Open Thread

Open Thread #427: Misc.

Aaron "Sleazy" Elias

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47 thoughts on “Open Thread #427: Misc.”

  1. Each iteration of Predator since the original movie starring Shwarzeneggar has been a downgrade finally leading to this, a complete joke of a tv series filled with comic relief and , shitty character designs and girl boss sex robot energy : https://youtu.be/43R9l7EkJwE

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    1. The Predator franchise is a joke. I find it hard to believe that even the sequel was made. That Hollywood keeps digging up this corpse of an IP, desperately propping it up and hoping that this time it will stick is a great example of the creative bankruptcy in the West. This is the equivalent of game studios trying to resurrect franchises like Bubsy, Fable, or Perfect Dark.

    2. Well, Nintendo also has franchises they keep on life support, like Metroid. The games may not sell very well, but at least the people who play them seem quite fond of them. On that note, I looked up footage of Metroid 4: Beyond for the Switch 2 and I was quite surprised by how good the visuals are:

    3. Pickernanny, can you recommend a few Switch games, basically everything you enjoyed playing? I noticed prices of some used games dropping significantly, so it seems to be a good time to pick up a few games I otherwise may not have considered.

    4. The Alien franchise also has a shitty-looking tv series on the horizon.

      Though Metroid isn’t a mega seller, it is still profitable and it’s nice Nintendo still caters to these hardcore fans. The Prime series is probably more successful than the side scrollers. Metroid Prime 4 will probably be the last first-party game I purchase from Nintendo for the foreseeable future.

      On that note, I definitely thought Metroid Dread was great. It’s one of the more intuitive metroidvanias with what I would describe as having a nice flow to it. I was able to 100% it on hard mode, but you will be backtracking a lot more if you want to do a complete run. Thankfully, there is a mastery aspect in play here and you can easily topple bosses once you’ve found out their patterns, so no need to become overpowered.

      Mario Odysee I completed. I wasn’t a huge fan. It seemed serviceable. I also didn’t really care for Link’s Awakening remake too much. Skyward Sword was better, followed by TotK and then BotW. The latter of the two open world Zelda’s is nicer because there are more limitations to overcome which I’ve come to believe is an important part of the fun factor.

      There really aren’t many third party games or shmups that you can’t just get on Steam and have much better performance, so skip virtually all of those (which is where I got most of my enjoyment).

      That just leaves other first-party games. What else is there? Mario Kart 8 is fine if you’re feeling into that. Astral Chain was bogged down with too many mechanics and too much filler. I could never bring myself to get into the Xenoblade series because I had already played too many time consuming games. Of course there is Mario Wonder and Maker, but I never played any other first party games such as these. Echoes of Wisdom didn’t look appealing, especially after Link’s Awakening. Not into Animal Crossing. Didn’t play Luigi’s Mansion, but those games are charming. Never played Kirby, Paper Mario, Mario RPG, Pikmin etc.

    5. The only two big or bigger franchises you left off are Donkey Kong and Pokemon. DK Tropical Freeze I had played already on Wii U. It is very good. With Pokemon, I probably missed the boat in the 1990s. That being said, as I mentioned earlier, Pokemon Legend: Arceus looks quite nice and it shakes up the formula, so this is a game I am quite interested in.

    6. Your point about Metroid is true. This is a minor franchise for Nintendo, but it still arguably makes economic sense for them to release new games. Even if the games themselves were not profitable, they could probably still justify making them in order to get some more hardcore players into their ecosystem. On the other hand, franchises that really are no longer viable Nintendo simply drops, like Punch-Out, Starfox, Kid Icarus, and a few others. Microsoft putting money into a new Perfect Dark game would be akin to Nintendo positioning Starfox as a triple-A franchise.

    7. I took a pic of my top 15 most played Switch games as an indicator: https://files.catbox.moe/ub2mzf.jpeg

      Obviously the YouTube app doesn’t count. I never finished FFXII or Octopath Traveler. I’ve gotten several endings on Nier Automata but never finished it completely, and Dead Cells never ends. It was my first and last experience playing it rogue-like—not a huge fan. On Blasphemous 2 I made it to the final boss and got bored.

      I have no idea what Pokemon the open world edition is like, but I can just imagine there is lots of inane dialogue to skip through. The open world is supposedly below average as well. I’d be more interested in a traditional Pokemon game personally.

    8. I was surprised to see Unicorn Overlord Overlord in your list. Vanillaware is a developer I am weary off. They have managed to establish a reputation for their art direction, yet the games I have played all had shallow mechanics. Dragon’s Crown I perceived as a breath of fresh air about a decade ago. My interest in the title dropped as soon as I had seen the ending, though, despite originally intending to play through it with a different character. Afterwards, I gave Odin Sphere Leifthrasir a chance. I thought the mechanics were really bad. I noticed that Aegis Rim follows a similar playbook, i.e. unique visuals yet questionable gameplay. Unicorn Overlord apparently tries to capitalize on the minor resurgence the tactical RPG genre enjoyed, with Fire Emblem having done well on the Nintendo 3DS. However, I simply cannot imagine that Vanillaware was able to balance this game properly, and I am not sure that the visuals alone could keep my motivation up. Seeing that this game is among your top-played titles, you probably did at least one full playthrough. What do you think of this game in hindsight?

    9. Your assumptions about UO are probably accurate. It’s the only type of game in the genre I have ever played so I don’t have anything to compare it to. I recall some redditors discussing how easy it was to abuse certain classes to make the game easier, but I never utilized those tactics. Definitely great visuals with hot waifus all throughout. Even the protagonist’s mom is a bombshell. Also, I did finish the game and did some post-game stuff, but there were certain parts of the story I skipped through just to get back on the battlefield as it is not very interesting . UO holds an 86% on Metacritic so do with that what you will. On the topic of RPGs, I’ve had Persona 5 on my wishlist on Steam for a ling while and Metaphor: ReFantazio. The latter of which I’m very curious about. I will probably end up abandoning Persona.

    10. “Even if the games themselves were not profitable, they could probably still justify making them in order to get some more hardcore players into their ecosystem.”

      I did not grow up with original metroid series, but I did enjoy Prime 1 and especially the sequel. The third one kind of sucked, I thought, so I dropped it pretty quickly. Maybe it was actually good but I thought the introduction of a campy storyline was out of place, even as a youngster. Metroid Prime is best when everything is up to the player’s interpretation or willingness to investigate the game’s surroundings and scannable literature.

      I think a relatively low budget Star Fox game in the spirit of the original or the 64 version would be quite viable, but perhaps Nintendo still has shell shock from the awful reception of the Wii U edition. Of course, nowadays it seems they have the full backing of IGN and the like, so an in-house Star Fox with a small budget would probably pull in a profit. The indie scene seems to be picking up the slack here quite enough already, though. There are already two games out that are decent quality and another one on the horizon called Wild Blue.

      On that note, I think it would be wonderful if Capcom would pump out low budget yearly or bi-yearly Resident Evil titles in the spirit of the original trilogy. It seems that AAA developers are still more concerned with pushing the envelope, though. With advances in AI, it may be possible that we keep pushing forward in terms of content and graphics as developing might get a lot easier, albeit more generic overall.

    11. I thought of Resident Evil Revelations just yesterday, wondering if this was on the Switch (it is). This was a relatively low-budget title, with a focus on mechanics. The pacing was good, too. I own it for PS3, but did not finish it, but partly this is due to me finding consoles a lot less convenient than handhelds. What I played, I liked, though. Similar campaigns would probably quite well received. With the RE series, Capcom is in a never-ending release/remake cycle, i.e. by the time they are done remaking the latest game, they can already start revisiting the next one. Right now, the gap is four mainline entries, seeing that the latest remake is RE4, and the latest new release RE8. By the time RE9 comes out. RE5 will be due for a remake as well.

    13. This looks really interesting. It seems Nintendo has learned a lot of lessons from BotW. Emergent gameplay is not only very satisfying for the player as it invites experimentation. It also changes how people perceive games. No longer is there a line from A to B (linear game), or A and B somewhere on a map which you need to traverse in between (open-world games). Instead, you can change both your environment and your means of traversal. I am not sure I want to call this a paradigm shift yet, but I can see this catch-on, and fundamentally transform certain genres.

    15. This clip made me laugh. The image quality of TotK on Switch 2 is great. I wonder for how long Nintendo will keep rereleasing BotW and TotK. BotW has been on three consoles now, Wii U, Switch, and Switch 2. It was a news story back in the days when Rockstar released GTA V on the PS3, then PS4, then PS5. This seems to be the direction the industry is moving into, with “forever games” that have a staying power that would have been unfathomable in the past, and a deluge of games of which virtually none will even be noticed. We have seen even big releases come and go, seemingly not having much of a cultural impact, despite selling reasonably well. For instance, it seems that people were talking much more about Kingdom Come Deliverance II, or Dragon”s Dogma II, before the release than after.

    16. In Response to RE games in general, I have Revelations 2 but never played it. I should do that but I would prefer to couch coop it. I’m taking this with a grain of salt because virtually all of the RE9 leaks were wrong (almost as if Capcom intentionally misinformed the public, or much more likely no one had a legitimate source and were regurgitating bullshit), but speculation seems to be that RE0 and Code Veronica are next in the remake pipeline. I only think this might be the case because I feel like Capcom might be a little apprehensive to release the negro murder simulator that is RE5 current day. I mean, it has to happen eventually, and when it does I’m confident there will be compromises.

    18. This is unexpected. The lightgun shooter genre is pretty much dead, so I wonder why business-savvy Capcom greenlit this game. The most plausible explanation is that they want to use the casual arcade audience to fine-tune the game, and then release it on the Switch 2 as well as PC.

    19. Aaron, I will concede some of my previous Nintendo hatred upon watching more DKB footage. It looks extremely well-made especially for today’s standards. I will maintain that my willingness to upgrade to the S2 is still very low, as it is hard to justify such a purchase while sitting on such a backlog of bangers via Steam.

      I only watched about 5 minutes of the RE2 rail gun footage and read an article detailing that there are still about 3 levels in development, and that the only playable cabinet is currently located in Essex, UK. It seems feasible that it will make its way to all platforms eventually, perhaps with optional hardware even. However, compared to something like House of the Dead, the gameplay looks very slow paced and probably might not receive the approval of hardcore proponents of the genre. We’ll have to see how the other stages turn out.

      Btw, this is at least Capcom’s fourth attempt at an RE rail shooter. Two of which I have played and I thought were pretty fun in the context of couch co-op. Umbrella Chronicles is certainly much more enjoyable than Darkside Chronicles, though, since the latter added a shaking camera effect that really puts a damper on the quality of the gameplay in exchange for a more visceral feel. It’s almost nauseating.

    20. Just caught Synthetic Man streaming Crash Bandicoot for a few minutes, apparently after just finishing DKB for the video review. I have not caught him actually streaming DKB but for whatever reason he prefers the relatively clunky Crash Bandicoot 1 to DKB. Look forward to a not so stellar IGN style 10/10 review for DKB.

    21. Synthetic Man does not like DKB. Calls it condescendingly dumbed down. I’d say it’s probably a pretty chill game and fun at times, but for $80 plus a hardware upgrade, probably not the best allocation of entertainment funds: https://youtu.be/0__Ph3jk5WQ

    22. This guy often wants to be edgy for the sake of being edgy. Nintendo has a long history, going back to at least Super Mario World, of providing the player with various levels of challenge. In SMW, you could go through one world after another, hit the switches in each Switch Palace, and relatively casually make it to the end. This way, you will skip the pretty challenging Star Road. There is also the even more challenging Special Road that in the pre-Internet days a lot of kids did not even know existed. Nintendo developed this approach further in subsequent years. In Super Mario 3D Land, 50% of the game are left after you see the first ending. Super Mario 3D World also hides a lot of content after the first credit roll. Based on what I read about DKB, the structure is similar, i.e. the main game is moderately difficult but in the post-game Nintendo takes the gloves off.

    23. I listened to Synthetic Man’s review of DKB in the background yesterday. This guy seem to have an axe to grind. He points out the supposed lack of challenge, but it seems that there is plenty of challenging content in this game. Also, he talks a lot about games being “too easy”, but this completely misses the point. Nintendo recognizes that any of their games might be someone’s first game. Entire genres died out because they catered to an ever-decreasing hard core of players. Thus, this particular argument, which is the core of his video, completely misses the point. The challenge is to create a game that caters to players across a wide skill spectrum, not just for “elite gamers” like Synth. Also, Nintendo deserves a lot of credit for being able to keep franchises alive for decades. This is no small feat.

      Other points I disagree with was his dismissing, in passing, TotK for supposedly having copied some mechanics from the obscure Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (2008). This is a bit of a stretch. Besides, what kind of an argument is this? I recall that when Splatoon came out, some people dug out a completely obscure game with a superficially similar gameplay loop. At least this is what it may look like if are high and suffer from Nintendo-derangement syndrome. In the end, execution matters a lot more than the idea. Obviously, this guy uses an exaggerated persona in his videos, but his takes should be a bit more grounded.

    24. He has definitely found a niche within the whole gaming black pill and rage bait style of content creation. I personally am not super enthusiastic with franchises as a whole becoming relatively less and less dense gameplay-wise. There are exceptions, though. Metroid Dread is a tight experience, for example. It also appears that Prime 4 will feature pretty dense gameplay by relative standards. I just hope MP4 will address a lot of the tedious backtracking that went into MP1. I mean, Samus has a space ship for crying out loud. Just have checkpoints where you can call upon it to zip you over to other areas of the map or something.

      I was also quite glad to see that Capcom didn’t go the open world route with RE9. Likewise, we can expect future remakes to be pretty tight experiences. With REmake 2, for example, it might take you 8-12 hours to complete your first play through. However, you can easily breeze through the game in under 2-2.5 hours during a speed run attempt.

      As far as difficulty in Nintendo games goes, some notes about BotW and TotK: They start out at the highest difficulty with you getting one shotted quite often. By the end of the game you are practically invincible, as you have enough hearts and armor to withstand most enemies, and the game allows you to pause it anytime mid-battle to gorge on the dozens of meals you have prepped in your inventory. Not to mention all the easily exploitable cheese strategies that an over abundance of freedom leads to. There is virtually no post-game difficulty with those games. In BotW, one of the most favored shrines is a place called Eventide Island that strips you of all your materials and makes start from scratch. I feel like that says a lot.

    1. He sure is squirting a lot of squid ink. Now he’s pretending he’s going to arrest BHO. I also heard he wants to eliminate the capital gains tax on home sales. Yes, another gigantic sloppy blowjob for the Boomers will surely fix everything.

    2. “Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard set off fireworks on Friday when she accused former president Barack Obama of organizing a coup d’état against his successor. Summarizing the damning evidence in her possession, Gabbard concluded, ‘These documents detail a treasonous conspiracy by officials at the highest levels of the Obama White House to subvert the will of the American people.’

      Treason is a capital offense with no statute of limitations. So consider how explosive Gabbard’s allegations are. The senior official in charge of all American Intelligence is stating unequivocally that Obama and his loyal subordinates sabotaged the peaceful transfer of presidential power in 2016, betrayed the American people, and made war against the legitimate government of the United States.”

      Nothing will happen, of course, but it just makes it more enjoyable to think that the left could possibly have had a still-Democrat President Gabbard in office, right now. Instead, they ran her out of the party after she let the air out of their precious Heels-Up Harris during the 2020 primary debates.

    1. Reality is stranger than fiction. Idiocracy went pretty far in its depiction of the descent into clown world. Had they put a crackhead son of the president in the movie, it would have been considered utterly implausible and thus not even funny, considering that the rest of the movie is an extrapolation of the then-present. How would you extrapolate from the Biden clan in the 2020s? We have seen corruption in all areas at a level that is hard to believe. I am waiting for the day on which we will see a stream of a child sacrifice from the White House. We cannot be far of from that.

  4. I just re watched a recent interview with Hunter Biden where he dropped numerous F-bombs. I re-watched it to count how many times he said fuck.

    Thirty-one times.

    And this was just a SEGMENT of the interview, mind you. Of course he was supporting open borders. All he did was rehash liberal lies about how awesome illegals are. And of course liberals are applauding this, as if he killed it. Not only is this nation going down, were losing all tact and class.

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  5. JD Vance is not amused that Microsoft fired 9,000 American workers while still bringing in Indian gentlemen to fill these impossible-to-fill roles:
    https://x.com/theblaze/status/1948216918072062098
    Note the expression on the face of the non-white gentlemen in this group, Chamath “my sweater cost 2,000 dollars” Palihapitiya. He does not like hearing this.

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  6. Aaron,
    In your past travels in Europe, which type of adapter or universal adapter did you like and found useful to charge your electronics? Epicka, Tessant, or Lecent?

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    1. I do not recall particular brands. You can pick up a cheap adapter anywhere locally, so this should not be much of a concern. Also, in hotels you can normally borrow chargers and adapters at reception.

    1. The most incredulous aspect of this story is that the South Park creators got $1.5b in this deal. I like that they demonstrate the relevancy of the first amendment. However, it is a cheap shot to lash out at Republicans, and conservatives in general. Why don”t these guys make more fun of lunatic leftist policies, and perhaps of non-Christian religions. Their supposed bashing of Jews also seems to have amounted to very little in this episode.

    2. @ Aaron

      That’s what half Jew Bill Maher did with Religious. Heavy criticism of most religions. Light criticism of Jews.

      The main theme was to separate church and state. But he is a huge fan of Israel. A nation of, by, and for Jews.

  8. Okay, guys. Just be careful with your pussy slaying careers. There’s an app that’s been blowing up lately called “Tea” where women go to flag men whenever they have a bad experience. The app has been around for about a couple years but now it has caught on and many chicks will be using it to look up if men they are interested in dating are players etc. It could even be the case that a woman you reject outright for being an ugo goes on the app and ruins your reputation. No man is safe.

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    3. This is a very interesting concept. In Europe, it should be illegal due to data privacy laws. In essence, the company behind this app collects crowd-sourced data on men. They can also create detailed profiles on the women, which includes the ability to build a slut registry.

    4. Absolutely. Also, in order to create an app you generally need to be female, take a selfie and provide a ID for verification. There is a big controversy of a recent 4chan hack exposing women who were promised anonymity. Perhaps due to all of the recent publicity there shall indeed be lawsuits incoming.

    5. I looked into the hacking story. It is far worse than imagined: The highly competent software engineers behind this app made all uploaded personal data publicly accessible so you only had to scrape it, with a script you can write in a few minutes yourself: https://kiwifarms.st/attachments/1753454843362-webp.7690329/
      This is not a case of hacking but an example of utter incompetency. I would be surprised if there were not multiple lawsuits against this company in the works at this time.

      On a side note, an AI could easily write a script for the aforementioned task. Most people with a modicum of computer literacy could have done what this guy on 4chan achieved. This explicitly includes non-coders.

    6. It seems the app was very popular in the United States, according to the image below. I am not sure what a “roastie” is, though.

    7. I think roastie in this context refers to a supposed phenomenon where when a chick has had her pussy beaten up so much that she’s left with Arby’s style roast beef-like labia. I don’t know if there’s any truth to that, or if it’s just that women who are predisposed with genetically larger labia tend to be sluts. I’ve personally banged single mom’s with really pretty pussies as well as 21 year olds with not as aesthetically pleasing vaginas.

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