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its Gamer's hours

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@BOENSAW doesnt have 1/100th of the artistry even their own game Sly Cooper did despite 10000x the budget

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@Graslu00 goldeneye PC port incoming ?????

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@TheOtherFrost story in clair obscur was dog and it was poorly optimized for PC. for my money im goin silksong and donkey kong as the two gotys

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@te6192 @TheSwitchForce @NateTheHate2 @Mathouuuwww Oh ye of little faith #trustSwitchForce

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@NEETWorldOrder you should try ufo 50

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@birdypilled @unicornandmemes unicorn1cfz3hktr7wq64kfmfccj39ulu83zmdpe272wxt

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@LumpyTheCook Ubisoft allocating a smaller budget to a game thats actually fun is only a half-measure because ultimately they're just apeing a successful indie formula and plastering bad dialogue & Fortnite aesthetics on it for cynical marketability. people saw right thru this hence low sales

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@wigger cut out all the self-help advice stuff or at least keep it brief. that all works in Hyde Wars not in standup, people dont want a Ted Talk

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@JonTronShow There is a PC port of it freely available.

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@GenePark Difficulty is simply one way of engaging a player in combat. Whether a game is "too easy" or "too hard" is dancing around what's really the core question: were you engaged with the combat or not?

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@SkillUpYT Bullshit. This game is a triumph, the best story/writing/voice acting/characters in any triple A game in many years, and the combat is insanely fun and badass. Not since FFX has the series been at this high quality. It's a must buy, the first true console seller for the PS5.

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🎵 woke up this morning, watched the Mario Bros. trailer again🎵

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@Ratatos77196870 the quality of the localization is astounding. the writing and voice acting not only beats other Japanese games, it beats most Western games

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My obsession with Mario pretty much boils down to the fact that the New Donk City area of Super Mario Odyssey is one of the greatest & most transcendental works of art in video game history.

The level is based on New York but really is unlike any city that exists -- it's a dream, an ideal of what a city could be. It's in the same vein as games like Sim City 3000 which jumps to mind, where an aesthetic mastery of the urban sprawl is achieved (also accompanied by an energetic jazzy soundtrack to complete the mood). Going to New York in real life is nothing like that -- New York is a hell-hole -- so these games instead portray an idyllic "City as Heaven" version of New York and there is a profound beauty to this. Occasionally Lego sets or Lego games have taken great care to achieve this aesthetic, then you've got Pizza Tower coming in with the zany grimy 90's sort of Hey Arnold version in its city and sewer levels. Setting this kind of tone with environment is something videogames specifically excel at (Ocarina of Time, Earthbound ). Something core to what I think it means to be a "real gamer" is acknowledging & appreciating this aspect of videogames specifically. This is the good shit. This is what I keep coming back to time and time again.

As far as Red Dead Redemption 2 or something goes (a game that would be more casually considered to be a "work of high art" in the field), something that takes great care in those other areas like writing and characters -- it's artful, it's appreciated, but what Mario does is more pure, and greater than that, to me anyway. You have to be skilled in videogames specifically to pull it off, not skilled in a medium such as basically screenwriting and bringing that in. And those strengths of RDR2 get bogged down in its open world anyway, IMO if you want to make a Flex How Good We Are At Writing type game, you should just go fully balls in ala Disco Elysium. Endless walls of text and dialogue trees, just give me the full blast of your towering skills of an author. Really you should just write the next great novel but, I guess that doesn't sell. RDR2, a good video game, but maybe would've been better as an HBO series? Last of Us was much better in that form.

Anyways.

In emulator on my PC I've created a backup save file at the start of New Donk City (after the rainy intro part) and literally just load it up and revisit this area a lot. I think it really says something that jumping around as Mario is almost not even the point, I'm just coming back to this level to vibe. Really the only other Mario game on this level is Super Mario Sunshine with Delfino Plaza and Ricco Harbor and so on and that's another one of the long list of reasons it is superior to Galaxy.

If the next game in the series is going to be open world, like Bowser's Fury but bigger, I think it will be crucial to not lose the atmospheric vibes that more contained levels can offer. Hopefully it takes inspiration from Elden Ring and its "legacy dungeons", the open world Mario should ideally contain "legacy levels" with defined theming & aesthetics. The Bowser's Fury segments divided by islands mostly kept to a similar look, but I'm hoping that's just because it's a demo of what's to come.

That is, if it even is a Mario game. Deep in the insane schizo rumor mills I'm hearing it might be Donkey Kong game. But whatever it is, I can't wait to see it. It's really the main thing I give a shit about.

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just got off the phone with Elon - he said i was the last checkmark he needed to break even on this shit. says its "all gravy from here." good stuff. anyway this is just me announcing that him and i are no longer poor

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oh word, yeah thats good clarification. im not a realistic graphics defender, always art design over good graphics and all. but i guess im here to defend Bigness and ambition. you dont want long dev cycles, e.g. its bad if it takes many years to make a game? i guess i dont mind if it takes 10 years to make a game. toby fox's deltarune will probably end up taking that long or more when all is said and done. if its worth it, its worth it

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@Blobware64 PIZZA TOWER, "SMALL"? PIZZA TOWER CONTAINS MULTITUDES. YEARS AND YEARS IN THE MAKING. PEPPINO MACH RUNS TO THE TOP OF THE STEAM CHARTS. BEHOLD HIS ITALIAN GLORY

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@Blobware64 have you played it?

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@NateTheHate2 they did a really great job. back to back trailers, no filler, felt night and day compared to geoff keighley sgf. lots of games people actually care about. and the starfield presentation was genuinely exciting

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@snab47169488 Explain why I'm wrong using at least 4000 characters

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Super Mario Sunshine is vastly superior to Super Mario Galaxy in pretty much every way. Disagreeing with this is the biggest tell that you're not a serious Mario fan nor a serious gamer nor a serious person.

Both games were dreamed up to surpass Super Mario 64, a certified classic that didn’t stop merely at creating an entirely new genre from nothing, instead fundamentally perfecting it right out of the gate. Much like 1993’s Doom, which essentially created and perfected the first-person shooter, Mario 64 is a game that is still regarded as one of the greatest and most influential platformers of all time. And also like Doom, the best way to play Mario 64 now is via a source port on your PC.

(By the way - if you haven’t played Mario 64 with a source port on your PC, you need to do so ASAP. There are many source ports available with various mods; my preferred port is Super Mario 64 Plus. Imagine playing Mario 64 with a full 360-degree free camera. Dropping into Lethal Lava Land and sweeping that camera across the horizon, drinking in the glorious uncapped draw distance, spotting even the patrolling Bullies all the way on the other side of the map. Jumping around, grabbing a star, then simply running over and grabbing another, staying in the level for as long as you want. This wonderland awaits you if only you open the door.)

Even without the quality-of-life improvements afforded by a modern source port, the Mario 64 that released on the cartridge was still lightning in a bottle, a giant leap beyond what had been done in video games before it. And thankfully, none of the nauseating excesses of contemporary overwrought, self-congratulatory AAA game design pollute the experience. It’s raw Mario, unfiltered, uncut. Endlessly replayable. Endlessly fun.

But when it came time for a sequel, could Nintendo recapture that lightning by playing it safe and sticking to what had been established? Unlikely. In order to create a worthy successor to such a groundbreaking game, more wild ambition and experimentation was in order. All the stops had to be pulled. Finally after years of waiting and delays, Nintendo emerged with the result: Super Mario Sunshine.

The big thing people remember about Sunshine is its iconic level design. Mario 64’s levels mostly stuck to the purely functional, giving them a surreal, abstract, almost dream-like quality. They’re bizarre and strangely captivating endeavors. Sunshine’s levels instead took a more holistic and cohesive approach, and impressively, without compromising the fun they were to move around in. Clamber up steel beams in Rocco Harbor. Bounce along the tightropes high above Bianco Hills. Explore the labyrinthine Sirena Beach hotel and its myriad hidden rooms and secret passageways. Beyond being striking and memorable, each level feels more like a real place, as if Mario is simply making do with the platforms he can find, as opposed to encountering playscapes obviously contrived for him. Certainly, these levels still are playscapes obviously contrived for him, but their subtle construction more effectively obscures this. Finally the hub world, Delfino Plaza, is a marked improvement over Peach’s Castle, being far more open, and thereby more conducive to exploring and fishing out all the hidden goodies.

So far so good, however Sunshine stumbled out of the gate ungracefully, and has its share of issues. You can’t pursue the game’s objectives in any order like you could the Stars in 64, and this forces you to slog through the more obnoxiously designed challenges every single play-through (e.g. Chain Chomp’s Bath). You can’t skip any of the cutscenes, probably included thanks to some asinine imperative to fully utilize the GameCube’s advanced CD technology, in which the voice acting has aged like fine milk. And arguably most egregious: if you run out of lives during one of the longer challenges, such as the casino Shine which leaps presently to mind, the game vindictively boots you all the way out to the hub. Well now! Why not just turn the game off for me while you’re at it? To detail these deficiencies is to illustrate why the vast majority prefer the much more polished sequel: Super Mario Galaxy.

And I have to concede, Galaxy is definitely more polished. It is perhaps the most polished game ever made. None of the rough edges of Sunshine are anywhere to be found; in fact, not much of any of Sunshine is to be found. The new hub world, Rosalina’s spaceship, is substantially reduced, from the collectable-populated grandeur of Delfino Plaza, to a barren staging area merely dropped in on between levels like a bus stop or airport lounge. Abolished is Sunshine’s sprawling level design, open venues that invited you to explore all their nooks and crannies. Instead you enter a room on the ship, select a level from a menu, proceed through the level on a path that is very intentional and carefully crafted, and then leave.

Don’t like failing? Fear not, Galaxy has polished out failure. A game over is pretty much impossible, as I discovered when I would often zone out while playing. Incidentally, I can’t remember what many of the levels were — that’s not a good sign! The personality and aesthetic is also polished, to an immaculate sheen, to the point of being somewhat sterile. Something about the mothering Rosalina character, thematically emblematic of this stark change in design philosophy, always rubbed me the wrong way — though she seems to be beloved by People Online, I’ve found the character comes across as saccharine. I can understand and support liking Rosalina in a horny way e.g. Pauline in Mario Odyssey (normal & good), but what I’ve seen is more like in a she’s-my-mommy weirdo way. I have receipts.

Anyway, swerving back onto the rails.

Discarding the innovations to progression that Mario 64 and Sunshine brought to the table is totally fine, so long as their dismissal can be justified by what comes forth from the more traditional approach. While I think Galaxy failed in this regard, we’d see better and more memorable levels in Galaxy 2, which benefitted immensely from the fountain of great ideas that flowed from Yoshi’s inclusion. And 3D World would further refine and hone in on the linear design, manifesting its intentions by bringing back the traditional overworld. People were unhappy with how the game looked at first, even though in retrospect, it was really just being less clandestine about its design goals, on top of trimming much of Galaxy’s fat.

And that’s really the sum of it - while Galaxy is a polished yet uneventful affair, Sunshine is a flawed yet deeply compelling one. It succeeds where it has to, and in time, those flaws will wash away. It’ll get a source port someday, Super Mario Sunshine Plus, and it will be glorious. Meanwhile, Galaxy doesn’t really have much to improve upon. Running it upscaled in an emulator is pretty much as good as it’s ever going to get.

Sunshine > Galaxy