#i played a lot of them in pikmin 3
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Wait people don't like the dandori battles and challenges in pikmin 4?
#i love them!!#i played a lot of them in pikmin 3#me against my sister and also we together in the challenges#pikmin 4 is super easy compared to 3#im doing the trial of the sage leaf now and Im finally struggling with dandori#but thats the fun lol we must play a lot to get better#already got the platinum medal for half of them#working on the white onion stage to get the medal#maybe they can be frustrating when things go wrong#like a monster get in your way or something#but the challenges in the normal story are pretty okay#anyway I just love games of doing chores in a limited time I guess lol
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i start pikmin 4 tonight and it's gonna be the first pikmin game i ever play without looking anything up... i am so scared
#flashbacks to being a kid reading pikmin 2 walkthroughs on gamefaqs and being scared just from the descriptions#i know i had spoilers for 3 as well#it was 10 years ago though and my teen years are not well remembered#banch.txt#correction: i played LOTS of 1 and 2 without knowing shit#but by the time i actually beat the games i had looked things up#who else remembers renting games for a week from a video rental store#and just running around in them
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Okay, I have a handful of little head canons just... scattered about, as... there's not a lot of source material to solidify them... I just have fun. HOWEVER. Throughout these head canons, I've noticed a pattern... and, it's got me theorizing.
I'm calling this theory the EAR theory, because... what else would I call it...It has all to do with the Captains’ ears!
What is the purpose of their designs? Why is it so important that they’re different among characters?
Do they have any correlation to their home planets? Why else would the developers differentiate these features if not to reveal SOMETHING about these characters simply by their ears?
To start, Pikmin 2. We’re familiar with Olimar, but now, we're introduced to others of his kind! Now, the introduction of the first game alone gives us exciting visuals of a foreign planet - Olimar’s home planet. We see its own planetary system, then to be shown his planet's sandy, and somewhat... barren landscape. This introduction is imperative to understanding these new characters, as we soon learn about Olimar’s coworkers! We're given the first impression of these little guys, but it’s not merely an impression of their personalities that's important; it's their physical traits! In comparison to Olimar, both Louie and the President are similar in their features - their closed eyes (which open large and wide upon exaggerated expression), their large and round noses, and their ears. With this, we can assume this is common on planet Hocotate and a majority of its population would share these traits. The differences, however, of their physique and countenance cause little disturbance to this pattern, such as the unique models of Louie and the President; Louie, in height and the shape of his head, as well as the President with his larger physique and chubby face to match. Nevertheless, there is one thing that goes unchanged, and it's their ears! This pattern establishes their ears as a key Hocotation feature.
Moving onwards, we're introduced to another planet in Pikmin 3: Planet Koppai! We're given more context of a new home planet for a new peoples: Koppaites. The narrative treats the player to the economical failures at play on the surface of this planet, and although we aren't given the same ground-level visuals from Pikmin 2, we're given more context to a considerably more advanced civilization! This information not only prepares its player for the mission, but, tells the story of their Captains! They rebooted the original three Koppaites, known as Alph, Brittany, and Charlie, but... I’ll go ahead and use Yorke, Nelle, and Don’s models from Pikmin 4. From first glance, they’re similar in stature to our previous Captains; however, they stand out with more lively expressions, smaller noses, and... considerably more hair... but not only that, we’re given a new pair of ears! They're shorter and more rounded, and almost...mousier. Now, alike to our previous Captains in the variety of their appearances- their ears have gone unchanged. Now, I will be nitpicky and point out that... Don's ears are stubbier... nevertheless, it shares a striking resemblance to his fellow Koppaites.
This detail is important... keep this in your pocket... we've seen this twice, already.
Moving onto our Rescue Corps! Now, Pikmin 4 opens up its story by rewriting Pikmin 1 - setting up this mission to rescue Olimar as if he had never escaped PNF-404. But, we don’t delve too much into a new home planet, of sorts. Rather, we find that the player's home planet is Karut; as well as that, we discover our fellow officers are from a variety of other planets, as well. We’re not given too much information about these planets, though, other than planet Giya and its history through Captain Shepherd's predecessors. Moreover, we're given a larger cast of characters paired with an abundance of physical traits; however, unlike the previous two games, we find that not all of the officers of the Rescue Corps share... the same... ears. Upon rescuing more and more of the officers, it’s established they’re from different planets.
Okay, this… makes sense...their ears are different based on their corresponding home planet. Correct?
WRONG!
With a look to the example provided, reinstating our previous beloved pattern... This would lead one to assume that Captain Shepherd, Russ, and Yonny were from the same planet. Rather, Yonny’s home planet is planet Ohri!
...As is Dingo’s. Yet, only Dingo stands out in comparison... as, his ear is designed differently than Yonny's!
Comparably, we can observe similarities shared between Lisa/Pom (I'm exampling her model as, I argue, she is the canon Captain) and the S.S Shepherd’s pilot, Bernard. Now, we’ve established that Pom’s home planet is Karut; so, this would reasonably lead one to assume that her ear is unique to the peoples of Karut. This is an exciting feat, as she is our new Captain... based on previous patterns, we should expect to learn more about her and her home planet...
inHALES, UNTIL THE CONCEPT IS OBLITERATED BY THE CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION, because, no matter how you design your officer - they're ALL from Karut? YOU'RE JOKING ME. but Put THIS in your pocket, too. exhale
...That is until we look at our beloved pilot. These two are similar in stature: yes; In height: sure; but… let’s see… I spy with my little eye, their EARS! But, Bernard is from an entirely different planet!
QUÉ??!?!?
INHALEEESS... but we're not done here, oh no, last, but certainly not least... we’re left with Collin.
THIS LITTLE FREAK OF NATURE.
No, remember that first thing I said to put in your pocket? PULL IT OUT.
Yes, he has a larger physique, his build is discernible with his unique facial features and ALL, but keep in mind, in LIKENESS to The President and Don! Now,... do we remember what we're talking about here... Collin’s I.D. badge reveals to us that his home planet is planet Giya. However, he shares LITTLE RESEMBLANCE to his FELLOW GIYANS. His ears DIDN'T EVEN TRY. Unlike Don's, for example, let me narrate it… they we're like, okay... squash... we're complimenting this character's design and not distracting from it by being proportionately smaller - but, still... we're Koppaite ears, and we're obvious about it. MEANWHILE, Collin's ears? These girls… are literally… doing their own thing. Like, excuse me? You are NOT from planet Giya - you may be a citizen, at MOST, but your ears tell me an ENTIRELY different story if we were to apply any semblance of pattern recognition.
Now, that SECOND thing I told you to put in your pocket, too - There are two characters out of the Rescue Corps you cannot replicate in the character customization. Guess. Who. They. Are.
Captain Shepherd and Collin. Why? They are entirely unique designs of their OWN! There’s significance in their character - but, if not significance alone, at least a richly developed design. So, there was a purpose in their designs and how they were set apart from one another. Why, then, are they from the same planet if there wasn't something special about their designs?
I have my hopes that there were... possible... plans for design development for the crew, but, with the end product… This is what we were left with; nevertheless, it's a detail that reveals that, in some way, there was something more!
Okay!
Theory aside... I based a head canon on these observations.
SO......... Iooking into the long list of planets of Pikmin 4, I was curious about the significance of their names. With a quick little search, according to the Pikmin Wiki, it’s noted that they’re often creative depictions of Nintendo…shenanigans… for example, one planet is named from “the site of a previous Nintendo headquarters,” as well as another being “from the abbreviation for Nintendo of America” (PikminWiki). Without a lot of knowledge of Nintendo history, I felt it was simple enough to find and try a few street names that were adjacent to Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto. There was one street name which had “koji” before the suffix... so, I designed a little home planet for Collin, naming it planet Kojia. I thought this one was short and sweet, and suitable for his cute, little ears.
Why didn’t I choose from the long list of planets?
I CONSIDERED THIS. Albeit, last second, but, I did… I found a few castaways similar to Collin’s model, but, again, the inconsistencies stirred in me a perfectionist’s rage… ok, bye.
God Bless!
#pikkissistext#pikkiesart#this research showed me ive been drawing everyones ears wrong#i prayed i asked the Lord “help me care about this” bc literally i cared for months but it left me before i started writing this#game theory#pikmin 4#pikmin 3#pikmin 2#pikmin#rescue corps#io#collin#captain shepherd#dingo#russ#yonny#bernard#olimar#louie#the president#yorke#nelle#don
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Are there any characters in Smash that you have a different perception of after playing their games?
Fox: I remember feeling sorry for him getting more attached after playing SF64 3D. He needs a scritch behind the ears. Also he may or may not be able to see ghosts. Idk what's going on with his dad but it. sure is a thing that happens.
Ness: Definitely brave like I saw him before, but he's a lot more of a kid than many people give him credit for. In game he tends to get either the "dumb kid needs to go be a dumb kid somewhere else" treatment or the "old soul in a young body" treatment from other people, but he's the only party member who gets homesick.
Olimar: Only played the Pikmin 3 side story and Pikmin 4 demo but it's good enough. Olimar is a lot less of a coward than I thought and more just. like. really wet and pathetic. Also in denial that he's happier on PNF-404 than his own planet.
Alph: Knew nothing of him at first but now I know him to be a skittish nerd.
Wii Fit Trainers: Bit of a misnomer bc I played Wii Fit before but I didn't pay much attention to the yoga sections. Minor differences in line delivery do a lot to distinguish their personality (f!WFT being calmer but more forward and m!WFT being more energetic but also more nervous). Also they just want to help you exercise right she attacked the other fighters in her trailer because it's literally a fighting game trailer leave them alooooone.
Cloud: Actually has a semblance of a sense of humor. Beyond that he's mostly how I imagined him before.
Eleven: Only played a small bit of DQ11 but I've played enough to know him as a sheltered small town boy with a mischief streak.
#64 fox#ness earthbound#captain olimar#alph pikmin#wii fit trainer#cloud strife#eleven dragon quest#not a headcanon#ask#specternabbermaiori#mine
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The Death Of A Website.
tl;dr click source to see an AU of my blog.
As many of you may not have heard, Cohost has gone read only. The website infamous for "Zero Discoverability" and its users "Not Being Funny." Servers will close down at the end of 2024, if not earlier, being backed up on the Internet Archive before that. Since their user counts were still low after 2 years (about half of all sign ups ever were from people evacuating twitter, which then didn't know how to use the site so most left almost immediately. Kind of hilarious) they didn't feel like anymore money bleeding OR the fact that a staff of only four people being on call 24/7 was worth it anymore.
However,
the people who DID use the site loved it. And they did some genuinely cool things on it, far cooler than anything I ever saw even in the glory days of Tumblr. You know, like Finn and Jake hi-fiving between 2 posts. Stuff like a playable maze, or a fully navigable 3d room you move around in with your mouse entirely within a post. They really did some cool stuff.
There were also a ton of really talented people, people like the composer Lena Raine(Celeste/Minecraft) who loved the site because you could just. Actually talk to people on it! Without an algorithm to boost their posts, the only people who saw it were genuinely looking for it.
Also some of them were just good posters, we did get Pikmin 18 billion and eleven from Cohost after all.
The point is, I think if anyone outside of Cohost actually knew what was being done on Cohost, it would of succeeded. There would of been enough active users for them to invest more. If I knew about all of this I would of been there way more!
But rather than just you blindly believing me, I decided to spend (almost) every hour I would of on Tumblr, on Cohost instead. Clicking that link, or the source, or the link on the source above in the tl;dr, will take you to my Cohost blog. At least while it's still read-only.
You should check it out. I reblogged a lot, but the first page or 2 (every 20 posts, I kept trying to stop but I got sentimental and reblogged more) is pretty much just people's last posts. I'd say give it 3 pages to see if you're interested or not in exploring more of what the website has to offer.
If you've ever wondered what people would post on a dying website,
If you ever wondered what some of the best posts people were making on Cohost that got shared again in its last dying moments were,
If you want some reference for what inside jokes would look like to an outsider,
If you're just bored and need something to scroll through,
if you ever wondered what I would of reblogged on that website if I remembered my password easily enough to log back in easily...
You could think of my blog as a small encapsulation of a small website. There's only 60 pages, including the ones from before the announcement from me just rarely using the site!
I reblogged all kinds of posts. Goodbyes, sarcastic hellos, mourning, long speeches about the spirit of Cohost set to sad music, nothing burgers, inside jokes I didn't understand, The New Garfield, posts I flat out didn't read past the title because they were too long and I just wanted to move on really there's a lot of posts to archive, CSS crimes, stuff I found funny, "Where to find me" and webrings and website posts for people I never knew, Love Honk, reviews for movies and games I never intend to play or watch, 88x31 buttons, music recommendations and history, entire games, signing up for RSS feeds, asks and answers related to other stuff I didn't share on accident, regular memes, Intern Secretary Eggbug, a post that's just an image hosted off-site so it'll update even after readonly, and so on.
(Nothing overtly NSFW. Tag search still works if you want that)
One that I, personally, am sad is gone. That I'm glad I got to see at least in its dying days. That I genuinely hope someone makes another attempt at creating.
#Cohost#The Death Of A Website#The Global Cohost Feed#<- there was no algorithm or 'new' section so a lot of people just tagged everything with this to do that. Kind of funny tbh#yes btw the 4 people also handled all of the site moderation. This did in fact cause: problems sometimes#if it's not read only by the time this scheduled post goes up uhhhh. Go Hog Wild I Guess.#I would go through people's blogs and random tags whenever my following tab dried up#so post type can get kind of clumpy sometimes. Feel free to skip forward or back pages if that ever gets annoying.#If you genuinely want to buy Cohost go make them an offer it is absolutely for sale btw.#The Cohost Global Feed#I definitely did not mix it up and am just being thorough
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📌PIN POST📌
Hello!! You can call me Saro/P! This blog is mainly for Pikmin art dump(and random speeches) so I don't often checking notification until I have another piece to share/post something ^_^ You can find most of my art in the pikmin tag if you're here for art! COMMS OPEN (3 slots) ☕: https://ko-fi.com/cheese1512 🟢Current status: Unstable schedule. Selective reply (Again, I don't mean to ignore you, sorry!)
I love Louimar, so often my drawing is related to Pikmin 2 timeline (I like Pikmin 2 the most). Remains NCP (NCP for me is just I don't often see them as couple, mostly because of my lack of information and I rarely do shipping haha... but I don't hate them!!! Infact, I would be glad if you could enlighten the dynamic to me,,,, I crave for interesting pairing...) for the rest of the cast.
I haven't play Pikmin, I really plan to as long as I could afford it.... My contents could be a tad bit OOC as a result but I will try to stay canon since I.Am.Serious.About.Lore. I love headcanon though it's cool asf.
I did writing for fun! Recently working on a small LM fanfic...
I speak English with lots of grammatical errors as I am not native, please pretend to not see my mistakes lol.
And I ramble a lot. Like. A Lot.
As long as I got credited, it is okay to repost or use my art, non-profit and stay as far from AI as possible of course.
Request is always welcome (for now...I am busy with personal matters so it will come through slow), strictly Pikmin please!
I need Louimar moots..............
Thanks for reading~🎶 I will update pin from time to time!

#pinpost#Oh also Louimar can be view as platonic!#As long as Louie and Olimar is on the same canvas then I am happy......
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SPEAKING OF MONSTERS
Thinking about the fun sound effects the monsters have in Wind Waker awakens an old rant in me.
I love the Pikmin series, I think my name shows that. As a kid I was never really good at 1, but I would play Pikmin 2 so much. Honestly Pikmin 2 specifically is still one of my favorite games of all time. Naturally the creatures, music, and sound effects are all very nostalgic to me.
So when Pikmin 4 came out and we had a lot of returning creatures, of course I was excited. 3 had left out a lot, but it introduced new ones, so no big deal. But something is missing from so many creatures from both 3 and 4.
The sounds!
The creatures themselves are the best they’ve ever looked (though I could rant about a few changes, another day). Yet hardly any of them retain the very unique and iconic sounds they had in 2.
Remember how in 1&2 if you happened to squish a dwarf bulborb with a Pikmin it would scream? Bulborbs would bark, growl, snore. They had different sounds for different things that were all very different from one another. Then comes along 3&4 and they all just sound muted. They only have quiet cutesy growls. They lost their bark.
Another example is the emperor and empress bulblax. When the emperor was charging a lick attack, you got to hear a loud, deep growl. The lick itself even had a handful of guttural sounds to it. In 4, it’s all just quiet smacking. As for the empress, she also lost her bark. But remember in 2, the fight where she would birth a bunch of larva? You could hear that happening across the map, letting you know something is coming. In 4, they took that away.
I don’t have the means to compare clips or audio files, but compare the Man-at-Legs fights in 2 and 4. The MaL had loud metallic footsteps. It growled. It’s gunfire was loud! In 4 it also lost its voice. It’s mechanical sounds are also more muted. When I fought it for the first time in 4 that’s when all this really started to get to me. I had freshly played 1-3 before starting 4, so the differences were extremely noticeable to me. The boss didn’t have the same punch it did before, and I think it really took away from my overall experience.
But the worst contender is the Water Wraith. Easily one of the most iconic bosses of 2 for very good reason. You hear the whistling of its rollers falling and then it’s roar, you know you’re in trouble and you gotta wrap up what you’re doing! I was thrilled when I saw 4s own version of the submerged castle. I saw those rollers and I lost my mind. The man was back!
And then it fell. I think you know what I’m going to say. The icon whistle: hushed. The iconic roar: drowned and garbled.
All intimidation had been stripped away. You couldn’t hear it growling from across the map anymore. The drop was so quiet. You couldn’t feel it’s presence like you could in 2. It’s all just so quiet!!
I could go in this loop for everything, but I just don’t get why so many iconic sounds where removed or just lessened. 4 in general is jusg so lacking in the sound department, and even though I found the game fun I can’t come close to calling it my favorite. It just lacks the soul I wanted to see from 2.
Anyways rant over. Maybe someday I’ll make this more coherent and come back with proper comparisons but we’ll see lol.
My ranking of the games worst to best is
1-4-3-2
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
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About the Switch 2
I've had time to think on this and I think I'm ready to form an opinion on the pricing of the switch 2 among other things.
Console price: I never really had a problem with it, its roughly the price of a current gen Xbox/PS console with really insane hardware for a handheld. The amount of engineering and specialty parts that had to go into manufacturing this portable beast in insane, I think $450 is a good price point for it.
Digital Game Key Sharing: I actually think with the mix of the DS Download play esque features and the ability to share games with other people for 2 weeks at a time, I think Nintendo did a really good move for people who have a lot of Nintendo playing friends/are in a framily plan like myself. I've always wanted to do something like this with my digital games, and now my friends have no excuse to not play Pikmin 4!
Physical Videogame Keycards: Motherfucking digital slop, just put the goddamn game on the card and leave us be. This is so fucking anti-preservation that the only way we can get roms and rip these games of the switch 2 to preserve them is to hack the motherfucker and rip the files out ourselves. Fuck you nintendo.
Videogame price: AAA games have been $60 for as long as I can remember. Ever since I was a child they have not gone up in price. Development costs, including and especially labor costs, have risen a lot since 2005. I think $80 will price a lot of people out of gaming.
However, unlike other major AAA companies Nintendo does not put out the same game ever 1-3 years and expect you to pay full price for it. MK8 came out on the switch on launch like 8 years ago. BOTW and TOTK were like 6 years apart. Paying $80 for a game you won't need to replace for 6-8 years I think is a damn good deal if you can afford it.
Also, the DS Download play esque thing means that many people won't initially need to buy the game and can instead play it online with their friends if one of them owns it, and game key sharing means they can pass it around their Nintendo family. And just like Steam Family sharing, only one person in the family needs to buy a singleplayer game, meaning you can go all in for it.
Are any of these things able to excuse tha price tag of $90 fucking dollars? No, absolutely not. That's atrocious and IMO the most I would ever pay for a AAA game would be $79.99
However on the larger scale of things, i do actually think videogames, especially indie games, should be much more expensive. Indie games should be a bastion of creativity and innovation, but how the fuck can you expect that in this economy when the dev is only getting like $3 profit whenever someone buys their game?
#nintendo games#nintendo switch#nintendo switch 2#nintendo#nintedo switch#i'm not paying $90 for a videogame#indie game#indie gaming#videogame#videogames#video game#video games#indie game prices should be higher#pay indie devs#indie devs#Nintendo switch 2 keycards are stupid#piracy is morally correct#piracy is preservation
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Games I played in 2024.
Man, fuck this year. Here are some video games I felt like talking about, I guess.
(2023 ⇐ 2024)
ABZÛ
There are a few different throughlines to the games I played this year. One is that I delved deep into my backlog; games I picked up in a bundle or a Steam sale some 6 or 7 years ago but never found the time or the hardware for. There are a lot of them. Most of them were worth the wait. I've long since given up on the idea of playing every single game in my libraries to completion, but it's nice to have options.
Another throughline was seeking out shorter games. I've… had some trouble focusing on longer projects this year, so games that I could play in short bursts (like The Solitaire Conspiracy), complete in a few sessions (like What Remains of Edith Finch), or even a single sitting (like Dépanneur Nocturne) were useful for filling in the time. ABZÛ was the first, and ended up being one of the best. Simple but effective gameplay, immaculate visuals and music, and a lot of fish. It was only a couple hours long, but it was the best couple hours I played all year.
Pikmin 4
I played though Pikmin 2 several years ago and had a good time. Last year I picked up a used copy of Pikmin 3 at a convention on a lark, played through it, and had a good time. This year my brother got me Pikmin 4 as a gift, I played though it, and had an excellent time. There's a certain charm these games have that keeps bringing me back, and the most recent game showcases the best of all of them.
Splatoon 3: Side Order
Ahh, time sinks. I still play Sky on the regular, return to Animal Crossing every now and then, and even threw a bit of Eastward: Octopia into the mix. I completed many more loops of Cobalt Core, and more races in F-Zero 99. Over the summer I even found time for some long sessions of Civilization 6.
Splatoon 3 was another mainstay, but this year it reached the proverbial end of the line. The game is still around and I still play it, but like with Animal Crossing before it, the game has been "finished" in that peculiar way live service games are. What exists now will continue to exist, but everything they wanted to do with it is done. Thanks for playing, enjoy the reruns, see y'all in the sequel.
But if it had to end, the one-two punch of Side Order and the Grand Fest made for a good capstone — a well-crafted single-player challenge, and a spectacular you-had-to-be-there finale for the multiplayer side. I can say I was there at the beginning and there at the end, and I'm glad I was along for the ride.
Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers
Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart and its antecedents are a thing I've been vaguely aware of for a long time but never followed too closely, so the sequel was a welcome surprise. It offered an abundance of content and a robust single-player mode, and it's a free fan-made project, so I figured "why not" and gave it a try, and was subsequently hooked for a good month or so. Not everything clicked with me — it's way more mechanically complex than any other kart racer I've seen (I'm told that's part of the appeal, but I've never had the dexterity for it), and it can get frustrating very fast whether you're racing against the CPU or against other players. All the same I can't help but admire it. Ring Racers is a passion project that's as much a love letter to itself as anything that came before, and apologizes for none of it.
Patrick's Parabox
I'll always make room for puzzle games, and this was the standout of this year's lot. Sokoban games can range from "okay" to "clicks with me immediately and is an instant favorite" (Baba Is You et al). Parabox landed squarely in the latter category, occupying my brain for a good few weeks until I'd solved every last level. The different ways it layers puzzles on top of each other were fun to figure out, especially when it starts introducing new ways to "break" them, which it turn become additional layers of the puzzle. Highly recommended.
(Honorable puzzle mentions: The Pedestrian, Linelith, Arranger, Bonfire Peaks, 7 Billion Humans)
Epigraph
While Patrick's Parabox was the best puzzle game I played this year, Epigraph was the most unique. It's another game about deciphering a fictional language à la Chants of Sennaar or Heaven's Vault (which is to say, one that appeals to me specifically), but in a much more compressed form. The entire game consists of a single, very complex puzzle. You're given seven artifacts with undeciphered writing, and a couple paragraphs of notes to start you off, and that's all you get. From there, you have to unravel the language piece by piece, isolating individual words and phrases and meanings until you understand the bigger picture. That such a leap is possible at all is a testament to how well designed the puzzle is. Like I said last year, I want more games like this to exist.
One caveat: only being a single puzzle means there's functionally no feedback unless you've solved the whole thing, so if you've almost solved it, it can be difficult to figure out which part of your solution you need to fix. It's only a minor gripe that didn't detract from the experience overall; as it turns out, I felt the same way about the final puzzle of…
TUNIC
I've been sitting on this one for a while. It's consistently been at the top of my wishlist ever since it was announced all those years ago. I bought the soundtrack the day it came out, but I never delved into the game itself until this summer. Something about TUNIC always drew me back towards it. I knew it was a game I wanted to experience blind, and now that I've done so, it'll be a game that occupies my thoughts for a long time.
TUNIC, the adventure game, is good! A charming little title in the vein of the old Zeldas. Exploring the game world is fun and gives a very satisfying sense of progression, whether though finding new tools and weapons, opening new paths, or discovering hidden paths that were there all along. Fighting enemies and bosses is challenging, but not insurmountable. It does get kinda frustrating in the back half, especially the last boss. The built-in accessibility options make it much more tolerable.
All of this is tied together by TUNIC's central gimmick, an in-game manual pieced together page by page. Most of it is written in a script you cannot read, and it leaves you just enough information to intuit what needs to be done, but forces you to dig deeper if you want to learn the truth: TUNIC, the puzzle game, is a masterstroke. Much like all of those hidden paths and shortcuts, all of the information you need is placed in front of you even if you don't realize it. Decoding the cipher text, and understanding the meaning of the Holy Cross and the Golden Path (not even solving the puzzle, just realizing what the puzzle actually is), was the most satisfying thing I've done in a game in years.
TOEM
Some games are memorable for a particularly hard challenge, or a compelling narrative, or a perfectly crafted setpiece level. Some games are memorable because they're just really pleasant. No stress, no time limits, just vibes. Everything about this game puts a huge grin on my face — the music, the characters, all the places to explore and secrets to find and puzzles to solve. A week, a month, a year from now, I'll have a stray thought about TOEM, and my day will be a little brighter because of it.
I like this game a lot, y'all. Very much looking forward to the sequel whenever that comes out. Take a picture, it'll last longer.
(Honorable mentions from the archives: Storyteller, A Little to the Left, Freshly Frosted, Wavetale, Islets, Arranger)
Here Comes Niko!
While we're on the subject of pleasant games, this is another one I've been meaning to play for a while, and another one I enjoyed a fair amount. Looking back, TOEM and Niko! have a lot in common — vibe-centric games with 2D characters running around in a carefully crafted 3D world, carried by a charming aesthetic and cast of characters, with a core loop of travelling from town to town and doing various small tasks to make friends and help people out. The biggest differences are the genres (photography puzzle versus collect-a-thon platformer), the color scheme (minimalist and monochrome versus bright pastel)… and one more key detail.
I knew most of what to expect when I started, the soundtrack and the aesthetic and the platforming, but knew next to nothing about the story, which caught me off guard. Early on it hits you with a moment of "…oh," that lingers throughout the game as you learn more about what the protagonist is actually trying to accomplish. (At some point I want to write up a comparison of the narratives of Niko! and A Short Hike, but it'd be an entire essay in itself so I'll spare you the details.) I didn't go into Here Comes Niko! looking for pathos, but that's what it gave me and I think it was a better experience because of that. Kudos.
(Honorable mentions from the "I'll get around to this one eventually" list, that I got around to eventually: Going Under, Creature in the Well, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap, Sonic Mania, What Remains of Edith Finch, RiME)
Anthology of the Killer
The best game of 2024. Like, unironically.
This comes from another developer (thecatamites) that I've been vaguely aware of as someone who makes interesting niche art projects, but only really knew about secondhand from other people, which was still enough to put it on my radar. And now, I cannot get this goddamn thing out of my head. It burrowed in months ago and has lived there rent-free ever since. At some point I need to introduce my siblings to this game because I just need to talk to somebody about it.
Anthology of the Killer is a lot of things. It's a collection of nine short narrative games that have been released over the past few years. It's surrealist horror comedy, and dances between all of those aspects whenever it pleases. It's a satirical take on history and modernity and art. It's a story about death cults and pop music fads. It's about just trying to get by even as the world around you gets stranger and more violent, or as you realize that maybe it already was. It's crude and bloody, and gets away with it by looking like it was drawn in MS Paint. It's a game where I can say something like "Heart is probably the best overall, but Flesh is underrated" and not sound like I'm losing my mind. It's the most well-written game I've experienced this year, and possibly any year.
"Aren't the stars pretty? Isn't it a nice night? Do you think the world is basically good or basically bad?" "Man, I just work here."
Who knows. Maybe 2025 will be better. Just gonna keep spinning the wheels for a while, see if it gets me anywhere. See y'all next year.
#tunic game#toem#anthology of the killer#here comes niko#abzû#dr robotnik's ring racers#patrick's parabox#epigraph game#splatoon 3 side order#pikmin#bryan writes about games
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Games I Enjoyed in 2024
It's that time of year again where I write about my favorite games I played in 2024!
Normally, I keep track of all this stuff on a Notepad app on my PC, but sadly, during the last bit of 2024, I had to hard reset my PC, and all of the old notes from previous years were lost.
Broke my heart a bit to lose a part of me to remember the games I played in previous years. It was like a personal journal entry of where I was in life. I do have the previous year's blog posts of SOME of the games that were highlights which is better than NOTHING, but man... (Rest in peace little file: 2018-2024)
Thankfully I could tally up all of the games I finished this year despite the loss.
I finished about 26 games in 2024 (two games were back-to-back replays so technically I finished 28 games but to keep it simple... 26). This is far LESS than last year, but far MORE than 2022.
I will keep most of these thoughts short since I did a stream on Radio PSI with Nightshade about my "favorite games in 2024." Here's a brief write-up.
Pikmin 4- (Nintendo Switch)
I'm sad I didn't get to play this at launch. I never finished 1, 2, or, 3 but once I was told that this game could be played as is without needing to play the other games, I decided to dive in, and I finally understood the appeal of the series. It's a comforting game to play and it's beginner-friendly so I don't have to feel too bad if I'm messing up.
From collecting the ship parts, exploring dungeons, collecting glow Pikmin, and upgrading myself and Oatchi... it was a treat and much more (especially with the post-game content). This is a game I'm glad I 100%'d. I hope to play the other Pikmin games in the future. It won't be the same as 4, but I love these little guys so much. The purple Pikmin are my favorite.
Incredible Crisis- (Playstation 1)
I was suggested to play this because a friend told me that my comic/ game idea had the same vibe as this game so I decided to try it out and... wow. They got me...
Take the wacky antics of Wario Ware and Bishi Bashi and slam them into a blender... you get Incredible Crisis. Some mini-games can be hard, but once you get the rhythm down it's not THAT bad. This game has SO many ideas and goofy things it tries to do that it is a personal gold mine of goofy ideas and things I want to try in my own projects so if you want something fun and unserious please check out this insane concoction of stuff that made me laugh and smile.
Also that OST by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. Perfection.
Chulip- (Playstation 2)
I played a LOT of Chulip-like games this year. Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Dropsy, Starstruck, and even For Whom The Frog Bell Tolls. Out of all of them... I loved them all equally. I couldn't rank them so technically they are all here in this spot. This is my list I do whatever the heck I want. Chulip is an insane game to pitch and market for a US audience, but I love games that break the norm. Simple premise, but you are thrown into so many moments, characters, and situations JUST to be able to kiss the girl of your dreams. It's stupid and obtuse, but that's the kind of game I want to play. It's all about the journey rather than the destination and Chulip makes sure that you remember this experience (especially at the end where the game THROWS a whole quiz on you to see if you remember everything you experienced). I want more games like this (Stray Children just came out in Japan and I am STOKED for a US release in 2025).
Splatoon 2- Octo Expansion- (Nintendo Switch)
I have NEVER finished a single-player campaign in Splatoon until 2024. Everyone told me that if there was ONE single-player mode to play it was Octo Expansion. I got around to it and I feel the best way to explain this campaign without saying much is that this is Nintendo's Portal 2.
Octo Expansion was awesome! The OST, the art, and the characters were a HUGE highlight personally. It's another game that inspired me creatively and that finale really put my skills to the test and left me VERY satisfied that I got to experience something like Portal 2 again. Good job, Nintendo.
Metroid Dread- (Nintendo Switch)
Before I could REALLY dive into this game I played all of Zero Mission and Fusion just to get myself ready and MAN. This game rules. I loved Super Metroid and I am SO GLAD I got to play this. I don't have much to say other than if you want to play a GOOD Metroid game and you haven't played Dread yet? PLEASE play Dread. Samus is the coolest lady in the galaxy... (this game prompted me to read the Metroid manga and now I am all about playing Metroid Prime 2 and 3 before Prime 4 is released so I am like on a huge Metroid fixation atm).
Before I talk about my personal GOTY I am gonna highlight some other games I enjoyed playing and finishing this year, but it will just be the titles (bringing the ones I already mentioned in passing here so it's not forgotten since I know not EVERYONE reads my silly ramblings):
Starstruck (PC)
Egg Squeeze (PC)
Corn Kidz 64 (PC)
P5 Strikers (PS4)
Metroid Zero Mission (GBA)
Metroid Fusion (GBA)
For Whom The Frog Bell Tolls (GB)
Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (DS)
Dropsy (PC)
Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch)
Ok it's time to talk about my favorite game I played this year that came out of nowhere and made me the happiest dude in the world...
Emio The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club- (Nintendo Switch)
This is one of Nintendo's most ambitious games to come out of the company in a LONG time. I NEVER thought I would see a new entry to this series EVER again. I had hope that MAYBE a remake of the Satellaview game would be in the works, but that was about it.
Nope!
When they first teased about "Emio" and left the internet stumped for about a week to figure out who the heck Emio is... I was like "ok this is a new approach of Nintendo that's cool". After the week passed and I woke up to see it was for Famicom Detective Club... I was probably one of the ONLY people who was VERY excited to see the news that Nintendo is giving me another entry to one of the most overlooked series in Nintendo's history.
I totally understand why a lot of people WOULD be disappointed when it wasn't a "real horror game", but I feel a lot of the promotion and pushing for this game means that Nintendo REALLY believed in this game and I was eager to see what the heck Yoshio Sakamoto wanted to share with this new entry.
To prepare myself I ended up replaying the older games and saw that they were doing chapter releases (sorta similar to Satallaview in a way hmmmm....) before the game was released. I basically sat down and marathoned it on Twitch.
I WISH I could talk about my ENTIRE thoughts of this game, but I feel that everyone should do themselves a favor and actually pick up and buy this game. There will NEVER be another Nintendo game like this again. Nintendo took a RISK to make this game and the story they wanted to tell is something I would never expect from Nintendo.
Never has a game broken my heart this much. There were many moments that caught me off guard that I will have a hard time forgetting about for the rest of my life. I can understand why Yoshio Sakamoto said that the ending will be very divisive. Even some reviews that came out afterward really showed who loved and who hated what this game was trying to do.
I feel this is the first time in a long time that Nintendo went out of its way to put so much money into telling a very human story that while not many people will see it for what it is, I'm putting Emio on my list as one of my favorite video games of all time. Unfortunately, the reception wasn't as big as it should have been and it may mean this series may be dormant once again, but there was a recent interview from Yoshio Sakamoto that FDC isn't QUITE done yet so I pray that means this IP has more moments to shine. This was a big surprise for me in 2024 and I truly believe that it's more important than ever going forward that people need to take time to enjoy something rather than trying to treat it like it's fast food or the flavor of the month. Emio proved that to me with its story, visuals, writing, and OST. I ended up playing this game TWICE and it's possible I may end up playing it a third time. The amount of new dialogue and new things you can find in Emio was surprising and it just made me love what Nintendo did for this game and I wish more people would give it a chance.
THANKFULLY you don't need to have played the other games in the series to play Emio. Yes, it DOES mention parts from the previous games in Emio, but they are more like little snippets that will lure you into wanting to play those games which I REALLY appreciate Nintendo doing. I'm happy that this new entry to the series is similar to how Pikmin 4 is a good intro game to the Pikmin series for newer players. I feel as time goes on that will be a game I gift to friends in hopes that everyone gives Famicom Detective Club another chance.
Welp... it's a new year with many more games to play and look forward to. Thanks to everyone who bothers reading these. Until 2026 when I'll post this again!
#blog#video games#personal thoughts#2024 wrapup#emio the smiling man#nintendo#thoughts#gameoftheyear
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Investigating Nintendo's Variable Pricing
Mario Kart's $80 pricing has been one of the biggest talking points online. Partly because we're all very sensitive to price increases in general and partly because what was shown off didn't really justify why Nintendo thinks the game was worth $80, along with the fact that Nintendo games are always full price. In a recent interview they said that they will price games on a Game-by-Game basis. So I decided to see how many times Nintendo released a game under the then-standard price of $60 to see how often they did the inverse of a Mario Kart World and released a game at a discounted price due to the size and scope of the game.
After doing a little skim through the Nintendo website, I was genuinely surprised by how many games didn't release at full price. This isn't an exhaustive list, but it was interesting find.
1-2-Switch: $50
Snipperclips: $20
Bayonetta: $30
Bayonetta 2: $50
Sushi Striker: $50
Captain Toad: $40
Cadence of Hyrule: $25
Good Job $20
Clubhouse Games: $40
Kirby Fighters 2: $20
Famicon Detective Club 1: $35
Famicom Detective Club 2: $35
Miitopia: $50
Game Builder Garage: $30
WarioWare Get it Together: $50
Big Brain Academy: $30
Nintendo Switch Sports: $40
Kirby Dream Buffet: $15
Metroid Prime Remastered: $40
Pikmin 1: $30
Pikmin 2: $30
Pikmin 1 + 2: $50
Everybody 1-2 Switch: $30
Detective Pikachu Returns: $50
WarioWare Move it: $50
Endless Ocean Luminous: $50
NES World Championships: $30
Mario Vs Donkey Kong: $50
Emio The Smiling Man: $50
That's almost 30 games over the switch's lifespan that I would count as "Nintendo Games", that were not full price releases. There are even some objectively great games in this list. Metroid Prime Remastered is a steal at $40, Pikmin 1 + 2 for $50 is not bad either. I haven't played the Famicom Detective Club games but I hear they were great. There's also a decent number of smaller download games like Cadence of Hyrule. Snipperclips, or the Kirby side-games. I wasn't sure whether or not to include the downloadables but I felt like Cadence of Hyrule and Snipperclips deserved some love.
There are still some games I would say are overpriced. Neither of the Warioware games felt like they were $50 material to me. The 1-2 Switch games as well are games I'd never buy. Despite praising them earlier, the Pikmin ports do look a bit silly compared to the gorgeous Metroid Prime Remake that's cheaper than the bundle of them.
Of this list I only actually purchased 3 of the games here, but you do save a lot of money by only buying the games you are interested in.
I'd say this list honestly would make me feel better about Nintendo's plan to adapt their prices to their perceived quality of the game.
Except for one minor detail: The games that were not on this list but by all accounts should've been.
For Example:
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD
Luigi's Mansion 2 HD
Princess Peach Showtime
Mario Sports games in general
New Pokemon Snap
Pikmin 3 Deluxe
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX
Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze*
Were all full priced releases despite being relatively simple HD Remasters or pretty barebones games. Luigi's Mansion 2 HD is particularly silly because Luigi's Mansion 3 is on switch for the same price and has multiple times the production value.
*Honestly Tropical Freeze is still worth $60, but the fact that the WiiU version was $50 gives it a spot here.
These outliers, along with the fact that Nintendo games never drop their price (They do go on sale though, but usually maxing out at $20 off) probably heavily contribute to the absolutely catastrophic reaction to Mario Kart World's 80 price-tag. If Nintendo actually priced their lower budget Marios and Remasters the same as Prime Remastered, I feel like people would be more trusting of Nintendo saying that they are setting their prices on a game-by-game basis. Only having 2 real Switch 2 games with revealed prices at launch set at $80 and $70 doesn't help either because we have no idea how often Nintendo thinks pulling out the extra $10 is going to be "justified".
#Nintendo#Switch#Switch 2#No shame to P3 Deluxe but it was just a wiiU port#For the record I am not defending the $80#If Nintendo announced the equivalent of the Booster Course for free over the next 2 years of MK World maybe they'd be onto something#Because MK8 + all DLC is $85 apparently#but I doubt that would go over well for the general audience or especially price conscious consumers
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Hello, all! I've gotten a lot of these questions in the past two months! And I never really thought about it. So, I played Pikmin 3 Deluxe for the first time in February of 2021. I was into Ace Attorney at the time, so I drew a few images of Alph, hyperfixated on him, and then kinda just went back to pure Ace Attorney. Then I play it again in May of 2022 and the hyperfixation manifests itself into my brain.
So I decide to finally kind of step into the fandom by posting on twitter. I didn't have an idea of who I shipped Alph with, but Charlie was def an option since he seemed to have an obviously big crush on him.
But as I look around at art on Twitter, I see this artist whose work I absolutely adored and they shipped Louie and Alph. they were very shy with each other and that sprouted something in my mind. Unfortunately I don't think they draw Pikmin stuff anymore, but the seed was indeed planted.
Then my sister tells me things like "they're colors go so well together - the light blue and the dark blue." And that really made me love them more. In Pikmin 3, Alph and Louie literally are not shown to directly interact with each other.
So my ship comes from the idea, Louie is tied up on the ship, the Koppaites are angry at him for stealing their juice, but Alph has a soft spot and crush growing on him as time progresses. Depicted in this comic. He's the one who checks up on Louie at night, maybe shares his portion of juice with him, and falls in love that way. But he's also defensive about when Louie is. Hence this comic.
So it grew into: they're both gay, not sure how to express themselves in front of each other. Tsundere Louie and shy af Alph.
Gaha!!!! That's honestly it! I hope they have more interactions in the future though I wouldn't count on it... Honestly, this ship is def a crack ship given canon LouAlph content.
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PapyrusPikmin1997 replied on Chapter 5: Now, this is an amazing fic, but like… how the hell is Olimar and the President dying in like sublevels 1-3 of the dream den? They aren't even that hard, and canonically the Pikmin leaders cannot die by pure damage, as in Pikmin 2 if both leaders "die" the ship just beams them up back to the surface and the day ends. (Unless however, you don't do it like this and instead make their life support damaged or something, which would be a very intelligent workaround)
Anonymous asked a question on my main blog: I know this sounds random, but for DLD, what... "game mechanics" have been changed? Because, so far it seems like the ""game"" is much harder and ruthless. I can infer that no longer does losing both captains just result in the hocotate ship beaming them up, ending the day and causing all the pikmin to die, but what else?
I received this comment reply and anonymous ask a few days ago, and considering that they're talking about very similar things, I figured I'd respond to them both at the same time. The long and short of it is that both of these questions are making a series of aggressive assumptions about how DLD "works" and kinda getting sidetracked as a result. There are also a few misconceptions that I feel are important to correct, because even if you are thinking of things in vague game mechanics terms (and you shouldn't be), they make it much easier to swallow what's going on if you properly account for them.
Fundamentally, DLD is a grounded story with a strong emphasis on how things would play out in a more or less real-world scenario while factoring known series lore; this groundedness is meant to make the emotional conflicts at the core of the story stand out all the better. For more details, let's continue below the cut, starting with correcting the assumptions.
Number one: The President hasn't been accompanying Olimar on any of his trips to attempt to find Louie. He may be physically present on PNF-404, yes, but he's more or less functioning as a middle-manager type or rubber-stamp than doing anything actually useful. This is demonstrated during the first scene of XVI and compounded via the President's noted absence during every other scene in the chapter. The long and short of it is that he's not relevant to the story that needed to be told here, as this story is very much about Olimar, the Pikmin, and their relationship; having the President be present as anything more than a nod to canon would have made things unnecessarily complicated here in a section that already had too much to say.
Next up: Olimar being alone in the Dream Den (aside from the ship's pod and the Pikmin he brought with him) also solves that "difficulty" issue more or less. I also never said that they specifically died on the first three sublevels — the Dream Den obviously has fourteen, and the only important part of the whereabouts everyone died is that the maximum sublevel they could have reached would be sublevel 13. It's important for the mainline sequels that neither Olimar nor the Pikmin encounter the Titan Dweevil here, so they must have all died before getting to that point; other than that, the exact details of their demise are up to the reader's interpretation, with the most likely scenario being a gradual decline in Pikmin numbers until Olimar fucks up in an encounter with any enemy, gets squashed by any kind of boulder or caught in a bomb rock explosion, or takes too great a blow to anywhere near his head such that his already-compromised helmet shatters and leaves him to slowly succumb to the caustic oxygen in the air.
Another thing is that considering what's "canonical" from the game's perspective is kinda the wrong question to ask in a lot of ways. HP bars or stamina wheels or any other kinds of video game abstractions like that work perfectly fine when you're playing a video game, but the second you're not they become really weird to work with and place very awkward limits on things. From a narrative perspective, working with this video game logic — where Olimar can get thrown around willy-nilly for 12-16 hours taking hard falls or getting crushed by boulders or god knows what else, end the day, and come back the next morning like nothing happened — makes things very awkward, because there aren't any consequences for fucking up. None of the Pikmin games have any kinds of systems to account for major injuries, such as Olimar's dislocated shoulder or Louie's implied concussion both from chapter 4; much less do they have any kinds of energy or stamina system to account for Olimar gradually starving in Chapter 1. Some games have systems like these — take the Fallout series as only one of many examples — but limiting what you can write to what is Explicitly Possible in a game just isn't conducive to writing a good story.
Having the day end when both leaders go down but letting the player try again tomorrow with no consequences other than losing a day is a good choice for a game, because it gives the player a chance to correct their mistakes; however, it's a bad choice for a story, because it removes all of the stakes. On the contrary, part of the reason that Pikmin doesn't have a lot of these systems for longer-term consequences and instead handwaves why some of these things aren't happening — such as PNF-404's relative lower gravity being the reason why none of the characters take fall damage — are because adding those systems would be bad for gameplay. In a game that is very fundamentally about doing things quickly and efficiently, it wouldn't just be annoying if e.g. Louie broke his leg and couldn't move and throw Pikmin at the same time due to needing crutches for a realistic length of healing time, it would be bad game design because it would be far too punishing to be fun. In writing, where the goal is to be fun by having higher stakes, the opposite would be the case.
That's a bit of an oversimplification — not every story benefits from higher stakes, even if DLD itself does — but one could easily write an academic paper about storytelling in interactive vs non-interactive mediums and how they function differently, and I don't have ten billion years to come up with definitions for all of these things to explain everything wrong with applying the rules of a certain medium universally especially when those rules are intended as abstractions. Either way, it comes down to the same thesis statement: "Applying the rules of a very dynamic and choice-based medium to an entirely predefined and non-interactive medium generally does not work well unless you're having your story be about applying those rules and all of the myriad problems or conveniences that it results in." DLD is not about applying Pikmin's video game logic to a non-interactive medium because it has far more important and deliberate things to be about, like communication, trust, personhood, fate, and perhaps most of all, dogs. Therefore, it does not benefit from having simplified video game logic that allows for infinite tries, and would in fact be made infinitely worse if everything that happened so far had no consequences beyond the end results of the immediate day. Olimar needs to die in the Dream Den because this is essential for his character arc; having him just "go down" and "get rescued" to "try again tomorrow" removes all stakes from this, because if he throws himself at the problem enough he'd eventually luck out and be able to save Louie. (Olimar is already very fond of throwing himself at problems until they get fixed; as we'll see, he doesn't need a "get out of jail free" card or a "get out of a bad situation without dying" card to continue with this behavior.)
So if we're not working off of video game logic, how does DLD generally work? More or less real life logic strongly informed by canon material. To some extent it's a vibes thing — I have definitely picked and chosen what works or doesn't depending on my own personal preference, and I've taken liberties with things that happen in the games as necessary to tell the story that I have in mind. For instance, as I've alluded to before, a lot of the rules about Onions and Pikmin work much more similarly to how they do in Pikmin 4 (with the exception of the three-type limit because it's purely a gameplay limitation put in place to not frustrate noobs). Some things, such as the exact symptoms of Olimar's leaflingism, are a blend of various ideas taking inspiration from canon, from other artists, as well as just what works better thematically. (Olimar growing a tail and "fur" certainly emphasizes the fact that he's a dog, not to mention the fact that it's that perfect combination of "cool" and "utterly horrifying", and the fact that his face remains uncovered by leaves has another thematic reading that we'll get to much, much later.)
But a lot of the minor day-to-day stuff is grounded pretty solidly in reality and an understanding of "if you were an inch tall, how would you approach this situation", which is much more effective for conveying the level of Absolute Deep Shit and general danger PNF-404 presents almost the entire time. You would not survive if a boulder three times as wide as you were tall rolled over you; Olimar and the other captains only do because Pikmin doesn't have permadeath, since that would be a very frustrating gameplay experience. You can cheat your way out of things like that hurting as much as they would for you, a Normal Human, especially when you factor in the fact that they are an inch tall, but past a point there's only so much handwaving you can do before you have to accept that half of the things that you only take "major damage" for in Pikmin would just be nearly instakills in real life. Allowing for more realistic damage creates more story, not less; you can't take damage from cornering too tightly in any of the games, but allowing it to jar Olimar's shoulder like that in Chapter 4 gives reasonable stakes that add to the situation rather than detract, as it makes it feel even more like the water wraith is a real threat.
As for other "game mechanics" that have been changed… thinking of DLD as a "game" in general is the wrong question. My philosophy with DLD so far has been to create a relatively grounded story about people and choices using Pikmin as a scaffold. (Not that DLD or any of its side material could ever be divorced from Pikmin itself — they're far too intertwined — but being faithful to game mechanics is literally the last priority that will only ever be nodded at in things such as the occasional mention of the max 100 squad size.) For everything else, I've tried to flesh the setting out using "speculative realism" where possible: by examining how things actually work in real life and applying those same principles to this setting.
For instance, while a lot of the medical science is simplified for a variety of reasons, such as ease of research and reduced scene complexity, almost all of it so far has actually had at least a little bit of research put into it. (Maybe don't orally ingest a topical eye medication, but tetrahydrozoline hydrochloride is a common active ingredient in eye drops or nasal sprays that reduces mucus membrane irritation; Omnicillin Z3 uses the naming convention of antibiotics in the penicillin family, implying that their medical science has progressed beyond ours; and demethoxycurcumin, one of the "active ingredients" in turmeric, is a yellow-orange compound that has anticancer effects among many other health benefits.) I've put a similar level of pseudorealism into the flight scenes as well; I've mentioned Olimar using various kinds of checklists multiple times (Wikipedia only has a page on preflight checklists, but here's a full list of checklists for a 747), and implied that Olimar has been acting as captain and pilot flying while the Hocotate Ship is effectively first officer and pilot monitoring via both of them effectively employing cockpit resource management principles. I even had Olimar do a walk-around on Day 30, though that was admittedly less of an intentional choice than being simply what the scene required for proper pacing. Even a lot of the specifics around how Olimar has been able to live as a leafling up to (and beyond) this point have had a lot of consideration put into them with vague real-life-adjacent explanations — it is admittedly more vibes-based than some of the rest of what I've listed out here, but most of that is because leaflingism in and of itself is a rather hefty lift away from grounded reality.
The long and short of it is: If something is actually important to be thinking about, the story will tell you that. If it's not, it won't. It should be easy enough to figure out what the actual differences are from there, but a lot of those differences simply aren't relevant on any grand scale.
In fact, the only "game mechanic" I can think of that's even vaguely relevant (and isn't essentially rolled into "baseline lore", such as the mechanics of Pikmin and Onions that I mentioned earlier) is Pikmin 1's ending requirements. DLD has simplified these requirements, in that there's no longer a strict two-tiered system with some specific parts being required while others are optional, but the general outline for part count has already been referenced in Chapter 1's title. In these relaxed requirements, you get the bad ending with 24 parts or fewer; the neutral ending with 25-29 parts; and the true ending with 30 parts. (I.E., the only change is that it's any 25 parts being required to get the neutral ending or greater rather than 25 specific parts.) Chapter 1 splits the difference as the exact dividing line between two wildly divergent outcomes of the bad or neutral endings, and thus the chapter title references 24.5, or the numeric dividing line between those endings.
Other than that, the exact game mechanics of all games in the series are for the most part entirely irrelevant. DLD is a story about people, and critically, one of the most important things that a person can do is die. Robbing Olimar and the Pikmin of their ability to end is a choice that must be made very deliberately, with great intent on the part of the story being told, and shouldn't be done merely out of faithfulness to the source material. …And that's about all I can say to avoid unnecessary spoilers.
#dogs leading dogs#dld posting#ask#i think that mostly sums it up. idk this perspective just seems like a very odd way to approach reading a fic? at least to me#but maybe there are other writers out there who are actively faithful to the weird game mechanics above all else?#or just haven't written anything that goes counter to some of these game mechanics?#idk. just a very interesting perspective here#but yea. i won't say DLD is trying for 100% realism (i can't get a degree in everything ive thought about re: this fic series so far)#but Grounded is a good way to put it. olimar and the pikmin can face realistic consequences for their mistakes.#this is essential for having those mistakes mean anything. and in a story ABOUT making mistakes and fixing them. it's so important.
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I beat Pikmin 4 with no upgrades
Over the past couple weeks or so I've been playing Pikmin 4 again. First a normal playthrough, which reminded me of how much Oatchi invalidates what the game throws at you.
So I figured, what if I didn't upgrade Oatchi at all? Then I took it a step further and decided not to upgrade my explorer, whomst I named Terri, either. [I DID have to buy the scorch guards to enter Frozen Inferno but I unequipped it right after I entered] I hardly bought any items, just a few bombs for some concrete walls, and, admittedly i had bombs to kill the Empress Bulblax in the Cavern for a King. I can't kill her properly even WITH an fully powered dog, I'll admit.
The results were disappointing. I knew the early game wouldn't be much different, but later wasn't much harder either. The only treasure past a pup tunnel is early on and only has a weight of 3, Oatchi's default strength. I was legitimately looking forward to, say, spending twenty minutes rushing into a 4 weight treasure over and over again to push it off a ledge, but alas no such obstacle occured.
The only parts to give me trouble were later dandori chllanges, the later night missions, and the Ancient Sirehound.
The dandori challenges were interesting, the early ones were easy sure, I platinumed the first one at least. Some, like Hefty Haulway proved quite difficult; not being able to use Oatchi to pick up some slack on that crimson banquet makes it hard to even get a bronze. Cliff-Hanger's Hold requires a lot of Oatchi's abilities to smoothly take on the upper level. Even a midly upgraded Oatchi comes in handy in Oasis of Order to immediately move the love nugget behind the start to get some extra whites, or to get the poison bulborb and/or the foolish fruit across that small creek, freeing up the wingeds to get the materials ASAP.
Speaking of whites, I actually used White Pikmin in more than one spot. I typically buy the poison armor for Oatchi ASAP, making whites very redundant, and with the onion confined to a special challenge unlocked after beating another special challenge, I often don't want to risk my white min. Since I never got the poison armor, I had no choice but to use the whities liberally; I was still very careful with them. Often restarting a whole floor upon losing just one.
The Night Missions weren't too kind. The early ones were fine and really no different, but the two in the Primordial Thicket were tough. Particularly the very final one, Autumnal Gully. Oatchi cannot glowmob, and with no upgrades, his rush doesn't stun. And you can't leave Oatchi alone for long, he will still autoattack, and with no armor or HP upgrades he dies near instantly upon a lumiknoll attack. Plus, one of the progg eggs seems to be inaccessible so I'd have to take on that progg no matter what. I resolved to collecting as many pellets as I could, getting to about 70 glow pikmin, leaving Oatchi on the blue lumiknoll and Terri on the orange. Terri being on the orange was imperitive to stun the baldy long-legs that approaches it. With plenty of spicy-spray it turned out not so bad, but it took way more concious planning than any night mission did with upgrades.
Then came the Ancient Sirehound. As I always do, I abused glow pikmin for this fight; glowies for the hazards, purps for the tail. The ice phase always give me trouble, trying to run to his tail with those snowballs rolling is a pain. But the breath wasn't a problem, until now. Get rolled into the breath and your pikmin are frozen, Oatchi is frozen, you're…not frozen. It does enough damage to kill an unupgraded explorer in one hit. Oatchi just barely survives.
The electric phase is a lot tougher, you can't just mosey on through the beams, you gotta dodge and jump them while making sure your glow pikmin go where you want, which with targeting isn't usually a problem until it randomly auto-targets the Sirehound, but many people have [rightfully] griped about the auto-target in this game so I'll spare you.
Fire phase was pretty normal. Even with the scorch guard i'd instinctively jump over the waves of fire…only this time it matters if I miss. But that didn't happen much.
Progg phase is always frustrating. The lack of HP and armor upgrades doesn't make a difference, sure you die in fewer hits but touching that stuff always kills so many pikmin its basically always a reset, anyway.
I didn't platinum the dandori challenges. I may attempt to but it may not be possible for some. Oatchi throating the banquet in Hefty Haulway seemed imperative for that one when I platinumed it, for instance. I didn't do the Sage Leaf because it's impossible to avoid Moss upgrades in the shipwreck tale, though I may do it for the sake of it. Who knows, maybe I'll find a way to do the shipwreck tale without even discovering Moss.
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not sure if this has been asked already, but what started your interest in Splatoon? i'm always curious to know people's reasonings for how they got into something.
Oh man...... It goes ALLLLL the way back to the very first announcement trailer for me.
You gotta understand, I've been a Nintendo fan since i was a wee lad when i got a Wii and DS for Christmas, i played through most of the heavy hitters and i had so much fun with that small white box and clamshell handheld.
During the mid 2010s i was all about keeping up with the latest gaming news and watching youtubers like Etika (rest in peace....) and so, when i watched the 2014 e3, and i see this orange goop and a squid swimming around, i go "oh is this Mario Sunshine 2?!?" And then this squid becomes a human like creature and it starts firing a gun, i go "what the heck is this?"
And then i saw people say how it's a brand new Nintendo IP and the last one they did was Pikmin, i go "OH! NOW YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION!"
However i didn't have a Wii U when it was the latest console so i couldn't play the game.... But i did watch youtube videos about it and i talked to my friend about it at school who was really into Nintendo like me. I missed out on all of Splatfests and i really didn't care about the Squid Sisters either.
But.... come 2017 and my dad comes home on Christmas with a Nintendo Switch... And then on my birthday a while later, i finally got Splatoon 2 and.... i couldn't stop playing it. It was so DAMN FUN! I played through the hero mode on a trip and that was a blast too! Playing Octo Expansion on release night and beating it is something i will never forget.
And then i started to look more at the characters, and sure my teenage brain saw them in a..... ahem.... different light.... compared to how i see them now but. I really did fall in love with these characters and i adored the music. I was there for the Final Fest and i chose Team Chaos because fucking Etika was gonna pick it lmao..... If only he was still around to see what the series would become.....
And then Splatoon 3 was announced and i kept thinking "man why are they making a Splatoon 3? It's way too soon." But then those thoughts were quickly destroyed by playing the world premiere and ROTM, and i thought "Yeah.... this is peak."
However.... my Splatoon brainrot got REALL intense and what it is today when in September of last year, i went in Alterna to activate the Sheldon drone and.... i just looked at Callie. Something in that moment sparked a fire in my brain and now.... i fucking ramble about her in nearly every post i make and defending her LOL! I became so fixated on her and the rest of the characters, it became so bad that sometimes i would get a tightness in my chest if people mentioned her in Splatoon 2. IT GOT THAT BAD! I spent so much money on plushies and amiibo too...... I nearly got teary eyed when i held my Callie plushie once it finally arrived.....
I'm sorry if this was a lot to read but, i just really adore this series and my obsession with it is multi-parted. I FUCKING LOVE SPLATOON!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE THE SQUID SISTERS!!!! OFF THE HOOK! DEEP CUT!!!!!! ALL OF THOSE BASTARDS!!!!!!! THEY'VE RUINED MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY! Callie is a gremlin living in my brain and she refuses to leave! SHE WON'T GET OUT!!!!!!!
#splatoon#callie cuttlefish#callie splatoon#inkling#ask me stuff#ask blog#splatoon 2#splatoon 3#ask me anything#etika#nintendo#nintendo switch#nintendo wii#ramblings#long post#nintendo ds
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intro post !!! ❀༉‧₊˚.
welcome to my blog ! here's my introduction {¬ºཀ°}¬
.ᐟ name * kris
.ᐟ age * minor ! (14-16)
.ᐟ prns * he/him
.ᐟ socials * (click them!) kris_exists [ig & pinterest] .piercethekris [discord] kris ?! [spotify]
.ᐟ interests / hobbies: (bold is spintrest)
/ music ! [ mcr/fob/p!atd/ptv/sws/wallows/fear factory/chappell roan/dgd/noah kahan/smashing pumpkins + more! ask me! im mostly pretty pop punk/alt rock but i listen to a lot that you wouldnt expect! ]
/ film ! [ total drama/spop/toh/adventure time + way more ]
/ games ! [ buddy sim 1984/animal crossing/pikmin/sims ]
/ musical theatre ! [ colton ryan | wesley taylor | heath saunders (alice by heart/heathers/be more chill/dear evan hansen/cabaret/some like it hot/nyny) ]
/ misc ! uhh i like skateboarding, playing guitar, drawing, a lot of stuff ! im a sort of busy person and im like never online. i have a boyfriend @livingghostz who is the most beautiful amazing man i could ever lay my eyes upon i love him so much!!! also @olliereguluskin @elliebelliebuttonz irl oomfs u are my best friends and i love you dearly!! im like never online anymore but i come back sometimes !
/ important ! i have autism (diagnosed) and i am really bad at deciphering tone, please use tone tags if i may be confused! also i tend to infodump and get really annoying so you can tell me to shut up i will not be mad! also im trans and pan so dont be like weird or homophobic or anything thank you
.ᐟ dni if:
-proshippers
-TRASH (transphobic, racist, ableist, sexist, homophobic)
-map/pedo
-zoophile
-use slurs you cant reclaim
-gatekeeper
-18+
-13-
i think thats everything for now,,, thanx for reading :3 stay safe i love you guys!! dm if you want but i may not answer
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