Videogame Discussion Thread

Boring combat? Check. All NPCs are Toads? Check. And yet I am utterly charmed by Color Splash. The game oozes style and the writing is superb. As the penultimate big game on the Wii U it really delivers. If Breath of the Wild was NX only I'd be perfectly happy with this being the Wii U's swan song.

 

It's a good game in its own right, just rather disappointing after the first three Paper Mario titles (especially the underrated Super Paper Mario which I felt was one of the best Wii games ever, what with its otherworldly moments and delightfully bizarre cast of characters). Ever since Super Paper Mario however, the series has drifted away from its RPG roots to focus on action adventure with gimmicky problem solving elements. Sticker Star, while not as awful as some might say, was definitely a low point for the series.

Color Splash instantly grabbed my attention because of the Mario Paint nostalgia. Also the premise has shades of Mario Sunshine (get it? shades?? sunshine?? ...also shades of paint). Only, it's like a playful inverse of Sunshine: instead of cleaning up paint which has threatened the ecosystem, you're slathering paint all over the place, quite literally bringing color back to the world. Sunshine being my favorite Mario game of all time---and me already liking the Paper Mario games more than most of the "regular" platform-y ones----it seemed like a must buy.

I don't regret it. The game is still more shallow than its predecessors, but it's a better game than Sticker Shock in my opinion, and its various levels and special effects are mesmering; this is by far the most beautiful looking entry into the series yet. There's also a nice dose of Nintendo weirdness with being able to summon real world objects or fight opponents on kitchen tables. Honestly, this kinda stuff gives it Little Big Planet vibes. Which isn't a bad thing.

The combat is pretty bland, as Ravi says. The main impetus this time around comes in the form of paint upgrades, and you'll need paint to progress thru levels and unlock secrets. What saves the gameplay are the puzzle solving elements and finding bizarre, seemingly random ways of dealing with enemies. Seeing objects come to life or the level itself curl up like paper is a sight to behold, and that---combined with the usual Paper Mario sense of humor---injects enough life back into the series to make it enjoyable and memorable.

Granted, I do miss the more colorful (hurr hurr) NPCs and narrative elements. Unique villains. All the things that made the first three Paper Mario games so unique amongst the Mario canon.

 

Ashes of Ariandel DLC comes out next week, and I'm feeling the hype. It's just a bit unfortunate Bandai Namco has revealed almost EVERYTHING about the DLC: the bosses, the environments, most of the new weapons, all four of the new spells, etc.

I mean come on... leave a little to the imagination, maybe?
Especially considering this DLC will be roughly half the size of Bloodborne's, with part 2 coming out sometime early next year presumably. That guesstimate comes from Miyazaki himself. Plus Bloodborne's The Old Hunters was originally two DLCs they pushed together into one.

The new arena seems a lot cooler than I thought it would be. Especially if the rumor about multiple stages / locations to fight in is true. I just hope they add some kind of incentive to it, like gaining covenant ranking, considering you can choose which covenant to represent while dueling.

Oh, and apparently poise IS getting an adjustment "to make it more meaningful." TBH I've always been of two minds when it comes to developers listening to fans: on the one hand it's great and shows a connection to the fan base, and sometimes genuine problems get fixed this way (like the ending to Mass Effect 3). Other times however, fans just whine to whine because things are different. Instead of adapting, they demand changes like nerfs and buffs. This is usually what goes on with fighting game calibrations, and frankly I think this kind of "listening to fans" isn't always a good thing.

It was only fairly recently that the community really figured out that poise WAS in DS3, and that it wasn't just a matter of From "forgetting to hit the poise switch." Come one. The whole system of hyper armor---poise only being activated for certain attacks---and that in turn being improved by certain armors is kind of a unique and interesting change of pace IMHO. But some people would rather combat go back to DS1 days with Havel monsters flipping around and everyone backstab fishing I guess.

I just hope "poise becoming more meaningful" doesn't entail ditching the hyper armor / activation state system the game has now, but rather extends those activation states to more instances perhaps. Heavy armor would become more meaningful, but the unique syste, of DS3 would remain intact for better or worse.

 

To me, Dark Souls' combat system is actually very satisfying: easy to pick up but difficult to master. As someone who grew up playing 2D fighting games and who was heavily into the scene as an undergrad, I find a lot of the same principles apply in Souls combat (becoming familiar with animation frames, wake up timing, baiting attacks, hitboxes, etc.).

Dark Souls 2 has the most refined PVP combat IMHO. Nearly every weapon is viable in the right hands. You can animation cancel. Punish mistakes easily. But it took a lot of patches, nerfs, and balancing to get it there.

DS3 PVP isn't as bad as some make it out to be IMO. Still, a lot of the issues with it are beyond simple balancing and would require a more extensive overhaul

That being said, I actually kinda love that poise was this mysterious thing that stumped so many. It took months of speculation until someone was able to actually test it and discover it did in fact exist and discover what it was. That, to me, was symbolic of mystery still being in the world of Dark Souls.

Things have changed since Demon's Souls. When that game came out---and to a lesser extent, when DS1 came out---the fan base was relatively small. People just started making YouTube vids about lore and game mechanics. Questions went unanswered, and stuff had to be figured out slowly. These days a new Souls game comes out and every single detail gets figured out within a month. You just have to go to the wiki, and it tells you whatever you want to know.

So it was just kinda neat having this big mystery that stumped the community for so long. Not just an obscure piece of lore, but an actual aspect of the game that is central to the experience.

 

I am waiting on Overwatch to add more characters and maps. Got boring pretty quick.

Any thoughts on the new Nintendo Switch? It looks well designed. Slick implementation. My concern is that Nintendo always has a history with difficulties getting 3rd party and/or multi-platform support. The fact their last couple consoles use different architectures and are much less powerful than the current Playstation and Xbox consoles doesn't help that fact either. I will pick one up regardless, since I always enjoy Nintendo IP games.