Be Excellent To Each Other

I thought the point of the review was that the game was in the discovering what made a mario level work, the voyage rather than the destination (levels)... So i'm not sure if the comparisons to lbp are that just....

Super Mario Maker has reviewed well at Eurogamer but it's not doing anything for me. Maybe when I was a teenager and I had enough spare time to chuck at stuff like this it would have fired me up, but these days I want to play games that have been, y'know, made properly by someone else - preferably folks who do it as a full time job.

(That's kind of the reason I always diligently avoid any sort of beta access to games, the PTR realms on WoW, that sort of thing - I'll play it when it's all working properly, thanks very much.)

User-generated 2D Mario levels? Pass. The ability to faff about making my own levels, which will inevitably be worse than the levels that proper Mario games ship with? Pass.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015- ... ker-review

My kids are loving it. Really makes them feel creative and the like to create obstackes for each other. And have to admit felt a bit proud when i saw that 34 people had played one of my first levels and 4 gave it a star.

Super Mario Maker is in the running for my game of the year. It's just tremendous. And I would argue incredibly important.

I'm loving it so, so much.

Dr lave this one i made eatlier. Nice maze i thought. Will you be my first follower?

Do you have to turn your TV upside down to play it?

The Wonderful 101 has, without a doubt, the worst tutorials that I've played (and, yes, I'm counting Dark Souls). It has no sodding clue how to explain it's concepts in an easy to digest, straight-forward way that I could replicate by moving the sticks and stuff. Or maybe the gamepad. Hell, drawing shapes on the gamepad kinda works, but then it really doesn't, actually I'm supposed to use the right stick. Or maybe I'm not. I hope that's not a sign of things to come.

Platinum Games do have a habit of making incredible games but not really explaining the systems very well. Bayonetta, Vanquish and particularly Revengeance are guilty of this.

I didn't have a problem with Bayonetta but I didn't even make it through the Revengeance demo because I had no idea what I was doing and the game didn't see too interested in explaining itself.

You must revisit Revengeance. It is a masterpiece.

The parry move that is probably the second most important mechanic after slicing is terribly explained.

It's so badly explained that I didn't know what the hell was going wrong until Lewie explained it to me in the Revengence thread, IIRC.

Oh yeah!

Now I am sad that the sequel it probably cancelled.

The Wonderful 101 could well be the worse Platinum game I've ever played. My frustration levels are through the roof here. I've never played a game so poorly explained or obtuse (well I might have but not in recent times).

I am not really having any fun whatsoever at the minute. I might even consider knocking it down to easy (hnnngh, don't let me be that guy) just to see if it plays any better.

The strange thing is, it's a typical Platinum game: locked in arena battles, combos and buying new moves but with this god awful drawing mechanic to switch characters and moves. I absolutely cannot stand this drawing crap. Awful, awful bullshit.

It's because they've decided to desperately shoehorn in take advantage of Nintendo's latest idiotic gimmicky bullshit innovative control system in order to ruin an otherwise decent game enhance your interactive experience.

No, Platinum just didn't use it correctly. The gamepad is excellent when utilised properly.

I'm just cranky because they fucking ruined Zelda for me. What's the best use of the gamepad you've seen?

Probably Zombi U. It contains your map and other things, but also your rucksack. So when you stop and rummage around in your bag you have to look away from the screen and down to the pad to look at your stuff. This really adds to the tension as the action doesn't pause. Also communication from the Prepper comes through the controller's speaker, which makes it feel like a phone.

Nintendoland also makes good use of it. I haven't played Mario Maker but it seems making the levels would be pretty tedious without it.

I remember being surprised to hear phone calls from characters coming out of the controller speaker in GTAV, it shouldn't make any difference at all but it was oddly effective. I'm waiting for someone to try and do something interesting with the touchpad on the PS4 controller, presumably some first party game will shoehorn it in. Uncharted 4 seems like a good bet, though I'm surprised Tearaway didn't find a way.

It was ok, but done in a terrible atmosphere smashing way. Every time you open the backpack the screen says LOOK AT THE GAMEPAD with a fucking arrow pointing down or something. It's hard to get fully involved in a game when you're constantly reminded that you're playing a game.

Plus the screen on the gamepad doesn't work very responsively to touch EVEN THOUGH ITS A TOUCHSCREEN. Probably because it expects you to be using the stylus like some kind of flashback to the 90's where Nintendo stopped making new characters for games and just relied on a stock roster (yeah, yeah, Splatoonmatoon). Smashing your finger to change weapons is ok but item management and dragging items around the gamepads screen is a chore.

Still the gamepad did add something extra to ZombiU that I imagine is probably missing from the PS4 versions even if the game needed damn good polishing up.

I like off-screen play, but yeah there are very few instances of games where the same game without the gamepad would have been much worse.

The worst levels in Mario 3D World were the ones that forced you to use the Gamepad for stuff.

I hear it is used well in Splatoon, and yeah Mario Maker wouldn't really make sense without it, but for the vast majority of the library it either isn't or shouldn't be required.

I thought I'd have a crack at the next level on The Wonderful 101. Still fucking irritating but now we have an irritating boss fight.

Hey, I tell you what really made my blood boil. The final move is activated by filling up a bow. The screen just says UNITE BUILD (it gets excited like that) only UNITE BUILD means nothing to me. I check back through the pause screen log to find out what shape I need to draw only there's not a Unite Build in the manual. Turns out that I just need to push the right stick into a shape of an arrow on screen. The little men then fill up the arrow - yes, I've made an arrow made of tiny people now to fire it and save the day.

Presses A (the usual action button): nope.

Press X (another action button): nope

Time out. You're dead.

A short reload later and I'm back. UNITE BUILD! Fill up arrow with men. Nothing happens.

Press B (usually jump): character jumps.

Press Y (usually dismantles little men): dismantles the arrow.

Push up to fill up the... time out. Dead.

Back again.

Press right trigger. Press left trigger. Right bumper. Left bumper. Time out: dead.

Back again. Fill up shape and wait. Time out: dead.

Reloads: Fill up shape. Try and make another shape. Nothing. All my little men are an arrow. Cycles through all the buttons again.

Nothing is on screen by the way. Everyone is just waiting for me.

Reload.

Reload.

Pressing all buttons. Rubbing my nuts on the touchscreen.

Presses in the right stick (never had to do this before) arrow fires and level ends.

Fuck. This. Game.

One more level but if it doesn't pick up I've had enough. I'm a clever man. I can grasp concepts. I like Platinum Games games but, seriously, this is taking the piss.

No. No. No.

There's too much going on and I can't see what my hundred little bastards are doing or from what enemy I'm being hit. How can I chain a combo or do some cool shit when I can't fathom where I am or where I'm being attacked from. Maybe I should sit closer to the TV. Maybe this game ought to fuck off? Yup.

Fuck this game.

Fuck the gamepad. Fuck this shit. Terrible, terrible bullshit.

Are you liking the game, though?

yes, ojne of the reasons it differs from other game editors i think, it's really intuitive and fast

(my screen sometimes blacksout now btw)

Poor Grim... http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015- ... lack-water

Boo!

EDGE gave it 8/10. It might not be so bad. I've never played one so I'm ready to have a look.

When I get internet at home I will!

(One of the reasons for my absence!)

I just got an unusual newsletter email from Nintendo (unusual in that I can't remember the last time I got one), basically announcing an announcement:



Tomorrow on Nintendo Direct, apparently.

Goodness.

So. An HD remake of Twilight Princess! Moar microtransactions for kids! Loads of games that expect you to spend a fortune on Amiibos to unlock their content! FFS. The rest was mainly sequels to games I haven't played, and on top of that everything looked a bit shit, apart maybe from Xenoblade and that racing game.

You better not bad mouth Xenoblade. Did you see that transforming action? Damn near blew me away with how awesome it looked. AND THAT DINOSAUR JUST HAVING A DRINK? Effing massive it was. It will be game of the year and I haven't even played it. HYPE TRAIN CHOO CHOO!

Somebody buying that neo racer? Looks fun http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015- ... neo-review

Having Xenoblade Chronicles X as an exclusive should be a crime against humanity.

Well, if the next Zelda is excellent, i might have an excuse to buy this console.

Might be worth waiting to see if the succesor is backwards compatible at this point.

Even if not, new Zelda might be crossgen.

I read the review of this and was much interested, as I did love me a bit of Wipeout and F-Zero back in the day.

The Digital Foundry tech analysis is up at Eurogamer now as well as the review, and reading about the efforts the devs made to get the game running at a rock-solid 60FPS with most of the shinies that we're used to seeing on XBone/PS4 tipped me over the edge into turning on my Wii-U and having a look at the online shop - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... racing-neo

I had a price of maybe £19.99/£24.99 in mind as being about right so when I saw it was only £10.99 it was a simple choice to have a punt on it.

Only given it about an hour so far but it is remarkable from a technical perspective, but more importantly is a great futuristic racer game. Do be aware that it's pretty stripped back, there are no options at all for example, and you only get one control scheme (which fortunately is fine). The main tournament mode has standard 'cup' style progression, and offers up a total of 16 tracks as far as I can tell. This then leads into a harder mode cup and there's then also a 'Hero Mode', online play is included but I haven't tried that. (That's not really a draw for me anyway, this is the sort of game I like as a solo experience.)

For eleven quid, and if you like the genre, and you've got a Wii-U, I'd definitely suggest you have a go. Once you've got past the 'ZOMG they got this running on a Wii-U!?!?' initial reaction, there's a very solid racer in there too. (The DF article makes the point that with a resolution bump to 1080p it could hold up very well as a PS4 title, such is the quality and variety of the visual effects in play.)

By all accounts it's running internally at 640x720 and then upscaled to full 720p, so yes on my 40 inch telly you can definitely see the resolution deficit, but once it starts moving around at a perfect 60FPS I defy you to notice.

Final icing on the cake is a very svelte 550MB download that then requires just over 1GB of space to install, so unless your Wii-U really is chocka you should have space on your internal storage to install it.

I am tempted and at £11 you can't grumble over the price. But I would like a demo first to test if I can actually control the ships in the game as it does look at little unwieldy.

Extremely doubt that the NX will be backwards compatible with anything; I know we only have rumour to go on at this point, but I'd very surprised if Nintendo sticks with PowerPC processors for another generation.

I'm half expecting Nintendo to soon announce that Wii U Zelda has been cancelled and moved over to NX, like they're keeping up the pretence to give the Wii U a less worse Winter Gift-giving Season than it'd otherwise have had. We'll see on that, I guess.

I was pinging off the walls a bit to start with, but was getting my eye in with it quite nicely towards the end of the first cup.

I certainly wasn't wrestling with the controls or fighting against them, and whilst there's only one configuration offered, it's sensible and easy to get the hang of. Plus you've got that gorgeous responsiveness of a 60Hz refresh rate, as opposed to the horrible sponginess of 30Hz.

For eleven quid I'd say just have a punt Banging tunes too!

I can't imagine they'll do that, a major Nintendo console not having a Zelda release would be just.... wrong, somehow.

Plus even though the Wii-U hasn't sold mega numbers, you can bet your arse that a large proportion of the userbase will buy Zelda, so I'm sure it'd still do very well commercially. (See also, Mario Kart 8.)

I do like my Wii-U, I find its plucky underdog status rather endearing, I felt the same way about my Dreamcast, which on balance I'd still say is quite possibly my favourite games console ever. (Although the Saturn would run it a close second.)

It's had a Zelda release though, in the form of Wind Waker. And it's going to get another in the new year with Twilight Princess. Ports or remasters or whatever but it's still Zeldas. Or Zeldi.

Put a chunk of time into Fast Racing Neo this evening and it started handing my arse to me on a plate, even towards the backend of the novice cups (Maybe I've been made soft with the 50cc cups in Mario Kart 8 whereas as long as you basically manage to stay awake, you'll get third or better, and if you're looking at the screen as well, you'll make first.)

The 'lean' control definitely comes a lot more into play (think air brake in Wipeout), and I've had to move entirely to using the four shoulder buttons rather than using 'X' for phase as it makes it a bit awkward for the hands. (Lean L, Lean R on ZL/ZR, shoulder L for phase, shoulder R for boost.)

It's a thrilling racing game, I don't even mind not getting third and having to try again, an entire cup is around 10-12 minutes and it's arguably a lot fairer than Mario Kart, whereby the blatantly cheaty AI often makes getting over the finishing line in first a flip of the coin on the higher skill levels. (There are no weapons in Fast Racing Neo and as best as I can tell thusfar, the AI ships don't have the ability to magically create boost out of their arseholes.)

Deffo a recommend if you've got a Wii-U and £10.99 going spare.

Nintendo have as recently as the last couple of weeks reiterated that the new Zelda is definitely coming out on the Wii U. They have repeatedly sold the console on the promise of getting a Zelda game. To not release it on the Wii U would be a terrible business strategy, and an extremely un-Nintendo move.

I think it is extremely likely that there will be an NX version of it for launch, but that doesn't rule out a Wii U version. They have prior record of doing something very much like this with Twilight Princess.

I think it's 50:50 on whether the NX will have any backwards compatibility with the Wii U. It will hinge on their ability to offer it whilst still moving over to a more modern architecture, with ARM or x86 being the two most viable candidates, and I'd lean towards ARM given that they are talking about shipping software that will be compatible with both their handheld and home console. Although developing an SDK with robust support for ARM (for the handheld) and x86 (for the home console) would not be outside the realms of possibility.

Some kind of dynamic recompiling solution (similar to 360 games on the Xbox One) would make a lot of sense, but developing something like that is probably the kind of task that Nintendo would want to outsource to AMD or whoever.

It would be a good idea if Nintendo started competing directly with the PS and the XBOX with the next generation. Nintendo always has the best exclusives, so it would be a first choice console for many people if third party multiplatform games started appearing on the console.

The gamecube was a more powerful console than the ps2. Didn't mean it suddenly had a glut of multiformat titles.

ha heartuly sounds good.. will buy i then.. can we race eachother?

So I finally went and bought an Wii U. Included: An Mario Kart 8 + An Splatoon. Let's play!

I have been skimming through the thread and sending friends requests to all the IDs I could find. I want to befriend everyone on here, so if I missed yours, please send me a request! I am lasermink, don't you know.

I have to say, playing Mario Kart 8 with the gamepad does seem to give me a nasty cramp quickly. I hope I will be able to adapt. I'm also disappointed to find that the component output is pretty useless, especially for Wii games. I was hoping I would just be able to drop the Wii U in as a straight replacement for the Wii in my setup, but I'm going to have to get an HDMI hub now. Bah.

Man, Mario Kart looks nice in hi-def.

I haven't plugged mine back in since the cottage, but I'd be up for some Splatooning definitely

I have been playing the quite generous demo of Pikmin 3. I haven't even been through the whole demo, but I know I am going to have to get it now.

In other news, I have been playing some more Mario Kart 8. If I rest the gamepad in my lap, I can play it reasonably comfortably, but the buttons could be in a better position. Apart from that, I find it far more enjoyable to play than Mario Kart Wii, for some reason.