ryotaiku

[ryotaiku]

I've been watching The Magicians as a potential replacement for Harry Potter and it just occurred to me this show is about a hyper-fan of children's fantasy books who finds out the author of said-books is an awful human being threatening the life of the people he knows & loves.

I wasn't even looking for that in particular but holy shit this is perfect.

[ryotaiku]

A useless explanation of reversible covers

A reversible cover is any physical game in which the internal box art (what you see behind the disc) can be reversed & used as a whole alternative game cover. However there's a distinction between a reversible cover and internal box art. It lies in two places:

The game title

A visible spine

The latter is especially crucial because who in their right mind would display a game on their shelf when you can't even see what game it is? Here are some examples.

Exhibit A: The Last of Us Remastered

No game title

No spine

This is not a reversible cover.

Special shout-out to my copy of Uncharted 3, which is a Greatest Hits Edition, and has internal box art... but Greatest Hits cases on PS3 are opaque.

Exhibit B: Bloodborne

Game title is present, but it'd be on the back of the case. This is fine, my Persona 5 Royal steelbook displays the same way. But the real flaw here is there's no spine. Not a reversible cover.

Exhibit C: Marvel's Spider-Man

No title on the cover, but we do have a spine. But considering the cover is Spider-Man, I'm willing to say a title is not needed. This counts as a reversible cover. My only criticism is the Spider-Man logo should be on the front while the Spider-Man figure should go on the back.

Exhibit D: Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

Here's what we're really lookin for. Title on the cover, the front side of the cover no less, but most importantly we also have a spine. This is a tried & true reversible cover right here. Though admittedly I don't actually like this cover so I've opted not to reverse it. Final Fantasy's gotta have that title on white background on the front or it's just not the same. Stares at the XV & VII Remake covers that use black backgrounds

Appendix: System information

While the title on the cover & spine are the essentials, sometimes reversible covers will still include system information in their covers.

Some examples include:

NieR Automata's reversible cover keeping the PS4 band while leaving out the system info on the back

Dragon Quest XI's reversed cover has a completely different game sell on the back than what you'd see on store shelves

and Stranger of Paradise with its sick-ass reversible cover ruined with an obnoxious health & safety warning already present on the unreversed cover.

What's your favorite reversible cover? Lemme know, but make damn sure it's actually a reversible cover.

[ryotaiku]

The instinctual need to gather the drippy honey whenever I see it

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I tried to record my Omnislash but I forgot I had Counter equipped

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[ryotaiku]

I could never be under Azula's command because if she asked me if the tides commanded her ship I'd say "kinda, yeah" and she'd throw me overboard so the tides could prove me right.

[ryotaiku]

Something weird about my aspect ratio preferences: If I'm playing a game through an analog output like S-video or composite, I can tolerate and arguably prefer widescreen stretching. But if I'm using an HDMI signal, I gotta 4:3 that shit. I think it's because analog stretching is slightly letterboxed.

[ryotaiku]

Somehow it slipped past me but I gave Watchmen Chapter 1 a watch(men).

This is the third (yes, third) adaptation of Watchmen the graphic novel. First was the Watchmen Motion Comic, which is the most faithful you can get without just reading it. It was pretty good, a lot more animated than you think it'd be, though it could've really benefited from hiring a woman to voice the female characters. The voices are all done by one dude and his attempt at voicing women wasn't great.

One year later came Zack Snyder's Watchmen, which seems to have had a bell curve in critical reception. First people hated it, then people loved it, now people hate it again. I haven't seen it in a while, but if I were to watch it again I'd probably say it was fine. Not the most faithful, and if it was the only adaptation I'd say it was okay. In fact for a long time I thought this was the only adaptation until I discovered the motion comic, and even then I thought this one came first.

Now we have Watchmen Chapter 1, the first part of an all new adaptation.

Gonna talk spoilers. Be sure to read the comic or be familiar with the story before reading onward. Seriously go read the comic if you haven't it's really good.

Watchmen Chapter 1 covers everything up to Rorschach getting arrested. This implies to me it'll be a two-parter, but I could've seen it ending earlier & making it a three-parter. Watchmen has a lot going on, and it's hard to fit it all into two movies. The motion comic is almost six hours long, and that covered everything page-by-page. Almost.

Something that makes Watchmen hard to adapt is it's literally half-graphic and half novel. Every chapter ends with a few pages of pure literature with no illustration at all, ranging from journal excerpts to newspaper clippings to police reports. Zack Snyder's adaptation weaved Rorschach's journal into scenes with no narration in the comic, and Watchmen Chapter 1 does the same; though it's cut down a lot more.

My favorite thing this adaptation does is it includes the pirate comic (notably absent in the initial Snyder adaptation), but it makes the decision to not animate it. The pages are shown and the narration is read, but none of it moves like the characters. It's a comic within the comic, and the adaptation keeps it a comic. Not only that, but the the pirate comic is narrated directly in line with how it parallels the story; something I never even put together the first time I read it. I like that a lot.

My only complaint is I think it's a little too obvious that Rorschach is the doomsday activist. I remember him being kind of a background character, not someone you'd immediately notice, and Snyder did the same thing. It's a detail you're meant to notice on a second or third reading. But this adaptation almost makes it a point to focus on him, like they don't want you to forget he's there, so you'll recognize him when the police tear his mask off. I dunno how I feel about that, and I'm not even sure if I remember the comic right. I'll have to read it again to reconfirm my memory.

Overall though Watchmen Chapter 1 is pretty solid. I dunno if Watchmen really needed another adaptation, but if you're gonna watch & criticize a remake, you have to accept the fact that the remake exists. And as it exists, I liked it.

[ryotaiku]

As a kid I thought my favorite retro store would be a place full of PS2 games & Freeplay arcade cabinets but nowadays my favorite retro store mostly sells music and stinks of incense and is run by a guy who uses the store's social media to promote his Kiss cover band.

[ryotaiku]

Tales of Phantasia is a 2D SNES game and it has reflection graphics that put Nvidia to shame.

[ryotaiku]

I feel like people's standards of what constitutes "good gameplay" in an RPG are unrealistically high. I keep reading blogs over & over about how RPGs are only worth playing for their writing, and that their gameplay is irrelevant or just flat-out bad. And all I can say in response is... no they're not?

RPG gameplay is good. It's really good. I cannot stress enough just how fun & enjoyable RPGs are to play, regardless of any narrative the game is trying to tell. A narrative is not the one & only thing worth playing the genre for. There's exploration, dungeon crawling, character building, encounter design, party dynamics, even just minigames can make an RPG worth going through. You do not have to care about a story to enjoy it as a game.

A game lacking difficulty does not make it bad. Lacking depth doesn't make it bad. Being "lesser" when compared to other games doesn't equal bad. It's okay for a game to be good enough, and "good enough" is still good!

I shouldn't have to defend myself whenever I tell someone I like RPGs but don't care for their writing. RPGs are not defined solely by a narrative. They're games too, and it's okay to appreciate them as games; independently from anything else they try to be.

[ryotaiku]

My microwave just had a psychological affect on me.

My whole life our microwaves have been a little bit beige. Just a gross light yellow you'd associate with the 90s. However our new microwave has a pristine white interior.

And for some reason, seeing that pristine white splattered with lasagna bits after reheating leftovers made me want to wipe it down. Not a thorough clean, it's not filthy enough to deserve one of those, but just enough to keep that pristine white visible.

I would never do that with a yellow microwave.

[ryotaiku]

Y'know I've heard people argue that modding games makes you appreciate them less; that adding new things or tweaking the existing game makes you disrespect the artistry that went into making it. But in my experience modding Skyrim, I've experienced the exact opposite.

For a long time when I played Skyrim I always got annoyed that I had to level my skills individually, while also spending level-up points to unlock perks within those skills. So I installed a mod that made perks unlock automatically as I level skills to their minimum requirements, and I even did the math & found out leveling every skill to 100 takes roughly 80 levels worth of experience; the game's natural end point when the Ebony Warrior challenges you to a final duel. It made perfect sense!

But then on my most recent Skyrim save I got all my favorite skills to 100, and realized I... didn't want to level any other skills. I liked the setup I had, and leveling anything else meant having to use a character build I didn't find fun. Suddenly the game's Legendary Skill option made a lot more sense to me. It's not there to let you level forever, it's there so you can progress the game & keep using the skills you actually enjoy using.

But it's not just game-changing mods that give me revelations like this. There are tons of mods to add things that seem like they'd be fun, but in practice end up bloating the game & making it worse. Hunterborn for example is a mod that lets you skin & dress animals, letting you craft their parts into unique items & equipment. It sounds cool in theory, until you end up dressing every animal you come across and get bogged down with crafting items you'll either never use, or spend more time crafting than actually playing the game.

Even fan favorite mods like Frostfall lose their impact if you want to progress a long-term save. Temperature & hypothermia in Skyrim sounds like a fun resource to deal with, and early game it sure is interesting. But as you progress you start to unlock more & more fast travel locations, and eventually the temperature becomes a non-issue since you spend so little time outdoors. And sure, some mods let you disable fast travel, but on a long-term save do you really want to climb the 7000 steps manually every time you're sent there?

The lesson I got out of Skyrim modding (and mods in general) is just how much of a balancing act game design is. Changing even the slightest thing can throw off the whole experience, and what you thought were oversights can end up being deliberate & integral design decisions.

Game design is an underappreciated art.

[ryotaiku]

Blade & Sorcery is a cool VR game but the crutch on progen dungeons bugs the shit outta me.

It's not even persistent procgen. If you leave a dungeon it'll disappear and you gotta select a new one. If you die in a dungeon & hit the retry button you'll respawn in a completely new dungeon.

They're littered with notes that probably have lore but I can't bring myself to care because all of this stops existing when I leave.

You can't even loot equipment off bodies. Anything that doesn't fit in your dedicated inventory menu disappears as soon as you leave. Your only equipment progression is selling treasure and buying new weapons & armor.

This game wants me to be an adventuring swashbuckler but I just feel like a hired merc. The game's still good but I really wanted it to be more than the silly ragdoll fighter.

EDIT: EVEN THE FUCKING BOSSES ARE RECYCLED

[ryotaiku]

Remember, the purpose of a remaster is not better graphics, or new controls, or rounder tits, or to add content warnings if parts of your game haven't aged well. The purpose of a remaster is to make old games available for people to play out of the box, and for a lotta games that's not as simple as running an emulator.

Fan-made source ports are better, but remasters are the next best thing.

[ryotaiku]

Final Fantier List after beating XVI

Since the last time I did one of these I've moved VII up to S and IX down to C. I also made a dedicated F-tier for II because anyone who says VIII/XIII/XV are the worst FFs have never played II.

I never thought I'd reach a point where I have an opinion on every mainline entry, for a franchise I only really became a fan of in 2017. There are a few I want to replay for a stronger opinion (admittedly II is one of them) but to say I've played every mainline FF is kinda surreal.

[ryotaiku]

I beat Final Fantasy XVI

This game is pretty divided among players. It's entirely action-oriented as opposed to being turn-based, it's the first mainline entry to receive a big ol' M rating (and boy does it deserve one), and FF's place in the industry in general is a pretty hot topic right now. Square Enix has stated FFXVI hasn't met sales expectations (coming from a company who sold off their biggest IPs to try getting into NFTs a year too late), and fans have been dooming pretty hard about the future of the franchise. I even saw one guy say the only FF fans today are people who were teenagers when VII came out.

But speaking as someone who wasn't even conceived when VII came out, FFXVI has been the most fun I've had with a mainline entry since XI. I went in expecting this to be decent at best and it ended up exceeding those expectations quite a bit.

My one complaint, and pretty much everyone's biggest complaint, is a lack of character variety. For pretty much all of the game you only play as one dude, but the companions all do a bunch of cool things that make me wish I could play as them too. Even in the Eikon fights, the big epic Kaiju battles shown in the game's title art & marketing, you only get to control the same Eikon in every single fight.

Even with that missed opportunity, I loved playing XVI and will most likely go back to try the DLC at some point. Stranger of Paradise is probably the best action-oriented FF, but XVI can still stand all on its own.