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gascon-en-exil · 4 months ago

Note

Now that you've mentioned it, I'm curious how'd you'd rank the Zelda games minigames from best to worst

That would be entirely too many minigames to do individually, especially from memory since I haven't played most of these games in years. I can go by individual title though, ignoring the ones that don't have minigames in the usual sense (the NES games, both Four Swords games, Tri Force Heroes) and also Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom because I never actually played the latter and because my frustrations with both are on a much deeper conceptual level. I do recall BotW having some obnoxious minigames though, involving horses I believe. I'm not counting as well any minigames that offer only minor rewards that don't contribute to 100% completion, because those can be safely ignored.

Rating is out of 10 based on how obnoxious they are, with 1 being perfectly manageable and 10 being so annoying that they actively discourage me from replaying those games.

A Link to the Past - 2/10

The only really notable ones are the treasure chest game and the digging game, both of which are pure RNG and thus can be save-scummed. They're also in the Dark World so you shouldn't be strapped for money when you play them which is nice.

Link's Awakening - 1/10 for the original/DX, 4/10 for the Switch

On the Game Boy (Color) the fishing, crane, and river rapids games are all simple one-and-done affairs if you know what you're doing. The Switch remake however adds a bunch of new mechanics and rewards to all of them which makes them more annoying and time-consuming. There are rare fish to save-scum for, a realistic physics engine to make the crane more finicky, and a rapids race that requires precise maneuvering to get its best stuff. I'm not counting the Chamber Dungeons as a minigame because that's basically a separate mode unto itself...and also because they're usually pretty fun.

Ocarina of Time - 8/10

Not off to a great start for 3D Zelda. The gravedigging "tour" is pure luck, Bombchu bowling is also RNG-reliant, the treasure chest game is only not a nightmare because you can cheese it later on with the Lens of Truth, and the shooting challenges are serviceable at best. It's the fishing hole that truly lands OoT this score though, because it's the perfect storm of awful: partially luck-based, finicky mechanics, and actually physically painful at times on account of how hard and for how long you have to hold the analog stick to reel the big fish in. Oh, and you have to beat it twice, and the second time is harder!

Majora's Mask - 3/10

Surprisingly manageable and even fun in places, like the beaver races and the shooting galleries even if they require perfect scores. The horse and Goron races have issues with rubber band AI, the hitboxes in some of Honey and Darling's games can be stingy, the treasure chest game is (again) mostly RNG...but MM somehow makes all of these not so bad in their own ways, perhaps to compensate for the constant stress of the ticking clock. If I had to pick a worst one it might be the jumping minigame in Great Bay, because it takes a while to reach and the camera is liable to screw you over. The dog race is mostly luck-based, but at least it takes very little time and can be somewhat cheesed with the Mask of Truth. I am absolutely not counting the fishing hole added in the 3DS remake, because it's not required for 100% and because screw fishing in particular.

Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons - 6/10

Sort of unfair lumping them together since Ages has all the really bad ones, but these two have always been a package deal. The baseball game is hard to get down precisely and also has a fair amount of RNG, the seed shooter game also requires some exact shots, and while both have dancing minigames Ages is the only one that takes into account timing. Making all this worse are the Oracle games' randomized ring system...plus a whole lot of randomized other things (Maple, Gasha trees) that aren't exactly minigames but still make these titles really annoying to revisit. Huh...I just noticed that "Gasha" sounds like "gacha"; were gacha games even a thing in 2001, or were Nintendo and Capcom just extremely ahead of the curve?

The Wind Waker - 5/10

Has some real nuisances, like the battleship game (RNG), the Flight Control Platform (precision gliding), and sword training (endurance). Much like my feelings on BotW however, it's not really the minigames that make me dread replaying WW so much as its various other headaches - many of which were addressed in the HD remake, granted, but they're still there.

The Minish Cap - 2/10

Another one where it's not really about the minigames. The only mandatory one I can even recall was catching cuccos, and a lot of that comes down to item progression later in the game. Kinstones are the real pain in MC, but even they're not so tough to find that you have to rely on minigames to get them.

Twilight Princess - 2/10

Same rating as MC, but for very different reasons. For me it's quite similar to MM in that there are a bunch of minigames but most of them are either inoffensive or actively enjoyable, and without the in-game time limit they're less stressful too. Snow sledding, popping balloons, the Clawshot cage games...all pretty fun. The only ones that stick out in my mind as not great are either quickly handled (goat wrangling, sumo wrestling) or are just boring (bombing pots on the river). Note however that this ranking would have been higher if I'd gone solely off my initial impressions from the Wii version. Having played the Gamecube and later HD versions afterward, I can safely say that, as always, motion controls make everything worse.

Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks - 9/10

The touch screen controls are bad enough, but I can distinctly recall both of these games also having some downright awful minigames. Hourglass has fishing and a merciless shooting gallery, Tracks has the whip race and the pirate shooting game, and both have stuff like another WW-style training endurance test and randomized part prizes making everything worse. I have very few good memories of either of these games, honestly; all their good bits get drowned out by the clunky controls and the miserable optional content.

Skyward Sword - 7/10

Again, motion controls suck - but at least the HD remaster fixed most of that, and in both versions a good number of the minigames are optional even by my standards. There are still some extremely bothersome ones here though. Fun Fun Island is very much not, the minecart race isn't the most responsive and the pumpkin shooting game can be very grating until you nail the exact way to (sort of) cheese it. I actually switched this ranking with OoT's as I was writing this, because I remembered how much losing the motion controls redeems the experience of this game. Still by no means a favorite, but at least I want to come back to it sometimes now.

A Link Between Worlds - 5/10 normally, 10/10 if you count the giant cucco

Fittingly, it's LttP but more of it - including more annoyances. There's still the RNG-dependent ones, but there's also now a racing game that requires some fairly precise movements as well as a finicky baseball game. The rupee-gathering games are now more about having a stopwatch on hand, but phones can cover that. The cucco-dodging game is a real pain and bumped the rating up a full point, but note that I am never in my life attempting to survive for 1000 seconds (that's over sixteen and a half minutes!) to get the giant cucco in the end credits. Even completionists have to know where to draw the line.

#The Legend of Zelda

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autolenaphilia · 1 year ago

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Duke Nukem 3D

Duke Nukem 3D, developed by 3D Realms is a showcase for Ken Silverman’s Build engine. It was not the only game to use the Build engine, nor even the first but it was the most popular and successful game to use it. It wasn’t even the first Duke Nukem game, but it’s success overshadowed the two platform games that preceded it.

At the core of Duke Nukem 3D is solid Doom-like “boomer shooter” action. It’s a game about shooting things, more than plot. The plot is, aliens have invaded and kidnapped Earth’s women, and now action hero Duke Nukem must stop them, it doesn’t go any deeper.

And the levels don’t deviate that far from the Doom formula either. Functionally it’s about exploring the often complex and maze-like levels, defeating the enemies, and finding key cards to unlock doors to progress and find the exit to the next level.Duke Nukem 3d also has the episodic structure of the original Doom, so the game is divided into sets of levels. The game originally shipped with three episodes in January 1996, but 3D Realms developed a fourth episode released first as an expansion pack and later bundled with the main game in december as Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition released in December 1996. That’s the version I bought and played for this review, using eduke32.

Duke Nukem 3D massively expanded on the Doom formula in ways that were very innovative for the time, and allowed it to compete successfully with ID Software’s own Quake, released that year, despite that game featuring actual 3D.

The Build engine wasn’t real 3D, in that it couldn’t do proper ��room-over-room”, which is the hallmark of true 3D. Instead it was 2.5D, like the Doom engine that inspired it. In such an enginethe level designer can’t create a house with two floors, one floor over the other, or a platform that the player character can both walk on and walk under. Things can have different elevations, but the engine can’t actually handle all three dimensions fully.

Except the Build engine allowed the devs to fake room-over-room with various means. The basis o this trick is that two different sectors or rooms could overlap on the map, as long as they weren’t seen at the same time. Using portals to other sectors and seamless teleports of the player, including on stairs, it could fake 3D space. And this is used to great effect in Duke Nukem 3D. The level cans often feel like true 3D, and knowing that it really isn’t only makes the design more impressive.

The Build engine also allowed for basically all of its levels to be modified on-the-fly, which is also exploited very well in Duke Nukem 3D. Years before Red Faction, you could destroy parts of the environment to proceed, like blow a hole in the wall to create a new path (often marked by Zelda-esque cracks in the wall), or blow up entire buildings to proceed, both to find secrets and as part of required progression through the levels.

In addition, Duke Nukem 3D had a more realistic level design that earlier FPS games. Both Doom games were fairly abstract mazes, even when Doom II tried to depict cities on Earth it was more a suggestion than anything meaningfully detailed. Even Quake, which came out after Duke Nukem 3D and was actually 3D used a Doomesque abstract level design. But Duke Nukem 3D succeded at depicting realistic locations more so than anything that came before it. You get a cinema, a bookstore, a bank, a hotel and a subway station. Like they are not entirely realistic, but there are clear representations of real-life things and realistic enough to work. It does indulge in Doom-like space techbases in episode 2, but otherwise the settings are more realistic

Duke could do a lot more than most FPS protags bar maybe the System Shock hacker (who also had a true 3D engine to work with). You can put on scuba gear and go swimming (going from the surface to underwater is maybe one of the more obvious teleports, but still pretty seamless.). You can find a jetpack and fly around the level and find secrets. You find a shrinker weapon that can shrink even the toughest non-boss enemy to a harmless tiny creature that Duke just steps on with his boots. And you can be shrunk yourself and go through tiny crawlspaces. Also Duke could talk, and specific situations triggered situation-appropriate oneliners, impressive for 1996.

There are some problems. Gameplay-wise, the levels can be very maze-like, and it can be confusing and frustrating to find your way. There are also some really dumb switch puzzles which give you 3-4 on/off switches and it’s just inputting combinations, bruteforcing the puzzle, until you find the right one, a waste of time. But overall the level design holds up, how the levels twist in on themselves is sometimes really fun and engaging to find out.

Of course, maze-like level design and dumb puzzles isn’t the whole extent of Duke Nukem 3D’s problems. Let’s talk about the babes for a minute, the portrayal of women in this game.

Of course the traditional defense of Duke Nukem is that it’s all a joke. And yeah, Duke himself definitely is meant as a joke, a parody of 80s bodybuilder action heroes, complete with one-liners stolen from other movies. He’s an obvious example of 90s-era irony. And some of the humor works. My favorite joke in the game is that Duke leaves each level by finding and hitting the level’s self-destruct button. It’s bombastic on a literal level, but a subtle enough comment on the violent destruction of action movie heroism that it’s still funny. Way less subtle, but still fun is the fact that one of the most common enemies are pig cops, once human cops who have been turned into literal anthropomorphic pigs.

Still the joke doesn’t go far enough to truly subvert the macho misogyny of Duke. If Duke views women as sex objects, the game doesn’t contradict him on that point. Women in this game exist literally to be sexy décor scattered around the levels, and not much else. The sexy scantily clad women in this game are silly, but they are probably meant to also be unironically titillating.

Still, again it’s not too bad. Duke is played with enough self-aware humor to not be totally obnoxious, helped by Jon St. John’s charismatic and rightfully iconic voice acting. And the sexy ladies are so silly that it takes the edge out of the offensiveness. Strippers continuing their dancing oblivious while an alien invasion is literally going on around them are just too silly. The game overall is so light on plot that both the babes and Duke as a character only appear occasionally. It’s a game focused on the gameplay, and the gameplay is good.

Duke Nukem 3D is ultimately just fun to play. There is some great action here, with a nice weapon and enemy variety to keep you going. And it’s impressive how the game pushes against the technical limitations of its engine.

The best way to play Duke Nukem 3D is buying the Atomic Edition on the obscure but legit digital games store Zoom-Platform, which sells the game without drm and also includes pretty much everything officially released for Duke Nukem3D. This includes all four episodes made by 3D Realms and the official expansions made by other developers. And while you can play the original game by emulating MS-DOS via Dosbox, the best way is probably the eduke32 sourceport which allows you to play the game natively on modern systems.

#my writings #game review #duke nukem 3d

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aeondeug · 2 years ago

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So now that it's been a bit and I've played a lot more of the game it is time for my thoughts on Tears of the Kingdom. I'm not the biggest fan of Breath of the Wild though I've come to appreciate it more over time. It's still a game I've never beat because I generally get bored part way through, though. Similar to other openworld games I've liked. I enjoy playing it but not enough to beat the game and certainly not enough to get all 120 shrines done. This is for a lot of reasons and thankfully TotK has addressed basically all of them.

I suppose the one that most people can agree on is the durability issue. I hated BotW's durability system as it made me afraid to use any of my cooler weapons. TotK's fuse mechanic has mostly solved this issue since I no longer go "But what if I need this?" since I can realistically just make another one and even if I don't have the materials, I likely have access to a zonai device or a consumable that'll have a similar effect if thrown/shot. I think this is not just the fuse power that is achieving this effect. I think it's the mixture of fuse, the throwables, the greater availability of arrows, the zonai devices and things like the grave weapon spawns. There's just such a great variety of ways I can hurt things that I'm no longer afraid of actually using my shit because I feel like I always have access to other things. The combination has beat my anxiety around item use.

The other big area that I wanted improvement on was dungeons and the dungeon quests. This has generally been achieved. The dungeons are better designed than BotW's I feel but most importantly they are different in their theming and have unique bosses per temple. Colgera and Armored Gohma are two very different bosses, not just in looks but in function. Also they feel a lot more traditionally Zelda boss than the Blights did. Because they're little puzzle bosses that you solve that aren't very hard once you do figure out that solution. And the solutions aren't that hard to figure out. I also think they're better spectacles than the Blights? Which is the other thing with Zelda bosses in the 3D games. They're big spectacle set pieces.

Lead ups to the dungeons have felt more varied than BotW's and these have generally been very fun to do. I still haven't done the Zora one but I have done the other three and liked them each quite a bit. My favorite being the Rito one because that's just a very fun little thing to do. I do think the story is very truncated, though. More akin to the amount of story you'd get out of a Ocarina of Time dungeon lead up than a Twilight Princess one. Which is fine. I do ultimately prefer the more story heavy stuff but this is a decent amount of it.

I think my favorite discovery with the dungeons though is that dungeon items and companions are back in a one-two combo. They function differently than they did in the older games and the things are just conveniences when taken out of their respective dungeons but I really, really love that two of my favorite Zelda elements are back. I do think that the method of power activation is awkward, though. I'd far prefer it be a wheel or something. Or like in the next game they remove the fucking horse whistle button and make that the menu for dungeon powers. As is, having to chase Riju down during combat to activate her power kind of sucks ass. I do generally like the powers and the companions though. I especially like how they tie into the final boss (I've only seen phase 1 of this due to dying and being like "Well we're not doing that now").

Variety was another big issue I had and that's thankfully been solved. As in addition to the shrines there's caves. There's also a lot more shrines that have their puzzles solved outside them. Which helps keep the dreaded "I am tired of looking at these fucking walls" feelings at bay. The addition of two different kinds of overworld traversal on top of that is helping too. The sky islands are basically what I wanted Wind Waker's islands to be and they're extremely nice uses of the new traversal tools you have in TotK. And the Depths, while a simple mirroring of the top, do have the light mechanic and the different shaped terrain and gloom to deal with. I do think that more could be done with the Depths, though. It needed more quests associated with it I feel. Maybe a town down there to serve as a hub.

The story is where I am more conflicted. I do prefer this structure to BotW's. There are a lot more discrete steps to the main story. But the cutscenes are still limited basically to just the memories. I would prefer the cutscenes occur during the actual game more, as opposed to some other shit I don't interact with at all. In terms of the actual story itself...I have never been under any impression that Ganondorf or Zelda would be better handled in this game than in past ones. I am extremely fucking disappointed they aren't but I was also expecting this. Ganondorf's just an evil power hungry asshole with little else going on and Zelda is continuing to have to sacrifice herself so Hylia's favorite himbo can do cool shit.

The way Zelda is handled in particular bothers me. I like her story overall but when viewed in context with the entire rest of the franchise and with BotW versus Age of Calamity it's just kind of infuriating. So congratulations WW and TP Zeldas. You are no longer the Zeldas done most dirty. That prize now is awarded to BotW Zelda. Handily. In a series where I have to say that OoT Zelda was one of the more impressively handled ones. When all she did was dress up as a ninja, say cryptic shit and give you songs. I am really kind of Unhappy with this doubling down. Especially when she is walking around with you in the opening bit. Also fucking christ they took her personality away again when she put on the fucking dress. This is a series where any time anyone but Nintendo gets their hands on the property they give her more to do because turns out people really love Zelda. But Nintendo cannot give up on their rigid bullshit.

Overall I do like the story but I am growing increasingly sick of how Zelda is consistently treated.

Let's get back to more positive things...The shrine design is ultimately much better I think. There aren't any that overstay their welcome and, again, many of them have their puzzles done in the overworld. Of the kinds of puzzles you see inside them, I think these are done a lot better. The Proving Grounds in particular fuck. They took the best elements of Eventide Island and replaced the fucking Tests of Strength with something that is actually fun and interesting. The only problem I have with Proving Grounds is that there aren't enough of them. I'm also super happy to see the awful motion control shrines are gone, as are the golf shrines. There are still some physics shrines like the god awful baseball one but these are fewer and far between. And even with the ones that show up their concepts are unique as opposed to "Here's another golf course, asshole". I also think that the way the shrines actually teach you things that are useful outside of them is nice. Both the building shrines and Proving Grounds teach you useful concepts you can make use of in the rest of the game.

Progression through the game I am also finding a lot better for a player like me. I did not work as well with the breadcrumbing method as many others did. So having a lot more things be tied to main story progression and having a lot more things be based around talking to the NPCs is doing a lot for me. This along with the greater amount of shit in the overworld to explore has made it so I'm never struggling to find interesting things to do. This does frustrate other players though and I am wondering if some better method of this can be done in the next game. One that satisfies players like me who need the greater amount of guidance and those who feel very stifled by it.

TotK is thus far one of the most engaging Zelda experiences I've had. And as a diehard for the older Zelda games this has done a lot to help ease me into this new direction for the series. I think if the team can take the things they did well here and keep expanding on this then Zelda is in a very good spot for both varieties of Zelda fan. They do still have a lot of work that needs to be done though. The story's still not quite there yet and the dungeon items can be improved. But this is a very good step forward. Still no double clawshots though so 0/10.

#zelda #totk spoilers #spoilers #tears of the kingdom

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scrunkore · 2 years ago

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Scunkore Media "Thread" 2023: Part 4

welcome back to the scrunko core

38) Miitopia (Switch, 2021)

Mii games are a dying breed, and honestly I'm not sure why they put this game on Switch when they did, but that's whatever really. It definitely has its fair share of improvements from the 3DS original, with a bit more content and an absolutely fantastic custom makeup tool that lets you make every Mii that much more unique, being put to great use by a whole bunch of creators. The game itself, though... it's still not anything special aside from that, and also its cute story bits and Mii interactions, but those get old well before you actually finish the game. And the game takes a while to get through, too, feeling very repetitive and grindy even while you constantly make progress. Basically, the game does some fun things, but it's not nearly enough to make the whole experience remain interesting throughout. It's just painfully average as an actual game, and I'd really rather have a new Tomodachi Life game, but that seems unlikely at this point. [2.5★]

39) The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Movie, 2023)

I'll never get over the reaction to the casting announcement for this movie, that was the funniest shit to come from that one Nintendo Direct presentation and unfortunately it might be more memorable than the actual movie itself. Chris Pratt Mario is the least of its issues (actually the voice acting is fine) - the plot and indeed most of the characters are pretty half-baked and it feels like they rushed the story through basic plot points between various action pieces, but at the very least that does mean it's never boring. Trouble is, that does mean I can't say the movie is good, despite the really nice-looking visuals and great soundtrack (when it's not using corporate-mandated licensed songs), both clearly made with a lot of love for the series. Sure, it was an entertaining movie, with some fun elements like Jack Black Bowser banging out the tunes, but realistically I think it's pretty average when I'm not giggling at the references - the critics were in fact correct, who knew. Still, does give me some hope for future Nintendo movies, because it was well-made. [3★]

40) The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch, 2023)

Breath of the Wild, one of the biggest and most popular games Nintendo has ever put out, finally got its sequel, and it somehow makes that game look like a demo. Everything new that they added results in Tears of the Kingdom blowing Breath of the Wild out of the water - the world map is about three times the size due to the added cave systems and whole new areas above and below Hyrule, the abilities Link gets to use are so much more complex and fun to use (especially the building mechanics), the enemies/bosses and side quests are more interesting, the list really does go on. It even has an excellent story that, while still unfortunately leaning back into "rescue the princess", delivers a really enjoyable narrative only marred by the fact that you can kind of ruin it by viewing it outside of the intended order, but I guess for an open-world game that's fine. I held off on writing this bit because I didn't really know what to say other than "game good", and now I don't want it to go on too long because I'll start rambling. The game is just really fucking good, man. Sometimes things in it are annoying, but I say that about every game, including Breath of the Wild - it may not be a particularly interesting opinion, but I think this game has just about perfected what it wants to be, and I have no idea what the Zelda team is going to do next. [5★]

41) Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast/PC, 1999/2011)

Next time someone tries to tell me that Sonic "had a rough transition to 3D" and it's clear they're talking about this game specifically, I think I might push them out of the nearest window, because that lie has gone on for far too long, though admittedly the ports of this thing have a couple unique issues and that's kinda why I modded the Steam port to be more in line with the Dreamcast version. But regardless, yes, this game is really good fun. It's a pretty unique 3D platformer with an excellent hub world and several different gameplay styles that each offer something fresh - from speeding through levels to fishing for a kind of annoying frog, I do rather like them all to varying degrees. The general vibes of the game as a whole (mainly down to the locales but also things like the incredible music) are pretty cool too, and the solidly enjoyable story - especially the parts with Gamma - is told in cutscenes that may look a bit awkward now but still have a lot of charm to them. Everything culminates in the classic final fight against Chaos, and that will always be really cool despite the actual gameplay of that fight being a bit of a pain. If you haven't played a "good" 3D Sonic game, open your heart up to this one - but do grab the mod loader if you're playing the Steam release. [4★]

42) Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast/PC, 2001/2012)

The sequel to Sonic Adventure is kind of a few steps forward and a few steps back, and production-wise we know it was a bit rushed, which does explain some issues, but thankfully the subsequent ports ended up having less issues than the prior game's. Adventure 2 takes a hit in not having a cool hub world to explore and instead opting for typical menus separating the two routes that include most of the different level types introduced in the first game, and one of those level types (the emerald hunts) is designed so much worse this time around for god knows what reason. In fact, the game can be a bit more annoying to play in a lot of areas, although plenty of the time it's just because it's deliberately more challenging and not actual bad design. But it makes up for anything that might be worse than in the first game by having even cooler presentation, with a stronger storyline featuring everyone's favourite grumpy hedgehog Shadow and better cutscenes, more banger music, and going right up into space for the supersonic finale. So generally it's both better and worse than the first game, but hey, you live and learn. [4★]

43) Sonic Triple Trouble 16-bit (PC, 2022)

With the upcoming Sonic Superstars set to feature Fang for the first time since the original Triple Trouple, now's as good a time as any to check out the stellar fan remake that turns it into an awesome 16-bit style game mechanically rather similar to Sonic 3, like the more traditional Sonic 4 that we never got. It's a lovingly crafted game that perfectly re-imagines the zones from the original with much cleaner graphics and refreshed music accurate to the hardware it's trying to replicate, and more spectacular setpieces that give it a whole new burst of character, plus it's full of its own fun original gimmicks and surprises too. A full run of the game getting all Chaos Emeralds and defeating the incredibly cool true final boss won't take you very long, but if you're a fan of the classic games you're bound to enjoy the ride and want to replay it with the unlockable characters too. Definitely a really cool fangame that's worth checking out. [4.5★]

44) Pokémon Infinite Fusion V5.X (PC, 2022)

It's the Pokémon fangame that got all the content creators posting YouTube shorts of the funny things they made in it, and of course, it's easy to see why a game with a fusion gimmick would have so much mass appeal - it's a massive undertaking from the people working on the thousands of different sprites required, and the idea of fusing Pokémon together has been popular for over a decade at this point. And that's a gimmick that the game handles really well, every battle presents you with some new cute combination or hybrid abomination and you never know what's coming up next, plus you'll always be mixing and matching with your own stuff to see what happens and if you can make something completely overpowered (I recommend Shedinja + Absol for maximum cheese). Though, I'm not that big on the core adventure itself, because it's just Kanto again with some Johto and the Sevii Islands tacked onto it, along with more Pokémon of course, and the new story elements are just kind of whatever unfortunately. It's also an RPG Maker game, so there's some jank to be seen, but I'm used to that considering the other things I've played. So all in all, it's hard carried by the fusion mechanic, but at least it manages to nail that, and it's still being updated constantly with new sprites to check out. [3.5★]

45) Puzzle Bobble Everybubble! (Switch, 2023)

I don't feel much for this game, so I'll keep it short. I've only really dabbled in Puzzle Bobble once or twice, and so I figured I'd give this one a whirl, but it wasn't that good all things considered. Sure, it gets the core gameplay right, as it should, and the online multiplayer works pretty well, but what I found pretty annoying was the story mode - a lot of the levels are just stupid and a pain in the ass, at least for me, so maybe I'm not a hardcore Bobble-head after all. The characters are rather annoying too, but maybe that's just in this entry, who knows? If there are better iterations of this series then I'd be down to play those as well, I just didn't like this one that much outside of dicking around with non-story mode content, which was decent enough. [2.5★]

46) Nimona (Movie, 2023)

The once-cancelled Blue Sky adaptation of a comic from ND Stevenson, showrunner of that very queer She-Ra series, actually got rescued by Annapurna and actually came out this year, and boy am I glad it did, not least because of how poorly animation tends to get treated by so many of the large corporations. The movie is an incredibly fun and deeply heartfelt story of people society was all too keen to paint as monsters because of an authoritarian regime, and it's definitely pretty clear about its messages in a way that pretty much anyone can understand. It's also quite well-animated and put together really nicely, and although I have heard that it goes for a more family-friendly angle than the original comic did, it still manages to get everything across effectively and hit the right emotional beats, and it uses its runtime as well as one could expect from it. Also, I gotta say, this one's also very queer - the two most important male characters in the story are gay and get to kiss on-screen which is awesome, and I definitely get gender vibes from the titular Nimona, the awesome transforming girl who gets the most action in the movie. Maybe it's a good thing someone other than Disney released it, because I'm not sure how keen they are about gay people and anti-establishment messaging (this isn't even really a joke unfortunately). But anyway, this movie was awesome, and I hope we do see more projects like it. [4.5★]

47) Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (Switch, 2023)

Ghost Trick has always been one of those really cool and unique DS puzzle games that people have been demanding everyone play for years, and in this case it's easy to see why that's all they were saying about it (in a good way). The story of this game is frankly too good to spoil, with some pretty great twists and turns that it takes, and I highly doubt anyone will be able to predict quite how it ends because that truly blindsided me and I loved it. The excellent cast of characters kind of helped with that too, especially the best boy of all time Missile; it's just very well-written as a whole. Now in terms of gameplay it's no slouch either, delivering some honestly genius puzzles revolving around setting up Rube Goldberg-esque series of movements with various objects that you, a ghost, can take control to prevent people from dying. Some of these puzzles are real head-scratchers, but I think anyone can get through them with enough trial and error, and it is immensely satisfying when you do, so it's a damn good puzzle game. Also worth mentioning, though it goes without saying if you've seen the game before, is that it has a really slick visual style with character designs that pop, and an excellent soundtrack that is very much welcome. Genuinely an incredible game, and I think they should let Shu Takumi do more original projects if this is what he can cook up. [5★]

48-49) Azure Striker Gunvolt: Striker Pack (Switch, 2017)

Had to check out some of Inti Creates' flagship titles when I saw they were doing a Love Live game in a similar style, and yeah, this is a fun type of game that feels inspired by certain Mega Man spinoffs. Both games in this pack have cool run-and-gun gameplay where you can "tag" enemies do deal more damage to them, and of course you kind of have to balance that with avoiding taking damage yourself. Not a problem in the levels themselves, but taking on bosses is where it can get super tricky, especially towards the end of the first game which is just way harder than the rest for some reason (so the first game does seem to require grinding for levels and equipment). So the core gamplay is something I quite like, but I'm not a fan of how it often presents the story as text boxes appearing during the action where you're not going to be paying attention to them because you're busy, and honestly I don't much care for the story and characters anyway (and honestly why are there so many little girls in these games, they even turn characters into them in the second one). I do also enjoy the little gimmick of having straight-up idol music playing at certain times when you're powered up, and the music is just kinda good in general, so there is that. Decently fun games overall, there's not that much left to say about them. [3.5★]

Finally, I'm done catching up on this, future entries will just have their own posts. Hope you enjoy these poorly-made stream-of-consciousness mini-reviews!

Last post

#scrunkore media 2023 #miitopia #super mario #zelda #sonic #pokemon infinite fusion #puzzle bobble #nimona #ghost trick #azure striker gunvolt

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herooftimechronicles · 1 year ago

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I, personally, am excited. NOT for any "flawless" Tom Holland castings, no...

But there's something about Miyamoto being personally involved, and an entire Zelda movie filmed with MoCap, that has the child in me bouncing off the walls.

My initial reaction to the news was just like everyone else's, skeptical and hesitant. We all point to the announced producers' and directors' industry flops (choosing to overlook their box office hits) as proof that a Zelda movie could never succeed.

Then, I got to thinking after seeing one of my favorite Zelda Youtubers Zeltik's opinion on the matter.

Well, Nintendo took great care with the Mario movie...

...and it did exceedingly well.

Now there's all these whispers about what Zelda thing Nintendo will do with the "Switch 2".

What if Nintendo really is working on reimagining Ocarina of Time... but not another game remake?

youtube

Ocarina of Time is the most prolific Legend of Zelda title, and it's held that position for over 25 years. Yes, there was the 3D remake that didn't do so hot. Fans seemed to want less "cartoony" remakes...

...in favor of something more "realistic". There's no way Nintendo hasn't noticed this.

On top of all that, Ocarina of Time's plot is solid. It's coherent and simple enough to expand on it in a film script format, and they won't have to worry about how it fits in with the "Zelda Formula". Stranger things have happened...

...but that's just my two cents. And I want to believe.

No thanks I hate this

#Legend of Zelda #loz #zelda movie #Youtube

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dragontamer05 · 13 days ago

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I fully support and on board with wanting to see Game Freak/Nintendo expand and improve on the pokemon games. I want them to be able to put out and showcase what the developers can do.

However might be a hot take but I really don't think that means, or has to mean things like Realistic Graphics or Full Voice acting.

If it's for like a one off, spin off/side game type thing Ala- Colosseum, XD, hell even Pokemon Conquest where development of it is it at the very least fully handled by Game Freak themselves then you know what sure. I'd love to see what could be made.

But in terms of the main games themselves Hell No. For one even with change of consoles, going from Pixel to 3D models and all the changes that came with it there's still at least some amount of consistency. Bright popping colours, cute things look cute and cool designs still look cool. Characters are recognizable plus over all the art design is seems to try and balance complex elements (with varying success) while also kinda remaining simplistic which allows for KIDS - their main target demographic although a game that can be enjoyed by anyone- Kids to be able to draw out their favourite characters themselves.

Sure I agree a little more details- and perhaps what might help best being able to get the game to better handle stuff like light and shadows consistently. Whatever can be done to help the games look their best I'm for it. But looking its best I really don't think means needing to go overly detailed/realistic. You change up the games look to much and you're gonna end up losing part of what makes a Pokemon game a POKEMON Game. And then you can bet your ass people would start complaining that 'Yeah it looks great but it doesn't look/feel like a Pokemon game'

Pokemon ain't Zelda, or Monster Hunter or whatever other game you want it to look more like.

To take a page out of Jurrasic Park, All people keeping thinking about is if they could instead of thinking about if they should.

Same goes for voice acting.

Look I enjoy some good voice acting in games, it can be a lot of fun however not every game needs it or should have it.

Animal crossing has it's fun little garbled noises take that away and put in full voice acted lines and I think you'd take away a lot of the games charm.

Zelda has proven it can work with voice acting but it's also long proven itself to work just fine without such. Using not much more then some small character noises- grunts, laughs, sighs ect, and not much more then like a 'Hey' sound for some characters when they're calling to you.

Or Okami. Beloved game without a lick of voice acting and frankly I don't want any. It also works off the Animal Crossing school of little noises- just changed in pitch/speed/volume/ ect to fit the character.

Now I can agree voiced or not the choice of animating characters talking in Pokemon games with out even some kinda of noise is an odd one and if they really want to keep that particular choice up - in particular having those full rendered cut scenes, I'd say at the very least maybe they could implements some sort of extra sounds of some kind or just do something to at the very least distract/take away from and make up for the lack of voice acting.

Besides the fact that fully voice acted games would take all the longer to be released- which sure for the development stand point of like the over all game not a bad idea and the games do deserve more time to cook before being released but that doesn't mean all that extra time would actually get put into / used with developing the game itself.

Not only would they need to at minimum have JP voice actors but then comes the decision of how many languages should they dub it into and what can they afford and then going through having to hire all those vas.

And once again we're back to the simple fact of not being able to please everyone as no doubt at least some people would be bound to fine some problems with voice acting. Not liking how one sounds, nit picking if 'oh the horror' there was a slip up oops maybe there's some lines of dialogue that they couldn't make match lip flaps perfectly or god knows what but you know someone would find something to complain about (whether it be an actual issue or just some personal gripe)

Over all I think when it's situations that are like one off side games with a smaller cast of characters to handle like say Pokemon Snap those are great for voice acting, and just in general sort of an experimentation exploration ground for things that may not work or fit well within one of main line games - it's great that they've been trying to do more with their classic formula of game play, trying to find ways to mix it up a little so the games aren't exact but come on they're always going to hit some of the same beats.

#and I want to be clear I'm not saying that graphically the games have been perfect or can't be improved here and there #only that they could easily improve and modify within the current existing look of the game without needing to make shit realistic #also people will talk about wanting better more detailed graphics while also complaining about the game lagging and barely able to manage-#said graphics #look maybe this is just me cause I grew up for a while playing mostly handled games and most of what had didn't have voice acting anyway #so I just don't care most of the time

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denisser · 2 years ago

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About myself

Hi!, my name is Denisse I'm from Mexico and I just moved to Vancouver to study 2d animation at Langara college. I have a degree in graphic design and animation and some diplomas in 3d.

I've always liked video games and anime since I was very little, thanks to that I've always liked to draw and that motivated me to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up, I really like the art in video games especially the design of the characters or the type of style that each game has. I would really like to work in a video game company either designing characters or working in 3d, that would be my ideal job.

Final Fantasy: my favorite franchise since I was a child has always been final fantasy and i have played several of his games and I always liked especially ffvii, ffxiii and ffxv are my favorite games. what I really like about these games is precisely the story, a fantasy world where the protagonists have difficulties and go through many problems to solve them, the art in these games can be found very varied but what is most is a 3d style realism with a little touch of anime.

https://finalfantasyxv.square-enix-games.com/

Persona 5 : what I like about this game apart from the story and the gamplay of the game is the type of art it has. it is a 3d anime style but at the same time it has 2d scenes, where you can see 3d and 2d combined giving it a very unique and incredible style in my opinion.also the character desing it so cool!

https://atlus.com/persona5/home.html

Legend of Zelda: another of my favorite franchises, this game has a great story and art that always attracted me, especially the game Twilight Princess (my favorite), is a game with the same theme as the other zelda games but with a very different style, darker in terms of history and a little more realistic in terms of art style than others, that's what makes it a very interesting game.

https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Twilight_Princess

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fmp1cieranshippy · 2 years ago

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EXTENSIVE RESEARCH 4

When did pixel art start? What type of games was it used in and why

Pixel art started around - 1972-1983 the games it was used upon were on games like pong, however because technology was restricted and very hard to come by, people with these type of games had to use their own imagination on what the game was all about, with just two rectangles and a ball and a score.

1983-1987 Also known as the 8-bit era

Technology was still limited, however developers with more access were able to recreate "try" to and make games with easy to get characters recognizable characters with secrets and cool and imaginative backgrounds to engage and catch the players eyes

Games will be told with imagery

Zelda

Sonic and mario

And so much more!

1987-1993

The 16 bit era

During this era technology was massive again not really but still massive, as Gameboys, arcades and consoles were a thing and pixel art was everywhere with old games coming back and new players coming and playing with them, but these games would get an extreme update and a much more detailed look cause of the extreme step up in size, games like Metroid

1993-2006 (the downfall)

Sadly Pixel art began to die down in popularity, as new creators and developers found new ways to exploit the style and make it "better", with 3D games coming along using the style while also removing the whole aesthetic of pixel art, as the 3D characters looked less like pixel art and just terrible models plastid in, which with good contrast is how pixel art started as cause of the low quality invented the most cool and unique style of art ever to be created.

2006-Present

Today Pixel art was reintroduce, with new games being made to this day and with the cool style being used more often, with using more bigger canvases to create awesomely amounts of detail with location, maps and level design.

Sadly the style will not burst with excitement as much anymore, as in now a days standards it is used for more indie style games being considered for Retro uses only, even though it can be used for big budget games as that would be cool but for now it is only used for the indie game side of game design which is just sad and should be used more often. Which is where I come in (hopefully)

how have they developed further?

Review a selection of pixel games that apparently hit the top 10 why and how does the colour palette and art work differ in each?

I will look at 10 / 5 pixel games and contrast and compare there unique style, to help differ from each other and which style I like the most and prefer.

15. Prodigal(2020)

Why: The game looks very Pokémon and Zelda (ish), which will catch viewers attention to try and play it

Style: The Style is very old looking, using a lot of lighter greys and pale colours to make it look very retro, while using cool colours like blue and eye catching yellows for specific items to indicate how important they are.

Backbone (2019)

Why: The styles eye catching and god smacking for those whoa re interested in looking at beautiful backgrounds and locations and yes I do find it pretty to look at also despite my opinion of it, plus that it was written in a modern style with funny characters and awesome great to details with dialogue and the mystery at hand whoever is looking for a good mystery and get wrap up in the drama.

Compare Style: To Compare the style here, where the pixel art is in different styles like detailed to extremely detailed, with the backgrounds and locations looking extremely realistic, where the characters and cars etc look very mid in terms of realism just to put contrast of the background, while also putting the contrast onto the characters as they shouldn't be the way they are like animal people but they are, so it makes sense. however I prefer the first style as I prefer to know that its pixel's and as much as it is good to go really into detail with pixel art I in my opinion think it removes the whole weird nature and weird blocky nature pixel art brings, where the first style can still be seen as pixel art and look beautiful and realistic, this just looks too realistic that it looks like real life. Which is what pixel art is once you add more detail to it, but that is ruining it for me as I prefer a weird goofy blocky style where you can still see it as pixel art but at the same time admire the hard work gone in to it to make it look like a person and look good.

6. Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (2014)

Why: For the beautiful crafted pixel art making a retro style to a game and putting it in a modern style without going over the top with the detail, to the point where it loses the pixel edge to it, while also having funny stupid looking characters that will catch the attention plus it being like Mario and having references to ducktails Castlevania

Style: The Style is really eye catching with good use of shading and lighting, with very funny looking characters but what got me looking at this game, was an old Ds game I use to play called Scooby doo, the style was very similar to this not like really detail but the vibe it gives off just reminds me of that game.

Can't find the exact game, but it looks like this in concept but I have a mental memory of it being more dark with enemies around every corner.

1. Eastward (2021)

Why: that feel much like classic RPGs from the SNES era, which will catch more attention to those that love that style of gameplay or want to experience it for the first time.

Style: The style is very simple, way simple than the others yet surprisingly holding enough detail to make it look pretty and simple, alot, the style which fits for the vibe is going for is very like aftermath situation where everything is reshined and preserved as people use the remaining remains to build small / big locations to survive from the cruel world, which is a really cool contrast.

#Youtube

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turbofanatic · 7 months ago

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I recently replayed Ocarina of Time 3D in it's entirety and I have THOUGHTS. Are they smart thoughts? No. But I had them.

-I genuinely prefer the old N64 aesthetics. Yeah, they're janky as hell but it feels a little more coherent and in some ways I think it's charming to see artwork strain against the limitations of the medium. Also they took away Link's big nose. How could you do this to me.

- At the end of the game that boy is a tank. I got nearly all the hearts and with the increased defense and fairies I just steamrolled through Ganon's attacks. Nokia brick phone of a boy. This is even with me forgetting to use Nayru's Love.

-Speaking of Nayru's Love, it's interesting how you need to kill Dark Link before getting it. Fascinating parallels to the Adventures of Link killing his shadow to save the princess. Bad Moon Tiny doesn't kill Dark Link on his second chance, I think he never gets Nayru's Love. He could probably get to the desert, but I think the great fairy just says "nah."

-You can get magic, Din's Fire, and Farore's Wind just as a kid. So Tiny gets those, plus the Termina stuff. He wandered around a little after being sent back and saved the Gorons and Princess Ruto. I'm gonna say he couldn't use them in Majora's Mask because that's not Din and Farore's land!

-The Great Deku Tree kinda sucks as a dad. You can't even see him without permission, which I guess is understandable since he can't run away and has dozens of kids. Maybe the fairies are doing most of the "parenting," which again makes Link borderline feral even by feral woods children standards.

-I like how he can and will cheat at games. I don't think he even understands what he's doing. He's just a little boy doing stuff. He probably tried to bite Ganondorf at one point.

-On that note, wow yeah there's a sad underlying plotline that this guy is nine years old and everyone thinks he's an adult and the world is shit. People say creepy things to him that he does not understand, and the juxtaposition between twee-as-fuck Castle Town and the zombie gibdo hellscape of seven years later is perfection. That boy is nine and things keep trying to eat his face. It's very similar to the original LoZ in that way (a ten year old doing too much), but the ability to have more details makes it more harrowing. There's probably something in there about a sweet spot of detail where it's realistic enough to convey specificity and simplified enough to invite the audience to add their own details, I'll ponder this more.

-A little off topic but this has been bothering me for a while, people have told me that Link in A Link to the Past is also nine or ten, and like, please think this through better. There are implications here and they are Bad. In the pamphlet accompanying ALttP (which is where most of the story was delivered in ye olde video game days) both Zelda and Link are similarly aged and clearly teens (officially, Zelda is 16 which feels about right, and ALttP Link looks exactly like AoL Link, who is canonically 16, not LoZ Link, who looks like a kid and is ten). And if you consider any romance with either Zelda or Marin in Link's Awakening (who we're told looks enough like Zelda to be mistaken for her) at all then you're dealing with a romance between a ten year old and a sixteen year old treated as a good thing. Even if it's a few years later in LA that's still a thirteen year old and a nineteen year old. That's not good! Anyways, I know a lot of people don't know these details so consider this a PSA.

-Getting back to OoT, I wish people used the fact that after both MM and OoT, Link just takes half damage. It's not related to magic or armor, he just shrugs things off.

-What is up with the forest temple. Seriously. Phantom Ganondorf is wearing a mask that looks a lot like the skull mask, which in turn looks like the forest totem the deku worship... something is going on here.

-Something suspicious is also going on at Hyrule Castle after Ganondorf attacks. Most of the guards outside the castle don't know what is happening, nobody is out looking for Zelda publicly... Honestly I think Ganondorf helped foment a coup or something and wanted to take the triforce in the chaos. We know there's a lot of messed up things in Hyrule and the peace is tenuous at best.

-WHAT HAPPENS TO BONGO BONGO IN THE CHILD TIMELINE?! Oh boy, there's some fun possibilities there! I should draw that thing.

-I still have no idea exactly when Link gets sent back to when he returns to the past. It's clearly before Zelda left the castle so he probably shouldn't have gotten all three spiritual stones, but he's in the chamber with the sword... how does he get out if it's sealed? Better minds than mine have pondered this for ages.

-If OoT is about a child trying to grow up before he's ready, and MM is about being given the time Link needs to start to grow up, I think the Hero's Shade in TP is about actually being an adult and doing what adults are supposed to do, help the next generation. I really do think that the Hero's Shade is intended to evoke both the Fierce Deity and Dark Link. The former for Link actually growing up, like c'mon the wolf spirit implies he even had white hair. And the latter because TP is about darkness not being evil.

Your true face... What kind of... face is it? I wonder... The face under the mask... Is that... your true face?

#hero's shade #the legend of zelda

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skyward-floored · 2 years ago

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I'm thinking about Lost and Ember and their stories/ game aesthetics (again). This is not a request I just thought you would like to know (...though I would not be opposed to learning about their worlds..)

I was thinking about them yesterday actually I’m filled with so many thoughts of them 😭 This is just a mess of thoughts, but if you have specific questions I’m never opposed to talking about my Links :)

Ember, were he to have an actual game, would have a style somewhere between a link between worlds and skyward sword: a bright and colorful world, but more realistic than the top-down games tend to be since his would be 3D.

He’s the type of Link more like the handheld games though, a more cheerful, younger teenager, not toon, but not like tp or sksw either.

And he’s got a companion that functions a lot like the sheikah slate, but instead of getting all of the abilities at the beginning like in botw, it’s more like a typical loz game where you gain more items/abilities as you go on.

She sort of ‘levels up’ after you clear a dungeon, it’s kind of like Fi and leveling up the master sword. Fun times :D

Lost on the other hand would probably have a world somewhere between breath of the wild and twilight princess, colorful still, but a bit darker, more realistic.

The game is a bit more four sword/minis cap in lore though, since Vaati’s the villain. But it also has ocarina of time flavor since the master sword is a thing (though part of the deal with it is that it’s been lost for a long time), as well as the six sages.

Vaati functions a little more like Yuga or Agahnim (is that how you spell it??) in this regard, he’s trying to resurrect Ganon in order to give himself enough power to take over the kingdom blah blah.

So basically I’m mashing together lore from like five games it’s great >:D

Zelda is the one who’s the playable protagonist you know, searching for the sages to fight back and free Link, so she’s wandering around looking for temples where they’ll supposedly be. It’s more complicated than that because of course it is though.

Plus her corrupted best friend is basically chasing her the entire time so... yeah. Zelda isn’t having a good week.

#dancing around brethren in a cradle spoilers for Ember XD #but yes I love talking about them so so much #I’m rotating them constantly #oc Link #Lost #Ember #legend of zelda #answers from the floor #mythic my beloved

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st-hedge · 3 years ago

Note

Of all the Zelda games, which one has your favourite art style?

*HIGH PITCHED SCREAM* I don't know cuz many of them are good in their own ways and for their own purposes and it all depends-- ugh. I love the cel shaded appearance of botw and I like how it stands between realistic and cartoony. It's a little blocky in just the right way. But the colours are very desaturated in game. Wind waker I guess started the cel shaded style for loz and I love the ambiance it has and the colours, but I don't like how blobby and a little shapeless everything is. Twilight princess has very weird airbrush rendering that I don't like but the character models are great. I can't comment on oot cuz I feel like it was a product of its time and the limitations even in 3ds but I adore the promo and concept art. SS just does not vibe with me in terms of in game style but I love the promotional art of the characters

I guess botw ticks the majority of boxes for me but it's very conditional? Probably would change my mind if I got to see a more recent remake of a 3d loz game

#ask hedge

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tomwaterbabies · 2 years ago

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if you had to create your ideal game, as in it's perfect and nothing needs to be fixed or added. What kind of game would it be?

my joke answers are "majora's mask but properly remade this time" and "monster hunter world but i can gay pose my characters in a photo taking system"

But Anyways. i am certainly not skilled in game developing at All and have literally no knowledge of it. but i DO know what i like. so like:

fave gameplay genres: action rpg, action-adventure, 3d platformers, and point and click (when theyre good lol)

compelling story. weird and unique and emotional + great world-building u could get lost in

fun gameplay Obviously. preferably on the more challenging side (with action rpgs i prefer really in depth combat systems. with 3d platformers i prefer an eclectic moveset, and with action-adventure and point and clicks i just need some VERY fun and interesting puzzle solving)

Divine Art Direction. i prefer unique style over hyper-realistic graphics most of the time but if the setting calls for stunning graphics im all for that too. just something aesthetically gorgeous to look at in one way or another

games that capture a lot of these near-perfect for me: most zeldas (majora's mask is my favorite), monster hunter: world, psychonauts, earthbound (an outlier as i dont usually like turn-based rpgs), secret of monkey island, dark souls 3/bloodborne (have not played much of these at all but i still think theyre great)

TL;DR i would want a game based on one of those genres And have it emulate these points similar to the games i listed as examples

#TY FOR ASK. this was fun #asks

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blitz-and-hearth · 4 years ago

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do you play any video games? additionally, do you have any game-related headcanons for MCGA characters?

Of course I do! I'm mostly into single player stuff though, multiplayer kinda stresses me out however I've got a weak spot for both Wizards101 and Pirates101, as well as Splatoon. Pokemon is deffo my bread and butter, I love it so much, especially the mystery dungeon games. Also love fantasy RPGs and like business/town builder management ones. Right now I've actually been low-key rping Blitzen in Fantasy life for 3ds since it's the only RPG I've found where you can be a tailor as a class, very fun he's level 50 now. As for headcanons I could name a bunch of aus but I think I'll list what I think characters favorite types of games are

Magnus- The Sims, he likes making all his friends as Sims and just having fun with it, low-key embarrassed about it. Also likes classic Fantasy games like Zelda and rpgs. Probably also farming games, mainly ones where you can make friends with the villagers/characters, so pretty much mainly Stardew valley and Harvest Moon games.

Alex- Horror games! Alex is a horror queer no question. She loves horror games, horror movies too but we're talking about games RN, so I think she'd have a huuuge collection of them. That's sort of her main bag, but I think she also has a smaller collection of games similar to Magnus' tastes, farming, life Sims, and a few "friendship saves the day" focused rpgs. Magnus is the only one who knows about that though and sometimes when Alex is having a rough mental health day they'll play them together

Sam- Tycoon management/builder games for sure, probably also has a weak spot for any games focused on flying like flight sims. Also low-key think she'd like romance games but that's the type of secret that might get you beheaded if you find out

Blitzen- I don't think he's much of a video game player, very picky about what he plays. Probably crafting/art focused games he can relax and make art for fun without too much effort. Deffo likes Animal crossing but pretty much all he does is making extremely complex pixel designs on it. Also Minecraft, though he only plays on creative to make those fucking insanely huge and realistic cities/buildings that have to take days if not months to make

Hearthstone- You fucking know he's a sucker for Rpgs, no question. I think he'd be one of the most dedicated gamers of the group. Motherfucker canonly went to a renaissance fair and definitely watches LOTR he's a big old nerd. Any fantasy rpg he can get his hands on he's gonna play until he beats the whole thing and gets all the achievements and unlockables. I'd guess he also really likes pokemon too, but that one is more of a comfort/relaxing game for him and he doesn't go quite as hard core with it.

TJ- Dude is canonly a gamer since Magnus hears him playing some kinda shooting game through his door, seems to be really into those shoot em ups and fighting games which makes a lot of sense. Call of duty shoota man, Grand stealing cars, Smash your bros, all those multiple shooting games that people seem to love but I can't fucking stand at all

Halfborn- alright so I know Halfborn is shockingly modern for just how old he is, but I think tech is a bit harder to keep up with so he's definitely into old retro shit. Pac Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong classic, all those pixel arcade games. Maybe eventually he'll get into newer more complex stuff but for now he's pretty happy with those. Though! I bet he does have some of those educational and brain teaser puzzle games for the DS my parents used to try to get me to play in a failed attempt to make me smarter

Mallory- Mallory is another who doesn't really play many video games, but I'd like to think miss hot head has a gulity pleasure of Japanese style romantic visual novels, which she thinks no one knows about but she's not great at hiding it lol

Also in general I think they have a game/movie night every week to just hanging out as a family. They had to stop any competitive games though because TJ and Hearthstone once almost killed each other. They both just get way too into it so now competitive is banned, strictly multiplayer co-op games only lol

#magnus chase and the gods of asgard #empty cup family #headcanons #magnus chase #alex fierro #samirah al abbas #Mcga TJ #Thomas Jefferson Jr.#halfborn gunderson #mallory keen #blitzen son of freya #mcga blitzen #mcga hearthstone #hearthstone alderman #fierrochase #alex x magnus

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chappybird · 4 years ago

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How to Get Roleplay on F-List: A Guide

Hey all. So I’ve had a few people ask me how on earth to get RP over F-List, or for those that have tried, say its too confusing. While F-List is a much different format than I think a lot of people are used to, it’s a pretty reliable source of RP once you get used to it. So I’m going to walk you through, step by step, how to start from nothing and get a profile set up to start RPing. F-List is 18+ Only and is a Restricted To Adults® Verified website. You can learn more about it by clicking the RTA logo at the bottom of f-list’s main page.

F-list’s main landing page can be located at https://www.f-list.net/.

Note that my f-list may look different from yours because I’m using dark mode (which can be set in the account tab) and I’m a subscriber, so I don’t see ads.

Step One: Make a Profile

Making a profile, or as they’re known on F-List, a character, is your jumping off point for getting started. There are three main factions on F-List: Anthro Characters, Canon Characters, and Original Characters, with subcategories of each. You also have hub profiles. There is a right way to make a hub profile, but that’s not something I’ll be talking about on this post. Hub profiles are pretty universally disliked on F-List and are often seen as a mark of laziness, and I do not recommend making one to look for RP on. You should make a separate Profile for each character you want to play as. If you have a normal account, you can make up to 150 different characters. If you’re a subscriber, you can make significantly more than that depending on your tier.

Choosing a name for your character is very important! You want something attention grabbing, but since each character has to have a unique name, this can get a little tricky. Today I’m choosing to create a Link from the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. As this is a popular character, it can be difficult to track down a good name. You can be clever with naming conventions, while making it obvious who you’re playing, or you can add in underscores, hyphens, numbers, etc. It’s really up to personal preference. I advise not getting too abstract with your character name. Just pick something easy to read and to the point. Once you’ve decided on a name, click the create character button to open up the character editor.

Step Two: Holy Fuck Dude That’s a Lot of Shit To Fill Out

Take a deep breath. The character editor is very intimidating to those that haven’t used F-List before. Perhaps you have used F-List for it’s old intended purpose, just to list your kinks to link people to when RPing on other sites. Your first instinct might be to scroll down there and start picking kinks willy-nilly. Stop. In the grand scheme of things, this is not as important for getting Roleplay and if you do it incorrectly you might actually hurt your chances.

Now that we’ve calmed down you’ll notice two things at the top of the page. A big white text field, and this guy:

This, more than anything on your profile, is the most important thing. If you have this on profile, you will almost never get any roleplay. This is your character icon, and it’s the first step on your journey to doing this whole thing correctly. All you need to do is find an image that’s 300x300 pixels or smaller and upload it with the Choose File button. Then scroll down to the very bottom of the page and hit save. Search on google, and if you have a hard time finding something of that size, A great site to use is https://lunapic.com/ to edit pics if you don’t have Photoshop or Gimp. Choosing or creating an image with some sort of transparency layer is recommended because it makes your icon look more polished, but you don’t really need to do that. This isn’t an image software guide so I’ll leave that to you to figure out. If all you can do is crop an image into a square, that will do perfectly. But you need to have something here. Besides your character name, it’s the first impression you’re going to give to people when using the site. I have honest to god had people message me on empty profiles that having nothing but a character name and an icon.

Sourcing your images is a bit of a grey area on f-list. It’s not really an art sharing site, but if you choose fanart that someone doesn’t want to be reposted, it can be removed by the mods if you’re reported for it. So we’ll just use some official art that already has a transparency channel and crop it using Lunapic.

Step Three: How To Set the Profile Up

If you’re following along, you should have something like this by now. This already gives us an idea of who you’re playing, and what they look like, and while you might get a couple of weirdos messaging you already, there’s still a lot to do. So let’s go over what to do next.

Now that you’ve already created a character, it will be listed under the character tab. Further characters will be listed in alphabetical order. Navigate to your character and click the “Edit” button underneath their icon.

We’re back to the big scary page. Remember that big text field? We’re going to ignore everything else and focus on this first.

F-List uses standard BBC code tags with [square brackets.] You can find some buttons that will give you tools like bold, italics, color, hyperlinks, and quote blocks. There are many different ways to create eye-catching descriptions. I would say the three basic ways are minimalist, inline based, and heavy BBC code. We’ll go through the first option in detail but if you’re interested in the the latter, there is actually a few F-List profiles that teach coding and even have a few templates to use. User beware, though. Many F-List users use these templates and they can sometimes look a bit generic as they are overused.

Templates: https://www.f-list.net/c/profile%20templates

Coding Help: https://www.f-list.net/c/profile%20references

If you want to make an inline based profile, having access to software like Illustrator, Photoshop, GIMP, and similar content is good to have as well. You can also make a blend of the three styles of profiles. I’ll link some examples of my own profiles for reference. Some of these have text included in the inline. Some of them just have an image with the text written out underneath. Again, it’s really up to your personal preference.

https://www.f-list.net/c/Rival%20II/

https://www.f-list.net/c/Lion%20Heart/

https://www.f-list.net/c/The%20Fire%20of%20Tamaran/

Now would also be a great time to familiarize yourself with the rules. Keep an eye on these, especially if you play contentious content.

https://wiki.f-list.net/Code_of_Conduct

Some big things to look out for and not to do: Photographs and realistic images of animals are not allowed. Even Nonsexual ones. Photographs and 3D renders of minors (even nonsexual images or nonsexual profiles) are not allowed. If there is even a hint of the character being a minor, do not use photographic or 3D renders. (For example: Tom Holland’s depiction of Spiderman. Even though Tom Holland was an adult when he played the role, the character is a minor.) Sometimes these can run into a lot of grey areas, but it’s better safe than sorry!

Step Four: Creating A Minimalist Profile

We’ll start with a short description. It’s really important to make sure your character’s name is present in your descriptio, especially if it’s not the profile name. If you’re feeling particularly lazy, you can copypaste something from a wiki or official description. Let’s start with something like this.

Link had humble beginnings as a boy that lived in the forest with the Kokiri. Known as the boy without a fairy, Link led a simple life until one day, the dying Guardian of the forest, the Deku Tree, set him upon a Quest to save the Kingdom of Hyrule from darkness. Arming himself with the elemental powers of Hyrule and the legendary Master Sword, Link journeyed through time to the Dark Era of Hyrule to challenge the evil Ganondorf and save his Kingdom from evil.

Shoving this into the Description box and hitting save will generate something like this.

You might notice that this looks like crap. And it does! however, we can very easily fix that with the power of just three simple BBC tags. Those being [center], [color], and [sub]. plus a little something extra I’ll explain in a moment. Let’s add those in like so.

[center][color=green][sub]Link had humble beginnings as a boy that lived in the forest with the Kokiri. Known as the boy without a fairy, Link led a simple life until one day, the dying Guardian of the forest, the Deku Tree, set him upon a Quest to save the Kingdom of Hyrule from darkness. Arming himself with the elemental powers of Hyrule and the legendary Master Sword, Link journeyed through time to the Dark Era of Hyrule to challenge the evil Ganondorf and save his Kingdom from evil.[/sub][/color][/center]

Instead of hitting save at the bottom of the profile this time, we’re going to click “Preview BBC Code” to get a look at what our coding has done.

Fancy.

But it could use a little work. When I’m making minimalist profiles, I like to make the lines of text a little shorter so it’s a little easier to read and looks nicer. Make sure each line of text is about the same length as the previous (minus any BBC tags)

[eicon]blank[/eicon] [center][color=green][sub]Link had humble beginnings as a boy that lived in the forest with the Kokiri. Known as the boy without a fairy, Link led a simple life until one day, the dying Guardian of the forest, the Deku Tree, set him upon a Quest to save the Kingdom of Hyrule from darkness. Arming himself with the elemental powers of Hyrule and the legendary Master Sword, Link journeyed through time to the Dark Era of Hyrule to challenge the evil Ganondorf and save his Kingdom from evil.[/sub][/color][/center] [eicon]blank[/eicon]

You’ll also notice that I placed an eicon tag with a “blank” body. Eicons are essentially image macros that can be used all over the site. Using the blank one here is a good way to put a block of empty space on the top and bottom so the text isn’t too crowded by the frame of the description box. Another couple to keep in mind are [eicon]under construction[/eicon] or [eicon]WIP[/eicon] if you want to save your work now and get right to chatting and exploring the site. This signifies that you’re still working on your profile and more will be added later. You can create your own eicons by going to Account > Icon gallery. Keep in mind each eicon must have a unique name across all users. Inputting this into the description and checking how it looks in the preview, we end up getting something that looks like this:

Looks like we got a bookmark while we were setting the profile up. That means someone saw us while browsing new characters and decided they want to keep an eye on our profile and are likely interested in RPing! If you like, you can disable bookmarks per character in the character editor under settings. Generally speaking though, bookmarks are your friend and it’s how people will find you to RP later.

Optionally if you want to add an inline, just upload an image of your choice in Account > Inline Images. You can then add it in the character editor using this button.

This isn’t a tutorial for creating inlines, but a general rule is to make sure it’s sized well, and transparent images tend to look better than non-transparent images.

Step Five: Character Details

Opening the Character Editor once more, a couple basic things should be filled out. We will take this section by section.

Settings: Some general tweaks to change and edit. Personally, I like to turn my timezone off, and besides that, I like to have my Guestbook and Bookmarks turned on as well, but all of these settings are up to you. A big one a I suggest turning on is “Custom Kinks Sort First.” This will come up later but it’s good to turn it on.

Character List: For now, you can ignore this part. You can use this to have certain characters grouped together and will show up in the sidebars of these characters. I haven’t run into any limits for how many character lists you can have, but keep in mind a character can only belong to one list at a time.

Images: If you have any images you want to upload, this is the place to do it. Headcanons of body types, additional art you’ve drawn or found, can be added here. You can add descriptions to each image that will appear when a user hovers over the image. Keep in mind, again, that usage of fan art is a grey area on F-List. It’s not an image posting site, but some artists do not want their art reposted at all.

Profile Info: You don’t need to fill out every single detail here. Bits that aren’t filled in will just not appear on your profile. It’s a good idea to fill out your gender, and in many cases, your orientation. Both are under General Details. Filling out RPing preferences is also a good idea. It’ll keep people from approaching you IC using first person posts if that’s not your thing.

Step Six: Kinks and Custom Kinks

This is probably one of the most overwhelming parts of the process. My first tip: Ignore the Kink section for now. Instead, skip ahead to the Custom Kink section.

Custom Kinks are a good way to tell people what you really want. Click the Add +1 Custom Kink button to make a new custom kink. You can fill out the basic title of the kink, and a description. Or if you prefer to leave the description blank, just press the spacebar. Select what category you want the kink to appear in (Fave, Yes, Maybe, No.) Try to avoid using inflammatory language against different races, genders, identities, and don’t kinkshame. This is a site based primarily around finding rpers that have the same interests and kinks that you do. Save the profile when you’re done and we’ve got something like this.

And really, you can probably start roleplaying like this. Maybe add a couple of images, and tweak a few things. So if you like, skip to the next step. But for now, I’ll go over the kink list.

The most important think to remember is you don’t have to add every single kink to your profile. Try to select the most relevant things, and avoid redundancies.

For example, I’m not interested in Vore of any kind. So I can put the kinks Vore (Being Predator) and Vore (Being Prey) Into my No category. Or, if I want to make it even more simplified, I can add a custom Vore kink and put that in my No category. Likewise, if I don’t want to do any sex driven play, I can probably go ahead and just put sex driven there and ignore most of the kink list. Kinks that are not relevant such as Vaginal Sex (Receiving) on a cis male can also be ignored. Kinks are broken up into sections, and while it is a lot, just take your time, go through it sensibly, and take a break if you want to. Remember you don’t have to add every single one to your profile. This will ultimately be easier on you and make your profile easier to read.

After a bit of editing, this is what my kink list ends up looking like:

You can try exploring the Subfetish editor but it’s a little confusing to navigate and isn’t very necessary. And now, your profile is done!

Step Six: Using F-Chat

So now that we have a profile set up, it’s time to find some partners. Regardless of what way you want to connect, if you prefer script or para, the main place you’re going to find RP is through F-Chat. There is currently both a desktop and mobile client. if you select Chat you’ll see the option for both, and clicking on them will take you to instructions on how to set those up. We will however be using the Browser client in this example. Go ahead and select F-Chat 3.0.

You will be taken to a landing page with a drop down of your characters, with the first character you created selected as the default. (You can change your default character in your account settings.) You can have up to three characters online at once. Keep in mind this goes by IP address, so if you have a roommate that also uses F-List, those will count towards your total number of online characters. If this becomes a problem for you, just use a virtual machine or connect to the internet via a different method, such as with data. (F-List is not that much of a data drain.)

Here is what you’ll see when you open F-Chat. You’ll see I already have people in my friends list and my bookmarks (that I’ve blurred out for courtesy.) These will appear the same on all the characters you sign in as. I will be notified whenever one of my friends signs in or sets a status. You can set these notifications to show only on the console if you’d like to in the settings. Let’s set a status first.

Here, you have the options of selecting from the default Online status to Looking, Away, Busy, and Do Not Disturb. These all do what you’d expect, with Do Not Disturb turning off the sound that would play when you get notifications from personal messages or pings.

The Status Message is an optional addition, and it’s great for if you’re looking for specific things or want your friends and bookmarks to know what you’re doing. Be careful not to post anything that breaks F-Lists code of conduct. F-List does have an aggregate of every status you ever posted logged on their server, so throwing a temper tantrum and posting something inappropriate and then taking it back later might still get you in trouble.

While the Character Search Option is available to you, I’ve personally never found it very effective. You can search users by kinks, but keep in mind it doesn’t search by gender or orientation, or what species or even if they’re canon or original. Instead, we’ll go right to the settings tab.

General: Just your general settings. You have a few options here to tweak and while most of it is personal preference, I’ll highlight a few to keep in mind.

Disallowed BBC Code Tag: good for if you find a particular colour particularly garish as a text colour, or if you find an eicon that you no longer want to see anymore. Enter Sends Messages: I have this set to off so I can avoid accidentally sending a message for when I post. When this is enabled, just press the send button on screen to send messages. Otherwise, if you want to linebreak in one post, just press Shift + Enter. Animate eicons: If you’re running a slow computer, or have a slow connection, turn this to off. Eicons are used as memes a lot in F-Chat, and some of them can get a little ridiculous. (Someone has compressed the entire Shrek movie into an eicon and uploaded to the site in very poor quality for example.) There can also be bright flashing colours or even nsfw images. In general these eicons are all 100x100 pixels in size, but some users like to tile them together to create bigger images so it can sometimes get out of hand. This is something up to personal preference, and while I have Animate eicons turned on, I can see why some people wouldn’t like it. Idle Timer: If you are the kind of person that walks away from your computer without changing your status, or you have fallen asleep with F-Chat open, it’s good to set this to a reasonable time. If you’re in Online or Looking, after you’ve been inactive for the depicted number of seconds, your status will be set to Idle. This is so other users know that you’re not ignoring them if you don’t respond to their messages. A downside to this is if you’re tabbed out or multitasking, it’ll set you to idle when you may not intend it to and going back to the window switches you to Online again. It can be a little spammy if you’re constantly switching between Online and Idle. Font Size: If you find F-Chat’s font too big or too small, you can edit that here.

Notifications: While this section is pretty self explanatory, I’d like to specifically go over the Custom Highlight Notify Words.

Now, because each profile has to have a unique name, you might want to select additional pings. For example I might want to add Link,Zelda,Hyrule,Hero,Hero of Time to my list. Everything is comma seperated and not case sensitive. There are a few things to keep in mind.

Common word pings: If I add Link to my list of pings, I might get pinged whenever someone talks about a url link, or a chain link, or any other common use of the word link. It therefore might be better to not use the word. If you have a profile name that is a common word, it might be better to also uncheck the option for Notify Messages Containing your name.

Similar Profiles: If there’s another Link in chat, then I will be notified everytime someone refers to him by name as well. This is less of a problem on more niche characters, but it’s something to keep in mind! You can set pings by room, so perhaps a solution to this is using Link as a highlight word in the Canon Characters room, but not using it as a highlight word in the Nintendo room. More about how to do that later.

Hidden Users: Pretty self explanatory once click over. If you keep seeing an ad you dislike, you can hide all advertisements from said user (re: character) going forward. Keep in mind this is not your block list.

Import: If you make two profiles and want to have these settings copied from one to the other, just log into the profile you want to import to, and select the profile you want to import from. Make sure to go back to change your pings if needed.

Lastly, we’ll be looking at the channel section.

You might be starting to be overwhelmed again, and that’s okay. There are a lot of options, but most of the time, you’ll only want to select the options that are relevant to us. Check off the list of rooms you want to open a tab for. These will begin to be added to your sidebar. the number in brackets signifies the number of users thats joined that room. By default, this list is most popular to least popular, but I personally prefer alphabetical. There may be some channels that you find inappropriate, offensive, or contentious, but your best bet is to ignore those parts of the site. It’s an Adult site that is heavily moderated by a mixture of paid and volunteer staff. Every effort is made to ensure that no real people get hurt, but it is understood that as an adult, you are responsible for curating the content that you consume. This is one of the fundamental principals that F-List is built upon.

For now, I’m going to go with Canon Characters and Canon Characters OOC from this list.

You will also notice an Open Room tab. Unlike the Official Channels which are moderated by F-List staff, Open Rooms are chat rooms created by the userbase, and moderated by the userbase. While the standard F-List code of content is applicable to all areas of the site, special rules may apply in these rooms, and you’ll find things like rooms dedicated to certain kinks, species, and fandoms. I can try searching for a few things I think might be applicable to me, such as Hyrule, Zelda, Nintendo, and Elf. Some of those get hits, and some of those don’t. I can also check them off to add them to my list. (Note that search terms have to be entered one at a time. I cannot search for multiple things at once.)

Once you’ve selected the channels and rooms you want to join, you can click and drag on the tabs to reorder them on the sidebar. If you’d like to pin a chat, You can just press the little push pin symbol, which will then turn green. (You can do this for User Messages as well.) This means when you sign out, these chats will still be there when you sign back in. Note that settings and pinned chats are device by device only, and furthermore, channels and logs will not carry over between characters.

Make sure to read the description of each room you join. There are often specific rules (such as no ooc talk in the canon characters room, and no male characters in the lesbians room.) Clicking the gear will allow you to change settings on a per-room basis.

Step Seven: Actually Finding some RP

Now, after all that effort, we’re finally ready to find some RP. You have a few options on how to do this.

You could just join a few rooms and set your status to looking with a status message on what you want, but this is considered very passive. You may get some people that reach out (As you saw, someone had bookmarked my Link less than an hour after I made the profile before logging into f-chat.) But your best bet is one of three options.

Look at the Ads: Whenever you’re in a room that allows ads, you will sometimes notice a differently coloured message fly by looking for roleplay. This is an ad. If you see one that seems to fit what you have to offer, you can right-click on their username and select “Open Conversation.” A chat window will be open under the PMs section on your sidebar. You can view this conversation like you would a channel. Keep in mind that users are not notified if you open a conversation with them, only if you send them a message.

Create an Ad: Make sure you are in a room or channel that allows ads by checking the description, you can select the ad tab in the lower right hand corner above the text input box to write an ad instead of a chat message.

Making a normal chat post saying “hey does anyone want to roleplay with me” is considered spam and could result in the mods having a word with you.

You have similar tools to what you do in the character descriptions, and clicking each one will automatically place the tags in the text box, with the eyeball being a preview and the question mark being a how to. You want your ads to stand out, but you don’t want them to be too obnoxious. Take a look at what kind of ads other people are posting to get an idea of what’s expected.

Talk to Others: And lastly, you can just play in public rooms or chat with people in ooc channels. This is a great way for others to sample what you’re like to play with and vice versa, or even just to get to know potential partners. In my general experience, you’ll have more luck finding people to play with long term in the user created Open Rooms than in the Official Channels, but ever case is different. There are a vast number of styles, methods of RP, and types of partners you can find.

That’s basically the ins and outs of F-List! The more you’ll use it, the more you’ll understand how it works and the social etiquette on the platform. Like many sites, it certainly has it’s share of dark corners and flaws, but all in all it’s a pretty good website to find people to play with! Have fun!

#cherp #mxrp #rp #tumblr rp #flist #no tea no shade for tagging other RP sites #just giving people more options and I've been asked about it a few times

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