The Open Thread is a place for open discussion among my readers. Post anything you feel like sharing! From now on, the Open Thread will no longer be monthly. Instead, there will be a new Open Thread whenever it is adequate. The stage is yours. Go ahead!
The latest Open Thread is made ‘sticky’ to improve access.
Please consider throwing a few coins into the tip jar, and buy my books! They are great. Your support is greatly appreciated.
Bayonetta 3 is out, receiving lavish reviews. Here is a more critical take on the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mSz2XuSAK8
This guy focuses on high skill/high reward games, in particular shmups and character action games; he is also pretty based. A while ago he had a video in which he lamented that there are no longer hot chicks in games. When it comes to the character-action genre, I trust this guy’s opinion more than any mainstream reviewer’s.
Thanks for linking to this guy. I’m about to go back and check and see if he has any thoughts on Nier Automata. I remember the one Bayonetta trailer a while back where it shows her break dancing or something before taking on some Godzilla type of enemy, and it just looked really silly. I’m not 100% sure but it seems like his view of Nintendo isn’t very positive, in that they seems to stifle anything edgy or interesting. Also, as far as hot chicks go, Bayonetta 3 has what looks like a butch dyke as a playable character. And Bayonetta herself looks like a soccer milf or school teacher in her mid thirties.
He has a lot of content online, including dozens or hundreds of hour-long streams. This alone gives him more credibility than game journalists as this guy actually plays games. I think he mentioned Nier: Automata a few times but there is only one video in which he explicitly talks about it:
Well, Bayonetta is getting up there in age. If she was 25 when the first game came out, which was in 2009, she is now 38, which is prime soccer-milf age. Joking aside, she probably only got short hair for performance reasons. Rendering hair is computationally quite expensive, as surprising as this may sounds, and with shorter hair, you can simply layer a few textures as strands on top of each other, as opposed to trying to model semi-realistic hair movement. Bayonetta 3 is quite disappointing in terms of graphics, so it is clear that the developer had to make a lot of compromises.
Awesome. I’ll check it out now. Guy makes me want to keep an eye out for a Ninja Gaiden sale.
There is a Ninja Gaiden Collection for PS4 and PC, but this version has not been well received. I bought all three Ninja Gaiden games cheaply for PS3. This guy thinks that the best Ninja Gaiden is the second one one Xbox 360. There is also Ninja Gaiden Black for the original Xbox but if you do not already own those consoles, it is probably not worth getting them for those two games.
That sucks! I’ll have to look into why the ports aren’t as good. I know they got Switch ports also. This dude seems to not dig the RPG aspects of Nier Automata, so it really seems more of a personal preference in his case. I learned last night that there are three main branches to the game with a total of 26 possible endings, 5 of which really matter with ending “E” being considered to be canon. I figured this out after completing 2B’s branch and then restarting the game from the perspective of 9S. I assume the 3rd branch involves another sexy lady bot (no not boy, P Ray), the other one featured on the box art I have that was briefly introduced as a rogue android.
When you boot up the post-game save and start as 9S, you have all your experience, items and perks still in place. It’s a really fun and creative game. I doubt Platinum will top it anytime soon based off of their recent output. I still have RE 7&8 to play through also, with Callisto Protocol, Atomic Heart and REmake 4, and Zelda to look forward to next year. Apparently, Capcom is not letting up either, as Code Veronica is now rumored to be receiving a remake as well.
The third branch in Nier: Automata probably involves A2, whom I find more attractive than 2B, at least when I compare the default models as the former has long, flowing hair.
I wonder when Capcom will remake RE 5 and 6. Both games still look very good, but Capcom has now figured out that they can make a lot of money with remakes, so those two games will be tackled eventually as well. I recently watched a complete playthrough of the Gamecube version of RE4, and was surprised how well this game still holds up. There are plenty of areas where the textures could be improved, but this is only something you notice on an LCD screen. The game is also still really fun to watch, which is pretty rare in general.
Yea, that’s right. Her name is A2. The way they set it up is such a unique way to experience a game.
I looked up a couple videos reviewing the NG ports and apparently it had something to do with not having access to the original source code (at least for NG2 as far as I can remember). Complete features are missing such as dismemberment. If you hadn’t said something I might have assumed they were good ports, as the only issues I’ve ever had with any port is performance problems. It looks like NG3 was a relative dud even though the source code was there. People seem to praise the first one above the other two, as it has to most enemy and boss variety. While NG2 did away with the simple puzzles which helped a lot with avoiding the breaking up of the gameplay in a jarring way. I’ll look out for DMC 4 & 5 instead.
I beat RE5 with a buddy way back when it came out. I don’t think it was very great, and I tried RE6 last year but could not do it. I think it’s awful. I think both of those games could benefit from being re-worked. Btw, I think it’s funny that just because RE5 takes place in Africa that that somehow makes it racist. It’s okay to blast your way through Spain and nobody bats an eye lash. Quite telling.
There is actually an HD mod for RE4 where a couple of guys went in and re-worked a lot of the assets. It’s actually quite impressive:
https://youtu.be/iEsFcVdJ0uA
Ninja Gaiden 3 had a re-release called Razor’s Edge, which is considered a competent game. It runs quite poorly on the PS3, unfortunately. I am not too fond of the simplistic puzzles found in action-oriented games. In Resident Evil 4, they are not too bad, but some of the puzzles in Sony games — I am thinking of God of War (old and new), Uncharted, and The Last of Us — are mind-numbingly boring.
I own DMC 4 for PS3, which is one of the best-looking games on that system. I think the game even runs in 1080p and at 60fps, and if not, it nonetheless looks really sharp and plays very fluidly. Check out DmC too, if you can pick it up cheaply. It got a lot of backlash but I quite enjoyed it. This is also probably one of the last Western-produced games that features an attractive woman, Dante’s guide Kat. (Yes, Dante is an all-powerful fighter taking on demons but he is lost without the direction of a woman, and one he does not even bang.)
If RE 5 was released today, there would be serious attempts by game journalists to get Capcom to make the zombies white. I also recall reading that Chris got this African side-kick only so that Capcom could counter accusations of racism, but this character was not very well-received, despite what you may have read in the gaming press. In the re-released Gold Edition, Capcom did not even put her on the cover and instead replaced her with a hot Asian chick I don’t even know where in the game she appears. She might be part of the Mercenaries mode, or one of the DLCs.
The HD mod for RE 4 is really impressive. I remember reading about it half a decade ago or so. The two guys behind it deserve a lot of praise for it as the result is clearly better than Capcom’s own effort at an HD remaster. There are probably a few rough edges that the video you linked to don’t show, but this does not meaningfully this achievement.
There‘s a fight in terms of free speech going on between the humble Kiwifarms owner Joshua Moon and a gang of sexual deviants. Those sexpests try to kick the Farms from the net, pretending that it‘s about protecting trans-rights when they actually attempt to cover up their dirt which is well documented on Kiwifarms: https://archive.ph/aIUSE
Joshua Moon already wrote last year about the mutilation of the free internet as we know (knew?) it in this article which also appeared on Zero Hedge: https://madattheinternet.substack.com/p/where-the-sidewalk-ends-the-death
I hope enough blogs like yours, Aaron, will still remain as a niche to discuss certain topics. Uber‘s tools shutting down everything controversial really rustles my Jimmies.
KiwiFarms has been under sustained pressure for years, and it seems that the site is now gone. Some of those campaigns were very transparent and reeked of Deep State involvement, seeing how well-orchestrated they were. This does not mean that they were anything more than smear campaigns. I think what we saw unfold with “trans-rights” on KiwiFarms was patterned heavily after the Gamergate playbook, the mainstream presentation of which is a complete inverse of reality.
I have no intention of shutting my blog down. However, I have been on the receiving end of leftwing oppression as well. For instance, I was banned from the Amazon affiliates program, from Google ads, and also from the Amazon advertisers program, but the latter happened in a much more underhanded way as they simply kept telling me that I cannot place ads for my books on Amazon. With the former two, they shut down my accounts and kept whatever money had not been paid out yet.
Super Mario 64 has a few sections where you need to dodge gigantic spheres. Who would have thought that this would come in handy at some point? This is a clear example of life imitating art.
The Resident Evil 3 remake has a “no skirt” mod:
This is rather amusing because in the original, the main protagonist comes straight out of a club, which is why she is dressed like a slut. This mod seems to imply that Jill loves partying in the remake too, and got interrupted right before a key moment of her night out. If this mod was canonical, there would be some guy out there in the RE universe with big blue balls, looking for a release.
I’ve seen full on nude mods for REmake 3, but honestly I think the lacy panties in this instance are sexier to look at. My overall thoughts on this game are pretty positive, however, towards the end when you take control of Carlos in the hospital it takes a pretty big dip in quality, I think. There were these hunter beta enemies that can one-shot you even on normal mode (dodging them is possible but it’s easy to make a mistake as they also happen to be hyper aggressive bullet sponges), so I ended up just cheesing them and shooting them through a crack in the door. Then, there’s a segment sort of similar to RE4, the part where you’re boarded up in the cabin and being rushed by enemies, but it’s not executed near as well. The first half of the game was a blast, I thought. There’s also enough incentive to speed run the game, as the more you do and the better your performance is the more points you accrue that you can then exchange for a variety of skins and weapons.
I was just looking at nexusmods for this game and found some pretty interesting stuff. There’s a mod to turn Nemesis into Shrek and one for his old head design. One mod turns Jill into the chick from DCM5, which was comical to me because I never realized they named that chick Nico Goldstein. Some dumbass actually put the time in to make an Ellie from TLoU2 on there. One that caught my eye, though, is a Tifa from FFVII mod. I might actually try that one out. It just re-skins Jill’s body giving her more revealing clothing and bigger assets.
Okay, so I’m on my second play-through of this game and I’m kind of noticing a problem with it (this is concerning as the this is the same team supposedly responsible for REmake 4). Maybe it’s just that I suck at this game but I’m actually doing way worse this time. The dodge mechanic seems very inconsistent, and several times I’ve missed the dodge window and Nemesis just stun locks me for a 3 hit combo and I die. I’ve tried dodging out of the combo but it feels like I’m stun locked every time. Again, maybe I just suck but this game is starting to feel unbalanced and super cheesy. If the dodge mechanic was more forgiving then it would feel more fair. At one point, I was escaping Nemesis through an alley having to blast zombie legs and weave through two of them in a narrow hallway, and when I finally get through that Nemesis jumps in front of me and punches me in the face (of course, I tried dodging his attack to no avail). I had detailed some super cheesy moments I experienced in the hospital section in a previous comment. I hope this isn’t some half-assed mechanic in REmake 4 because it feels frustrating.
REmake 2 was way more balanced in comparison (pretty sure this was a more experienced team here). Whenever MR. X is stalking you, the police station is designed with this in mind and gives you many opportunities to bait him into chasing you around a desk, for example, or it gives you a wide enough berth so that you can guide him into one direction before juking him in the other direction. When he hits you, you are stunned but he takes a few seconds to crack his neck or adjust his hat before leaning into his next attack, giving you plenty of time to recover and run away.
You touch upon a very important issue in modern videogames that does not get much attention at all: modern gaming is often incredibly sloppy. Even some of the most acclaimed games out there, including both critics’ and gamers’ favorites, do not have good mechanics. Instead, you essentially flounder through those games. You may get one-shot out of nowhere, or perhaps the game eats your inputs as it just dropped a few frames, but instead of addressing these issues, developers reduce or even remove punishment. You can simply start over, or hide for a bit and have your health recovered automatically, and these quick fixes are supposed to reduce frustration.
When you watch playthroughs of games like Dark Souls or Monster Hunter, top players seem to, as you also mentioned, cheese some enemies. Another approach is to completely memorize the entire moveset of your opponent, and exploit certain weaknesses, which is something you could not do without excessive practice. In my view, a really well-designed game should not require any such tactics at all. I think Resident Evil 4 is a very good counter example as some of the bosses can be defeated in multiple ways. You can also farm gold and buy a rocket launcher, if you so desire, and one-shot them. Furthermore, the game modifies enemy behavior to make battles fairer. Instead of groups of enemies ganging up on you, they slow down as they come closer, addressing the issue that the controls are more fluid than they were in the previous titles but still not as fluid to allow you to take on crowds of enemies. Oh, and on top you have dynamic difficulty that is so well implemented that many players are not even aware of it.
I ended up watching a previous speed run world record and I can remember three instances where the guy was doing really great, but then gets caught and takes damage. You can tell that it should have been escapable because of his reaction, and there seemed like some instances where he just plain got lucky and maneuvered his way through a crowd of enemies. I realize there’s a tight reaction window and a certain amount of skill to avoid damage, but damn it feels inconsistent. This is me just coming off of Nier Automata where the dodge mechanic in contrast is much more forgiving. If you get locked into a combo in that game it’s not overly difficult to time the next blow and dodge out of it. In REmake 3, there’s also the lucky phenomenon where if you are grabbed by a zombie Nemesis can just cancel that out by punching or swapping at you, and instead of damaging you it stuns the zombie and breaks their grip.
Final thoughts on RE3 after beating it a second time. I think it’s worth approximately $5-10. I was kind of caught up in the spectacle of the pretty graphics and crazy cut scenes, but after speeding through it and skipping most of the cut scenes I realized that there are just way too many scripted events. Also, there are too many brainless quick time sections and segments where you just press forward, the puzzles are shitty and the boss fights and enemies lack creativity. I realize this is a work of fiction, yet there just appears to be way too many logical inconsistencies with events and how things are set up. It just feels like this game was rushed out to cash in on the success if REmake 2.
Jill herself comes across as Mary Sue-ish compared to REmake 1, and the Nemesis is just nowhere near as oppressive as he should be (except that he feels like a giant frustrating cheese ball sometimes when he is chasing you throughout the street setting). They definitely didn’t do this behemoth justice. Thinking back to the original version they would have been way better off just making a prettier 1:1 remake with some extra content peppered in, because pretty much every aspect of this version from a story telling perspective is worse off. The syntax is poorer in virtually every way. Everything is just shoved in your face within the first hour with no chance to let the characters unfold naturally.
Finally, this is concerning considering this is supposedly (as far as I know) the same team that’s been given the keys to REmake 4. It doesn’t need to be “reimagined” such as how REmake 3 was. It instead simply needs to be a faithful remake with updates mechanics, enemy AI, graphics and some new surprises here and there. If content is cut, it should be because that specific content was inadequately executed by today’s standards and something better and more creative should take its place (not because it saves development time to push out a historically ridiculously sold game that people will no doubt buy again). But what the hell do I know?
Saying that the RE3 remake is worth between five and ten bucks is damning. One indication that this game was rushed is that it was released only about one year after the RE2 remake. I don’t think that it is plausible to assume that Capcom has put as much thought and preparation into both games. It seems that RE3 is worth at least one play-through, but probably not more than that. Well, this is still more than can be said about a lot of other games.
I am cautiously optimistic about the RE4 remake because Capcom cannot afford to mess it up. The reputational damage would be too big. After all, RE4 is the most beloved game of the franchise. It is also arguably the most classic game in Capcom’s catalog, in the sense that people play it to this day, which cannot be said of other classic Capcom games like Street Fighter II, the first Devil May Cry or other once well-received games like Onimusha.
“Saying that the RE3 remake is worth between five and ten bucks is damning.”
Well, that’s about what I paid for it, and it’s all I’d recommend you pay for it if it ever came down to it. When it was brand new, I think $40 would have been justified. I have a feeling that REmake 2 & 7 are probably the two most worthy installments in recent times. I agree with you totally about RE4. Everything we’ve seen so far looks faithfully enhanced, but it’s obviously still too early to know if any corners have been cut yet. I remember it being quite a large game, as in there were a ton of areas to progress through compared to most every other RE game. It probably may even be the most content rich in that regard. The urge to cut shit out like the mine cart section, for example, may prove too strong for Capcom in a rush to get the game out.
RE4 was, for its time, incredibly large and varied. It felt like multiple games in one. Probably, Capcom could have confined the game to the Spanish village, added a few puzzles and extended areas, and people would have been more than happy with this game. They really overdelivered.
A short video expressing skepticism towards The Callisto Protocol:
https://youtu.be/av8vi_QnMbI
My excitement for this game went down after they released the trailer containing what feels like a five-minute long slide down some tube. I can’t imagine this game turning out poorly, but there is a good chance that it will not be able to reach the heights of Resident Evil 4 and the first Dead Space. (I have not finished Dead Space but I readily acknowledge that it manages to create incredible suspense.)
By the way, I noticed something else in this video that is worrisome: The Asian actress they used looks much better in real life than in the game whereas it probably should be the other way around. Then again, the first Dead Space did not have attractive women in it either. Still, if The Callisto Protocol was made in Japan, you would expect a different outcome, i.e. more hot chicks and less gore.
For sure. One thing about the first two Dead Space games that was really creepy is that the Marker was playing tricks on Issac’s mind, adding a sort of paranormal kind of horror to the mix. The Asian chick in the game appears to be what the actress probably looks like before she does her hair and puts on make up. The hottest chick in the Dead Space series was Ellie: https://files.catbox.moe/falmsi.png
The upcoming Final Fantasy XVI needs more diversity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wybUrMKJbs
Quick, someone call Anita Sark-eew-sian to fix this! She will tell Square-Enix where to put in transvestites, blacks, muslims, and homosexuals, and shred the bizarre narrative that medieval Europe was “white”.
Should I go ahead and pre-order the game for being based? Haha. Joking aside, I never thought twice about the fact that FFVII had a big black Tyrone in it back in that day. The creators at the time probably though it would be ‘cool’ to have a black guy included like all those Western buddy cop films. Nowadays, they’re not even playing ball basically saying, “fuckayooo gaming journarists!”
Speaking of FF, any FFX fans here? I remember finding the storyline for that game really engrossing.
I picked up FFX twice but did not manage to get into. The first time was on the PS2, not too long after the game had come out. Admittedly, I was slowly drifting away from gaming at that point. The second time was earlier this year, via the remaster for PS3. Yet, I found the game pretty garish, so I quickly put it away again.
I played it when it first came out. I was probably about 12 or 13, and at the time I had hit my peak in FF fandom with FFIX. So, I really enjoyed FFX, though it was the last time I would ever get into a FF game. In fact, the only JRPG I’ve been able to get into since then was Chrono Trigger, and more recently Nier Automata if you want to consider it more of an action JRPG.
BTW, Aaron, I’d like to share this with you as it shows how Ubermensch destroys online spaces…
https://archive.ph/zZ7TM
This is a link to the now defunct Dissension blog that was on wordpress.
You can see there was an image of a negro sucking his privates. It was originally though that it was Stonah wit ah Bonah that put the image up. But if you click the image, it is hosted at a different location that the “meme’s” the tragic mulatto was known to post. In fact if Uber posted any images on this site, you might find they were posted from the same image hosting…
The study below argues that the vaxx is many times more harmful than Covid:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070
Uber’s mom completely lost it when I told her about it.
Have anyone watched the Graduate? With Dustin Hoffman.
It seems this movie is clearly subversive to the family culture of 1050-1960s. The wife is a cheating whore who has little moral fiber to seduce a young man.
A lot of things in that movie raises more question than answers.
The performance is great though.
Hoffman looks uncannily similar to Al Pacino in Godfather
We discussed this movie in the comments a while ago. There is a great article on the Unz Review about it, detailing how subversive this movie really is:
https://www.unz.com/article/jewish-themes-in-the-graduate-1967/
Yeah, I am actually searching for the names of the director and screenwriters. I saw Zuckerman and suspected that it was a Jewish name but was unsure about it.
The most revolting aspect of this is that on Quora, there were two people who stated that Ben and Elaine might have the same father. This implies that the whore’s husband is cheated twice.
I felt as if my stomach was twisted. If that is true, she has sex with her own son.
Oh, the olden days of high-brow subversion! Today’s audiences would not appreciate such subtle hints anymore, which is why we are getting flooded with tranny porn, incest porn, black-on-white porn, BLM riots, homeless drug addicts in the streets, feces on the boardwalk, and a plethora of further beacons of progress of democratic society.
There is also a scene in Californification where the nun gives blow job to Hank. Back in the days, many PUA turned to this movie as an inspiration in their conquest of pussies. I have watched some episodes and find it highly irrelevant to pick-up. As with most Hollywood movies, pick-ups are depicted as the women doing all the work, and in this case, Hank just has to “spit some games”, which is pure nonsense.
That scene in Californication is much more revolting than anything else.
Again, with Californification, you have a kind of behaviour that is totally unacceptable anywhere else. Throwing cigarette butts into the holy water fountain, calling “Jesus” as the nun’s husband, swearing “God damns” right in front of His statue, nun giving blow jobs. I can imagine this kind of behaviour is imitated by young kids whose feeble minds cannot yet discern right from wrong.
And you have a whole set of audiences cheering in the comment section. Obviously, they have been totally brainwashed by shows like these.
Scam Master Extraordonaire Tyler Dyrden (Owen Cook) Just Out did himself:
His latest rebuttal on “looks do matter” is that: He would have made a TON OF MONEY if he said that looks matter, and that nobody wants to hear that “looks don’t matter”, but he spent such a long time brainwashing guys to sink money into game because he’s a saint that wants what’s best to them.
He could have made “more money” “by saying that looks matter”.
https://youtu.be/Od9mMJoMbO8?t=1536
Now that is revolting more than the film above.