What games are you currently playing?

[Ambidextroid]

Mmm, nostalgia

[Master]

I've never really played the old school SimCity games, I've enjoyed playing Cities:Skylines, rubbish as I am at it (and as laggy as it is given my laptop's not exactly built for such simulations). Do you think it'd be worth trying out some of the older City Sims?

[Ambidextroid]

SimCity 2000 is by far my favourite, I remember playing it late at night making huge cities then destroying them with a plethora of "natural" disasters. I don't know how easy it would be to set up on a modern system, but I would definitely recommend it!

Now I'm playing some Mario Kart Wii on the Ishiiruka Dolphin emulator, at 1080p with 4x AA:



I also set it up with the Wiimmfi server so I can play online

[Pirez]

That's amazing : setting top-of-the-range PCs to play emulate a game with specs that the original console could only dream of... only to play the shittiest game in the MK serie.

[Keane]

you're wrong and i'm gonna pretentiously explain why! because I really wish people would change their minds on it being a bad game when its the juan I've easily poured 100+ hours into

Mario Kart Wii is way too underrated, I feel like most people just never bothered to get the hang of its (slightly more complex?) controls and then write it off as being too stiff and difficult, even though it's really not hard to grasp. The physics are great and all the weird tricks and jumps you can pull off with bikes added much more depth to the gameplay, I love stuff like trying to bump onto the speed-boost ramp in Mario Circuit without a mushroom, or doing a trick over the little pond in Toad's Factory. I've seen people who've played the game plenty of times argue they can't make sense of the controls, and then when I watch them play it's because either A. they never fucking learned to play manually or B. they're just not picking up on how to pull off certain tricks.

Mario Kart 7 & 8 feel way too stripped down in that respect, I don't understand how anyone can argue MK8 is the "best" game in the series when it feels kind of lacking in what I described. There's very little to explore or master about their handling and it always feels like you're playing tracks in the same manner every time. Why are there almost no shortcuts in MK8? Mario Kart Wii has at least one per track and usually requires saving a mushroom or needing to be really precise in your movement. Tricks are more fun too, you got the blue ramps on the sides of walls and tricks are usually like these really big, cool jumps, but in the new games they're reduced to just little speed boost bumps.

Items are better too - the thunder cloud always requires some really quick thinking, and the mega mushroom is like a more satisfying star. Mario Kart 8's Super Horn is just a less cool, less useful red shell (as is the boomerang), and the Special 8 is just a bunch of other items thrown together. Coins are annoying most of the time, and collecting them isn't that fun either, unlocking karts through them just feels cheap and like I didn't really do anything to earn that reward. Beating all 32 time trials in Mario Kart Wii, or doing missions in Mario Kart DS is an actually fun way to motivate players to check out different parts of the game and reward them for it. Coins you just pick up without even trying anyway.

Battle system is obviously terreeble in Mario Kart 8 and time-constraint result, but, but how does it hold up in the video game, Mario Kratt Wii? Pretty gewd, Merio. I actually wish they didn't do retro stages for this, as the new ones are all great and utilise the game's ramps and boosts really well. Playing with 12 people at once on really chaotic stages is hilarious. My only complaints here are that some of the retro tracks don't feel properly adapted to the system and like they were put it in just because they felt obligated to. The coin mode also isn't quite as fun as the balloon battles, people usually end up just avoiding each other to try and stay safe. Mario Kart 7 did a decent job with battles as well (it's the same system), but lack of bikes makes it a little more stiff. And Mario Kart 8's is basically unplayable.

All in all I think the problem with the newer games is just that they're not as progressive in terms of content and the physics lack excitement. Double Dash's complete chaos and Wii's stunting feels like the kind of gameplay that should accommodate a cartoony racing game, I thought MK64 was more a result of limitations and time period yet that's where the series seems to have aimed for again recently. That's not to say Mario Kart Wii is a perfect game either, it has some glaring flaws: Like I said, karts are just straight up worse than bikes and that's a big problem. The selection of retro tracks was a poor choice. I fucking hate how the game just spams blue shells whenever it deems you as being too far ahead of the rest, or how when you lose speed it slows you down so much that you can go from first to last over being hit by a shell, and falling off a cliff takes forever to get you back to where you were.

And 7 & 8 aren't by any means bad games, I've enjoyed both of them and they still uphold the majority of what makes Mario Kart work. Mario Kart 8 looks gorgeous and there's some cool tracks in the batch, Mount Wario is one of my favourite tracks from any game. The new battle system in Deluxe also looks great, and I hope with how that's looking and Nintendo's shift in approach with the Switch so far the next game will take more risks and expand on the gameplay, rather than the anti-gravity gimmick which visually looks amazing, but somehow doesn't actually affect the gameplay in any meaningful way.

[Ambidextroid]

Yes! I agree completely!
While I actually think MK7 was pretty good, that's only really because it did an alright job at emulating the feeling of MKWii. MKWii is by far my favourite and honestly 8 is the worst I've ever played, it feels terrible, almost as if I have less control over the vehicle. MKWii has some brilliant maps and it feels (and looks) like a solid game with tight controls and the subtle boost systems give it an extra level of skill required to master, while MK8 just put boosts in random stations like bumping into enemies which doesn't really make much sense gameplay-wise. Wii also had a bunch of fun "improvised" short cuts, but it looks like in 8 they avoided these at all costs

[Hunchman801]

I started playing Resident Evil Survivor last night. It's an FPS for PS1 released in 2000, and it looks very average at best. I'll try to review it when I've played it more.

[Adsolution]

yes, I agree with not only keane, but ambiducks ass swell!!! MK8 is the definition of fucking bland modern nintendo.

There's just no way to precisely control your character.

It definitely takes some getting used to, and you can "master" it, but the controls in the original are indeed very clunky.

I'll see if anything changes my mind by the time I finish the game, but even the best story in the world couldn't make up for a faulty gameplay. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad game. It's just that I was expecting a great game, and it's just average.

Here's the thing: The original game wasn't the big deal. Everyone considers the original to be a great idea, but a bit of a boring, rushed package, and rather iffy over-all (though I actually like how challenging its combat is and how brutal the counters look compared to the later games). Assassin's Creed II is where the series blew up: it's one of my favourite games of its generation, and of all time. It fixes literally every single problem you might have with the original (yes, every one you mentioned. Even climbing is faster/easier and later you gain even more abilities to help you climb), and brings to the table a breathtaking, emotional and immersive story with unbelievably gorgeous environments and music; it feels like you're living in an Italian impressionist painting, from the glowing, moonlit canals of Venice to riding your horse across rolling flowery hills towards a castle in the distance.

Here, listen to these two tracks all the way through. The latter is a super long music loop (I like it when games do that and don't just repeat the same short thing that doesn't vary over and over!), and is in the first city of the game. It's also one of those compositions I've literally never heard anything else like. It's not just those tracks though. It's hard to pick individual ones, because every single piece of music in the game is uniquely evocative and transports your mind to another world.

To just give an idea, it does one of my favourite things video game stories can do: it follows the protagonist as he ages. At the beginning of the game he's 17 and speaks like a high-voiced, carefree teenager. By the end of the game he's 38 and sounds like a sage, and even has a beard! But that's not where the story ends, it continues directly into Brotherhood and then into Revelations, where by the end of the game, Ezio is an old man in his 60s. Brotherhood is fantastic as well, but Revelations unfortunately gets a little bit boring (but it's still pretty good!).

Also, I might add that you can start right at AC II without having played the original, kind of. One of the things that blew my mind about the second game though was playing it after you've finished the original, and since you've done that, you're in for an awesome experience.

[Hunchman801]

Thanks for the heads-up. Pirez and boombo told me the exact same thing, so I'll definitely give the second one a chance some day, something I probably wouldn't have done otherwise.

[Fifo]

Now I'm playing some Mario Kart Wii on the Ishiiruka Dolphin emulator, at 1080p with 4x AA:

Wow! Does it run at 60fps? Does it lag?

[Ambidextroid]

Wow! Does it run at 60fps? Does it lag?

Yep! And nope!
Ishiiruka is a special build of the Dolphin emulator which is super optimised. That paired with my trusty GTX1080 make it a nice, smooth 60fps experience. It plays GameCube games beautifully too!

[Fifo]

Wow! Does it run at 60fps? Does it lag?

Yep! And nope!
Ishiiruka is a special build of the Dolphin emulator which is super optimised. That paired with my trusty GTX1080 make it a nice, smooth 60fps experience. It plays GameCube games beautifully too!

Cool!

…Shit, I’ll have to compile it myself

[Hunchman801]

I started playing Resident Evil Survivor last night. It's an FPS for PS1 released in 2000, and it looks very average at best. I'll try to review it when I've played it more.

Just finished it. Clearly flawed, but there were interesting ideas, I'll elaborate later.

< still needs to get Resident Evil 7.

So when are you getting it by the way?

[Harpic fraîcheur]

When it will be less expensive probably.

[Hunchman801]

Haha, might take a while. I thought Ad said something about playing it too but I can't find the message in question.

Also, I played Rayman 3 HD for most of the night. I bought it when it came out but I hadn't made it past the Bog of Murk. Now I'm getting used to the controls and I can actually enjoy it. It's also my first time playing Rayman 3 in English, and despite all the money they've spent to appeal to the American public, I don't find the voices and the dialogues anywhere as good as in the original. Maybe that's why it didn't sell well in the US.

[PluMGMK]

So that mirrors my experience when I first played in French, and was struck by how much better it was. I was hoping I didn't think that for just the obvious reasons, and I guess I didn't!

[Hunchman801]

Clearly not, in my opinion.

All right, let's talk about Resident Evil Survivor. It's an FPS released in 2000, just after RE3. It is set on Sheena Island, an island owned by Umbrella which underwent an outbreak, and we play an amnesic character whose goal is to survive and escape (not very original).

First of all, you can tell it's from 2000. Even by the standards of the time, it's rather ugly (it seems to reuse assets from RE2, except there's no fixed camera to sort of hide their shortcomings), and you'll spend hours in the menu just to reload or change weapon. You can't even save your progression; if you die, you'll be prompted to save your weapons and ammunition for your next playthrough, but you have to finish it in one go. Thankfully, it's not too hard (I played normal mode), and I finished it the first time (well, second time, but I quit the game the first time because it was getting late) in about two hours. The final boss, however, cost me pretty much all of my continues, so you're still likely to die there and have to start from scratch. Not very user-friendly by today's standards, to say the least.

One good thing is that they've managed to make it keep the survival-horror spirit, as it's rather slow-paced and you'll die quick if you're not careful. Another noticeable point is that four times in the game, you'll be given a choice between three different paths, all leading to the next section (without being told though, as you won't be able to go back after picking a door). This means that about one third of the game depends on your choices, and that you'll need three playthroughs to see all of it (and collect all weapons). It's an artificial way of creating replay value, but interesting nonetheless. By the way, one of those paths (kinda hidden compared to all the others) faces you with two giant alligators and is arguably the most difficult part of the game, final boss included.

In the style of the original Resident Evil, the dialogues are extra cheesy and the voice acting quite poor, but I guess it was expected. There's a twist, but it's not introduced in the most clever way.

Also, I don't know if this is because I'm playing it on PS3, but the analog sticks don't work and I have to use the D-pad; something quite horrible for an FPS.

In the end, it's clearly not a great game, but rather entertaining and worth playing if you're into the series. If not, pass this one by.

[Dart]

Also, I played Rayman 3 HD for most of the night. I bought it when it came out but I hadn't made it past the Bog of Murk. Now I'm getting used to the controls and I can actually enjoy it. It's also my first time playing Rayman 3 in English, and despite all the money they've spent to appeal to the American public, I don't find the voices and the dialogues anywhere as good as in the original. Maybe that's why it didn't sell well in the US.

I've always loved the English cast in Rayman 3 personally (though David Gasman as Rayman I find very hit or miss) but I can imagine a lot of people would be quickly annoyed by the performances. As for the differences in dialogue localization I'm not sure they're so different that it would create any major changes in sales between the French market and US one, though from what I remember the French version was a bit more explicit in delivery, can you confirm that?

[GOT4N]

Yes! I agree completely!
While I actually think MK7 was pretty good, that's only really because it did an alright job at emulating the feeling of MKWii. MKWii is by far my favourite and honestly 8 is the worst I've ever played, it feels terrible, almost as if I have less control over the vehicle. MKWii has some brilliant maps and it feels (and looks) like a solid game with tight controls and the subtle boost systems give it an extra level of skill required to master, while MK8 just put boosts in random stations like bumping into enemies which doesn't really make much sense gameplay-wise. Wii also had a bunch of fun "improvised" short cuts, but it looks like in 8 they avoided these at all costs

wut

MK8 has way more advanced technics than MKWii lol, have you seen demon sliding, firehopping, neutral hopping, soft drifting?

[Ambidextroid]

I just hate the feel of the game. Even the graphical style. It's hard to pinpoint honestly, but I was really hyped for MK8 and when I got my hands on it it felt terrible.
So many maps take place on a fixed course that either floats in the sky or has walls on either side so you can't use your boosts strategically to get around corners or perform tricks on little bits of terrain to pass grass patches. You get a boost when you bump into your opponents but usually it's not helpful and can't be employed strategically. Plus some of the items feel a bit useless and redundant, while in Wii each tier of item depending on your position feels like a clear upgrade from the last and they're all useful (save maybe the lightning cloud, but even that I find to be fun).
There are so many points in Wii where you can boost over pits and grass and mud patches to gain a bit of progress where every bit of progress counts, while in 8 it feels like these sorts of things are pointless since it pretty much comes down to collecting coins instead which I often find myself forgetting to concentrate on since they're not as fun as performing tricks and getting boosts.