-than-the-starting-amounts, and i couldnāt have been happier. that rules. my ability to equip cool shit was maxed out before i even finished the third dungeon, a whole like two levels earlier than i should have been able to. good shit
iām now in the fourth dungeon and while iām at low health, my base damage for a jump attack is 6, meaning if i do just okay at my button presses for the move that lets me repeatedly jump on a guy, i deal like 30 damage with just mario in one turn. i love it. its bonkers. its very satisfying to be at deaths door and inflicting insane amounts of hurt
i also frankly like that paper mario manages to both be a jrpg for kids who like mario games, while still being a jrpg. it doesnāt try to separate itself from the genre or be something else, it just makes the numbers small enough, the party member system simple enough, the character progression and equipment minimal yet deep enough to be both satisfying AND easy to pick up for someone who doesnāt even know what a āslimeā is. and i respect that!
also okay i really like the flow of do new stuff in towns with sidequests and your new world traversal abilities ā do the next dungeon, unlocking new traversal abilities and locations and new buddies ā play as princess peach sneaking around. thatās two parts downtime to one part action! in two different flavors of downtime! i find it deeply satisfying.
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I ended up liking it more than Thousand Year door just because itās a bit more focused and I think the script pops more. Thousand Year door pulls some great setpieces but it drags as a whole: the towns are too big, the dungeons are too long, the jokes are run too long. Just keep it smaller, simpler, it canāt be stretched that far.
I love the Ghost chapter, though.
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I know it was watching two idiots try to be funny and play an RPg (not a good combination) but my take away from watching the game grumps play all of Thousand Year Door was everything in that game went on about 30% longer than it needed to and for them at least there was a distressing about of āokay now spend 3 minutes walking over here, again, if you remember exactly how to navigate this horrible sewer that is like the centerpiece of the game world.ā
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Because of all that padding, I 100% feel okay with my decision to just skip around a few of the Game Grumps playthrough videos to see what I missed. Turns out ā a lot of backtracking.
Is Origami King any good Iām trying to figure out what my next Big First Party Nintendo Game will be
I did some Origami King posting when I was playing it. I found it fun and charming for the first like 10 hours, and then everything after that was a major slog. It wears out its welcome pretty quickly. I never ended up finishing it.
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I feel like this is basically the video game standard. Thereās probably some formula we could work out for diminishing novelty/enjoyment for every multiple of 10 hours that a game stretches out to.
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Iām tempted to just coopt the inverse square law
I should pitch this to Polygon or something and get paid
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You know, playing Death Stranding and thinking back to MGSV, Kojima games definitely do introduce new stuff roughly every 10 hours that subtly alters how you play the game, rather than front loading everything.
A big way to fight wear in longer games is obviously content changes, plot developments, etc. but thereās this assumption (honestly I think unjustified) that every mechanic has to be tutorialized to death, so once theyāre through 8-10 hours of tutorial itās like ok thatās it! Kojima games just involve a lot of people explaining things to you all the time anyway, so the whole game winds up feeling tutorial-ish, but you could probably just likeā¦ give players more stuff to work with and see what happens.
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This is honestly just RPG design prostrats, but sometimes it backfires. My favorite kinda backfiring of this is still the Xenoblade Chronicles X mech getting like 40 hours in that immediate screws you over.
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after 100 hrs of sekiro I finally got around to doing the Shura ending. I got it on a NG save so I only had six gourds and a very low attack power but I did it. In the end I scared the old man with firecrackers so he couldnt burn me to death
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otoh i wish they could do this more without throwing everything out the window at the end in favor of bombastic setpieces. latter day kojima games are so good at hypnotic cozy incrementally developing infinite groove and the periodic AAA disruptions like the military shooter sections in death stranding and trivializing endgame toys are always a bit of a letdown
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Yeah, I can agree, and itās kind of why I think Kojimaās auteurship obsession is more of a weakness than a strength overall. Itās good in the sense that it lets critical choices actually get made intentionally, but there are elements of his cinematic ambitions, for example, that just need someone else in there to say ālisten, this might be cool to you but it would be better cut out of the gameā
Edit: also a fun game I like to play when I play a video game is āwould you work for these peopleā and Kojima is a hard no. I bet itās an absolute nightmare on the day-to-day. Looking at the things that money gets spent on in those games just to get one shot to come together without really adding anything to the whole experience is a big red flag haha. But I just canāt deny that, overall, heās out there making pretty reliably interesting stuff especially in comparison to the rest of the space
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I think one of the most impressive things Iāve seen is that, after leaving Konami, he was able to set up a brand new studio, switch engines entirely, and ship something thatās at least quite good, roughly on time, and as absolutely stuffed with ideas and marginal scribbling as the team is used to. It feels like the exact same team working at the top of their game despite what should have crippled them.
Iām always impressed by how much little one-off custom design is stuffed into the corners of Kojima Team games, the tiny cute AI behaviors and unique mechanics on dozens and dozens of items. That stuff has only gotten harder over time, and they must have an incredibly strong production culture of review and iteration to get it in.
But I think it definitely means you get used to Kojima walking in on you a near midnight and asking you to add something or change something.
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