[size=+1]Community Unrelated Ramble #125[/size] I know, I know...These aren't supposed to be me just writing down my personal life and thoughts, they're meant to reflect the site in general but I cannot get this out of my head. And, hey! At least it's interesting. Well, maybe just to me but I can try to make it interesting. The jokes are likely to still be lame but I've written over sixty of these things. Can't all be gold! All right, all right...The big news for me is that I caved in and brought a Wii U. Woo, hurray, yadda-yadda. I did it because nothing else on the other consoles interested me. Steam has my back on anything niche. I will never touch an Xbox One unless forced to by some wayward purchase form a grandparent or something. The PS4 has indie games on it but that's what my PC is for, plus most of the games on it seem to be boring old shooters. I have my PS3 for that. I'm OK. The Wii U is the only console willing to let me have beat 'em ups, a mascot-driven platformer and a kart racer. All three are pretty big parts of my taste in games. These things I like and enjoy supporting when I come to mainstream gaming. Ratchet and Clank has been so-so for the last few games. Crash Bandicoot games are now unrecognisable. Spiro games aren't made like they should be anymore. Jak games started getting extremely stupid and strapped for threats to give Jak to face as soon as the third game rolled around. By then, he could become a being of pure energy that could summon angelic wings and slow the flow of time to a crawl. Where do you go from there, exactly? These are the titles I enjoy and most of the stuff I've seen advertised for the other systems haven't interested me. It's partly why I've brought a 3DS. It's partly why I've faffed around with an Ouya. It's partly why I've been playing the HD Kingdom Hearts games. Mainstream gaming has been so, so boring for the gamer that doesn't enjoy gritty, macho realism. Enter Wii U. A system that takes HD Graphics and uses them to make environments as bright and colourful as feasibly possible. I would adore a HD update to Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii U. They managed to make a game full of wonder and colour with just the Wii hardware. Imagine what they could do with the Wii U! Mario Kart 8 looks wonderful! It's so bright and pretty! These are guys that have some wonderful vision and a artistic direction I love. Now it's in a really crisp presentation. It's just...ah! Words fail me. The thing is that I want to talk about the thing itself. These are just tiny little things that I noticed that I really like. Firstly, and I'm sure I'll be considered so sad for this, but it has a little light for telling you when a game is in the slot. Why has it taken until now for that to happen?! That's such a good feature as the alternative is to turn the system on to check if a disk loads. All my disk based systems don't do this except my Wii U. The PS3 was monstrously expensive at launch but it doesn't have a disk light. Or my Wii. The Dreamcast has a lid that you can just pop up quickly so I'll cut it some slack. I just don't know why nothing else seems to do this. It's a design feature that seems like a no-brainer but it's the first I've seen it actually implemented. It's also a sign that someone is thinking about how it's put together, though. The next bit is the controller itself. I like this thing. I don't find it much heavier or uncomfortable than any of the other consoles I have (Note: I own an N64, a Plug-n-Play Atari 2600 Joystick and a Mattel Intellevision. I have far, far worse controllers to get used to). It's the multitasking that's possible with this thing that get's me. Look at it for a second: It's large but it's large for a reason. That reason is because the Wireless Controller is also screen number 1. And versatility is the Wii U's ace in the hole. You see, unlike the PS4 and Xbone, the Wii U only needs this controller to function. That screen in the middle is where the game can display what would be going on the TV, hence removing it from the equation if the need arises. This makes the Wii U a flexible machine. If say, you wanted to watch a TV show but you were in the middle of a boss fight in...I dunno, Bayonetta. Well, you can easily change your TV channel to what you wanted to watch through either the TV's remote or the TV Remote feature on the Gamepad and have it in the background while you finish your fight without having to turn off your game. It's not a perfect system but it is a clever solution to the old problems all consoles that are set up in someone's living room have. That ability to bypass the TV is excellent. Heck! The gamepad has a good range on it too. I was able to sit downstairs in a friends house while the Wii U was in his bedroom. No lag or slowdown. No issues except battery life. Pretty handy. No longer being tethered by a controller and screen is nice. Just sit where you want and play. Also, I don't want to take way from the fact that this game console has one of the oddest features I've ever seen on a controller. The Wii U Gamepad has a built in Universal Remote. I'm not joking. One touch of a button lets you control your TV with ease. Buttons turn up on the touch screen and it lets you control it. It's like if the 3DS could cook toast or the Dreamcast could send and receive e-mails. Actually, I think it could. Heck, Japanese one's could do video calls before they were really a thing. But my point is how random it sounds to add that in. I get the idea of it, as the strength of the Wii U is to be able to cut the TV out of the equation whenever you like. I get why it's there, it's just strange to know it's an option. It's like when my 3DS downloaded a patch for a game for the first time. My mind cast back to how much people had to moan and complain to Nintendo just to get an update to the Flash player for the Wii's Web Browser. You know how many of those we got? One! And it was out of date within a month! It's surprising to see this thing built with so much thought. Heck, the Gamepad itself reminds me of those awesome, home-built portable consoles. Y'know! When some guy who know's his soldering iron more intimately than anyone should pulls an N64 or a Dreamcast to bits, wires it up to a controller, a battery pack and a decent screen then puts it all into a fitting case. They're pretty awesome. I like to think Nintendo saw some of these things and figured it a good idea. Then they took the idea and ran with it. So, I paid about £300 for this thing, including Mario Kart 8. I don't feel like I'm wasting any money quite yet. [size=+1]- Site News[/size] More music from Dragonbait. Because Dragonbait is just that awesome. Remember to catch New Song Sunday on Sundays on EPR. 6 till 7 GMT. Your smart. You can figure out what that means in your time zone. It's character building. Artist - Song From 1/10/2015 174UDSI - Lets Have A Battle (174UDSI Mica Cover Remix) Archie - Your Life (Original Mix) Art Fonseca - These Wings Keep Me Grounded Tk 2 BeatleBrony - Crystal Empire (Mull of Kintyre) Buffalo Brony - Bronies on the Track (Like That) feat. Clavi Sound and Melody Beats Exiark - Laughing out Loud (feat. Ckibe) Jeff Burgess - Magic Show Mush - Lets Have a Battle (Of The Remix) Pony! - The Adventures of Mooniewoop Radiarc - Draconequus Reverbrony - Mining for Diamonds Silver Note - Chasing Marks VaceslaV & idkQuicksilver - The Old Me [size=+1]- Recommended Reading[/size] Not much happened this week. And, I think I know why: It's January. Unlike me, you lot have jobs and school to get back to. Me? I'm an unemployed weirdo trying to develop computer games. So, at least I can sit around and appreciate what was added to the site since the last post. Which isn't very long but...umm...Anyway! How about a recommendation for Dune. The book, not the movie. Ridley Wolf tells us breifly about his delve into classic sci-fi. Personally, I'll always be a War of the Worlds guy but, each to their own. Would you like to know what I think of your avatar, Ridley? Y'know, while I'm here? Well, the mod in me is a little antsy at how close but not actually breaking the rules it is. Another part of me admires how attractive the character is, especially in that outfit. But there's another part of me languishing in the fact that I'd never look as good in that outfit as she does. Welcome to my head, folks. You know what I love? The fact that I can say that Everypony is the only site I have ever seen that has it's own Entomology Blog on it. MLP Forums? UK of E? Do you have an article on the surprisingly awesome sounding Lynx Spider? No?! Oh, you probably think is a new body spray flavour. Tsk, tsk! What? I can be a egomaniacal git occasionally about my own site if I like, can't I? OK, how about the news...umm... Look! New Plushies! Have to admit: not a fan of brushable hair. Mainly just my preference but they look nice anyway. Hey! It's January the 12th. What happens around then?! I'll tell you! Nothing. [size=+1]- Survival Guide[/size] It's 2015 now. We've survived into the new year. We just have a few more months before Season Five begins. We can make it, especially with the stuff I've heard about. [size=+2]My Little Pony: Collectable Card Game The Crystal Games Expansion[/size] I'm pretty certain you've noticed that I love the CCG to bits. I think it's a really good game that's pretty well balanced and very engaging despite the initial learning hump. It's a very complicated game that relies on a heavy amount of stuff you have to keep track of. That said, I think it's well worth picking up. Especially now as the expansion has blown the game open enough to shake things up. The addition of new card types has made this game more about card synergy than one card being stupidly powerful. Crystal Ponies join the game and now can gain special abilities simply by being with other crystal pony cards. Some will get keywords and some can gain other neat abilities. They're expensive but very powerful. Especially the Crystalised Mane 6 cards that are almost hilariously over the top in how much they can ruin your opponent. The Crystal Rarity can be exhausted for a super powerful version of the Inspired ability. Several on the field doing the same thing can allow a player to look at almost a quarter of a deck and edit it how they like. It's surprisingly powerful. On top of that is the new cards, new Manes including Derpy Hooves...sorry 'Equestrian Mailmare', because Derpy assumes we're all to stupid to be able to separate a clumsy character from a special needs character...Ugh. Still annoys me that whole thing. Anyway! There's now the Teamwork keywords that can pass printed abilities to characters that share traits. So, all unicorns could get a boost in power if their Mane Character is at home or something. Again, card synergy is being pushed big time in this expansion, opening up some unusual and interesting strategies. Least of which is the ability to have decks with more than two colours. Crystal ponies are expensive but ones with the Prysamic keyword gain abilities from having crystal ponies of different colours on the field. It not only makes decks of more than two colours viable but makes them pretty formidable as well. So, yeah. I think it's a good expansion. It's that or Magic: The Gathering. And Magic doesn't have cards that ask you to tell jokes. Wow...That's all I can really do for this week, huh...Hmm...Oh! How about a new thing? Just for this week. How about we discuss those near misses that almost made the Survival Guide, but didn't for one reason or another. [size=+1]- Survival Guide Fails 2014[/size] [size=+2]Sonic Boom (The TV Show)[/size] Reason: Not Trying Enough I think I've harped on about this thing for long enough. The entire internet has. The Wii U game has been a pile of sludge that I will only tolerate if Arin and Danny are playing it for me. And the TV show, while it does have some good jokes, doesn't elevate itself. It's character chemistry only really works between Dr Eggman. None of the other characters play off each other that well. The biggest disappointment is Knuckles as the jokes about his intelligence grind your patience down quickly. Some are just pointless. I agree with one comment I heard, suggesting that Knuckles would have worked better as a rival to Sonic. Like a Buggs Bunny and Daffy Duck relationship where they do compete but Knuckles never quite gets there. Thus making Sonic a little cooler and Knuckles worth while. But no...We're expected to laugh at the moron. But I do laugh. Not necessarily at the right parts but there is one bit that had me in stitches, if only because it was the stupidest chain of logic I'd seen in a long while. So, Eggman gives the team, except Sonic, evil cookies that turn them into Evil Geniuses like himself. Exactly like himself. It doesn't make it because of most of the stuff I said in my review. It just doesn't do enough to compete with the shows available at the moment to really be worth looking at. It would have been fantastic 7 years ago maybe but not now. [size=+2]Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMix[/size] Reason: Far more than £10 in cost, Requires PS3, Re: Chain of Memories needs to die At some point, I'll go into detail about this one at another time but for right now, only two thirds of this disk are seriously worth working your way through. Re: Chain Of Memories is something that will provide a great deal of bile for the eventual video I make on it. Until then, you can only imagine the pain of playing this thing to the end... [size=+2]The Internet Archive's DOS Game Library[/size] Reason: Some games are broken or won't work, some games need copy protection codes to play them, Illegal? I'm sure you've seen this on the news. The idea of being able to play tones and tones and tones of games is pretty appealing. Lots of these old classics are worth dredging up and playing for a bit. Look past the simplistic graphics and you may be surprised. Plus, no emulator required! They're all browser based. Heh! Not so fast! Some games don't appear to work correctly or have horrible frame rates. Some will ask you for copy protection codes that are only found in the game's manual and some just straight up don't work on my machine. There's some issue over copyright that is getting some games taken down. In theory, this would be perfect for the Guide but for right now, it's a broken system that needs way more work put into it. Well, the guides not been going for too long but I figured I'd throw that in. OK, time to wrap this up. See you next week, folks! Hopefully, things'll kick up a bit.
War of the Worlds was pretty good, too. I just found the part about the aliens dying of unidentified generic Earth germs to be a bit farfetched. I mean, these guys have all kinds of now-obsolete technology. Did it not occur to any of them to invent Space Purell? As for my avatar... well, @Sinderlocke is very good at barely-SFW cheesecake art. Also, thank you for putting the image of you in that outfit into my head. Excuse me while I go poke out my mind's eye.
I still miss working digital, it would have looked so much better, but thanks! Though I'm scratching my head at the 'cheesecake art' comment. What does that mean if you don't mind me asking? It sounds yummy, I absolutely love cheesecake. Mmmmm. Cheesecake.
'Cheesecake' is another word for pin-up art or photos. And yes, cheesecake is good. Now I want cheesecake.
I just watched that episode of the Sonic Boom TV show... The end just...what. Why did it end like that? Why? I'm so confused...
This is why Sonic Boom is a near miss. Episodes don't handle their world and characters well enough to warrant watching. Their solution to evil geniuses and a Sonicified Dr Eggman is to make everything as it was with magic science cookies. It's stupid but works in this setting. The issue is that it doesn't benefit Sonic to do so and seems kinda rushed. Eh...stick with Pastel Coloured Ponies and those crazy kids in Oregon.
Well, I don't really mind the part where they solve the problem with the cookies. The part I don't get is, why did they change Eggman back? I mean. He's evil and all. So if you made him good. Why would you make him evil again? I guess maybe I'm taking it too seriously lol, but I didn't like it much. The animation really annoys me as well. It looks like video games looked 3 years ago, not like tv shows look like now.
Well, I only read part of the post, but I kind of agree with some of what you've said about the Wii-U. I feel Nintendo puts a lot of love into what they do : ) I didn't see if you posted what you have but I'd like to suggest 2 games, especially given what you enjoy: Rayman Legends. I played it on a friend's wii-u and was actually really impressed by some things they did. It also has a surprisingly great 2-player co-op for a platformer. It kind of makes it into a puzzle game at times for whoever is the tablet. It has a lot of levels, but there are few (normally towards the end of a set) that are timed to music. They were really creative and well done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m5YQrucis8 Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. In general the Monster Hunter games are really interesting open Adventure RPGs set up like a bunch of awesome boss battles in the wild with really interesting creatures. The series is huge in Japan. That said look for 3 ultimate. There were some other new releases recently with G in the title that were apparently MMOs.. I can't say for sure about you but I feel like that would ruin it for me. Still, it is a great series with lots of cool weapon types and I think you'd enjoy it (Ultimate I mean, I can't say anything about the MMO ones).
I got a Wii U for Christmas (a very unexpected gift, to be sure), and I can definitely say I'm enjoying it so far. Despite Xbone and PS4 technically being far more powerful machines, the graphics are still quite smooth and I've yet to experience any frame rate drops in the few games I've tried thus far. You could say this little underdog packs a decent punch in spite of how heavily it's been scorned by the gaming community since its inception. Of course, I'm really just in it for the Nintendo-exclusive games. Yes, I'm aware that makes me a Mario/Zelda drone, but I don't give a damn. I'll take my "kiddie" franchises over a sea of stale shooters and overly brooding storylines any day.
