#those map changes better be complete remakes

[bapzap]

im legitimately baffled by how genuinely bad these patchnotes are. i expected nothing, and somehow nintendo managed to exceed expectations by actively making the game worse while not fixing any problems

[nullconvention]

I don't have a lot of 10/10 games but Mirror's Edge is probably one of those, and a lot of that stems from how sparse it is. I'm not a video games minimalist - I don't believe that fewer mechanics, fewer things on the screen are inherently better - but I do tend to feel that a lot of things are added to games because they seem popular at the time and someone decided that this or that game NEEDED crafting or needs a certain kind of map or compass function, etc. and Mirror's Edge largely doesn't do that.

There's an exception to this - you can pick up yellow messenger bags throughout the level. These don't do anything and if you completely had forgotten about them, the game doesn't change whatsoever. Those are sort of the exception that proves the rule - they're out of place in the way the game plays but they're also so unimportant that they slide off the play experience like an egg from a new teflon skillet.

It's also pointedly not devoid of game mechanics. The most prominent of these is Runner's Sight which is a way of color coding for the player what would normally be something that stands out to Faith instinctively, picked up over years of practice and training. Since there's a great deal of bullshit over how bad it is that players just now realized that games put yellow on shit so you can see that they're interactive surfaces, this is a good way to recall that it's been done basically forever by now and that it's also done in real life spaces to make where you're supposed to go stand out. The items aren't actually red - but they make themselves clear as you're running at them full speed to help you keep your flow. After a few moments, it becomes instinctive for the player as well.

10/10s are pretty rare. They're games that essentially nail it, and that doesn't mean no flaws at all, but flaws that are so minimal that they don't detract from the overall experience, and I think that's the case for ME. I don't typically rate games, so it's shorthand for 'flawless experience' that goes up on the list with stuff like Hyperlight Drifter or Portal. Possibly Resident Evil 2's remake. There is nothing I would add to this game and nothing I could really take away - not even more or less playtime - except the very end level is slightly missing what makes the game stand out mechanically, forcing you to navigate a visually cluttered and largely horizontal environment. This is really so minor that I'm reaching for something. If you asked whether you should buy it now, after all this time, I would say "yes, absolutely" providing that you don't have a crippling fear of heights.

[blazehedgehog]

What parts of Shadow the Hedgehog 2005 do you think would be worth keeping for a complete remake/do-over? Would that game's structure work better in the "open zone" format?

Nnnno. Not really. I dunno.

I think in the context of having these super grindy missions like "kill 30 GUN soldiers" or whatever, sure, yeah, maybe having huge playground style islands could make that palatable to a certain type of person. Doesn't mean it's a healthy type of gameplay, though. Lots of people love to just watch numbers go up and will do all kinds of brain numbing activities as long as that still happens.

I like the branching story system. I like it being presented as this Outrun-style map you navigate across.

Having grindy objectives like "destroy 10 battleships" is what makes it lame. I think having better level design would help here immensely -- instead of grinding out some tedious objective to change paths, literally have it be two different physical pathways through the stage. The high road leads one place, the low road leads another.

You could still have some of the objective stuff, but maybe just reduce it. Like imagine you get to the end of the level, the goal ring is in front of you, but next to it is a locked door. You need two key cards to open it. If you went exploring earlier in the level, you might find those key cards hidden in some offices somewhere.

Or imagine a level based around vaults. At several choke points through the map, you get to pick and choose which vault to open to take a different path, and each path has unique dialog and interactions so you can get a taste of what each offers, and then the final vault door lets you pick which goal you want to complete.

Maybe one level has time pressure and you have to race to activate something. Failing the race doesn't fail the stage, it just shuffles you off to a different path for the next level.

The story needs to be a lot more general, too. Shadow's story too easily stops making sense when you consider there's probably only three or four "plotlines" and if you shift across alliances to dramatically, you end up in the middle of another plotline with your old one getting ignored. All of this "hey shadow, do this random job for me" stuff needs to go away. Put much more focus on Shadow searching for information. Give him agency instead of just Shadow stumbling his way into and out of a regular Sonic game plot that's happening in the background.

I would literally throw just everything else into the trash. Everything. No cars (Shadow doesn't need them), no guns (clashes with the fast-paced running gameplay), no aliens to take power away from SA2's plot of a grandfather desperate to save his granddaughter and going insane when she dies in a military accident. Seriously, how weird is it how they sort of reform Gerald in this game? Or at least take away his agency? And then in the next game (Sonic 06), Shadow is working for the same military that killed Maria and drove Gerald insane.

Just start over from "Shadow died, but actually didn't, and he can't remember anything" and delete the whole "promised time" apocalypse garbage and Shadow being made in from a stupid alien blood pact. Only problem is, I don't know what you'd replace that with.

[pinchraccoon]

Pinch Reviews: Resident Evil 4 (Remake)

I hold a lot of love for Resident Evil 4, the original, that is. I'd been pretty interested in 4make (as it will henceforth be called) for large parts of its dev cycle, and after playing the original a mere six months prior, I felt that when I played the game near launch, I was pretty cognizant of changes and differences made to the game that would be felt either extremely positively or extremely negatively.

I am very happy to report that this game, despite it changing plenty, retains the vast majority of the spirit of the game, and remains extremely fun, replayable, and tense for its entire runtime.

I'll attempt to review the game in short and spoiler-free quickly here so as to not spoil any changes for anyone who isn't interested in hearing about such things. 4make makes excellent use of the modern hardware that it released for in order to provide crisp, satisfying gameplay, consisting of responsive gunplay, the same integral inventory management, and exploration of unique and intriguing areas that I would say, even to those who aren't fans of the series, but are looking for an "in" to the survival-horror genre, could very easily enjoy. At the end of the day, the game is still Resident Evil 4. All of the praise that one could give to that game can, by and large, be given to this game as well.

Now to discuss the changes made to this game. My listing of changes will not be comprehensive, as there are far more than I care to list, but those that I do detail will be in the interest of explaining the spirit of the changes at hand.

Graphical updates:

The game is beautiful. What do you want me to say. I can look at Leon Kennedy my beautiful malewife in better quality than ever before. This is a net positive. (although the graphical differences only provide a "different" experience not a "better" experience)

Expanded exploration:

RE4 had multiple sections that would incentivize the player to explore, but large portions of the collectibles were reasonably easy to miss. 4make seeks to expand on the exploration present in the original by adding a map with waypoints, markers, and other smaller quests for Leon to embark on in each major area of the game. Initially, I was split on these sections, however as the chunk of my psyche that requires me to pick up lots and lots of little goodies took over, I came to quite enjoy it. The increased focus on collecting and exploration can allow the player to upgrade their weapons more efficiently, without the stress placed on them to pick and choose upgrades that they'd keep for the whole of the game. I like this change, as you *can* ignore it all if you'd like, but if you want more stuff to do or more money to throw at your problems, you can do that as well.

The Parry:

Leon can parry with knives, so long as he has one that isn't broken. That's cool as fuck. You can parry chainsaws. Parrying an unarmed melee cuts the enemies' hand off. I love parrying. Good addition. (also it helps to alleviate some of the balancing issues present in RE4 relating to not having a lot of options in the close range.)

Ashley:

No longer tied to a health bar, Ashley now operates on a "downed" system that basically means that you can tell her to follow or stay, but if she gets hit, she's on the ground and needs to be picked back up, lest she be vulnerable to kidnapping or death. This alleviates some of the problems with Ashley eating all of your healing items through very little fault of your own. I like this change.

Boss fight tweaks:

Some fights are practically unchanged, like Menendez, while others are completely reworked, Like Ramon Salazar. Some are even just flat out omitted, like U-3. I'll refer to each and give a brief description of changes and whether I like them or not.

Del Lago: Removed some QTE elements in favor of real-time steering. Largely unchanged. Still fun.

El Gigante: Practically the same.

Menendez: Largely the same.

Verdugo: Pretty much the same, but Leon is more responsive now compared to the tank controls of old, so it is a bit easier. A-OK.

Ramon Salazar: Complete overhaul, unique arena, unique boss form, unique attacks. Nothing is the same. I'm kinda indifferent though.

U-3: Completely Omitted. Good Riddance.

Jack Krauser: COMPLETE overhaul, he is WAY fucking better in every conceivable way, narratively, gameplay wise, the whole way down. Whereas I would once dread Krauser's fight because it was a bit of a slog, now I hold the Krauser fight in high regard as perhaps the best narrative moment in the game.

Saddler: Doesn't suck ass now.

Ultimately I like the boss changes made quite a bit, very little that wasn't broken got "fixed" and I'm happy with that. The largest changes really come from the updated combat systems.

Story:

4make has a much greater emphasis on providing characterization to each of the characters, and provides a much greater narrative weight to what Leon, Krauser, Ashley and Luis go through. I would be willing to say that in terms of impact this game might win out for me, but everyone is entitled to their own take as to what were the "bette" story aspects individually.

The Regenerators:

This one is gonna be real specific, but bear with me. Regenerators are not scary in this game after about 30 seconds of having knowledge that they exist. First, the way they're introduced is changed from the iconic "thaw out" scene from the original, to them just, sorta being alive and active? It still spooked me a bit, as I was expecting the original scene, and I wasn't prepared to take one on, but I was quickly soothed once I learned that you can parry the regenerators. Being able to parry any enemy puts the player in a state where with reasonable timing and attention, most enemies who are parryable can do not a damn thing to you. This makes the Regenerator into more of a combat aspect, as opposed to the horrifying wall they were originally. It's a nitpick, sure, but this is legitimately my *one* issue with this game.

Overall, I'm willing to surmise that 4make is a pretty faithful, but extremely fresh modernization of a classic title, and while it works to bring the game to modern audiences with its updated graphics and mechanics, I don't feel that the experience is better or worse than the original. This isn't to 4make's detriment as much as it speaks to the unyielding quality present in the original Resident Evil 4.

Play the game.

[cathriana]

So, after much consideration, I decided to give a shot at Nanowrimo this year, except I'm not.

Basically, since I'm still in the worldbuilding phase, the amount of work I pour into my project doesn't necessarily translate into words, so it's not going to be the 50 000 words mark that is going to be my mark. The aim this month is to complete this map :

This is the map of the Empire, which you may not have seen me talk about in the past. This is where the main story takes place and I've overalled part of its geography and most importantly, switched to a better PC that can handle a map 10 times bigger and more precise than what I was working with before.

Problem is, that change of scale pretty much fucked up what I had done with the previous one, so I have to start back from the beginning, with the placement of the cities, the delimitations between duchies, as well as some cultural overall since some climates got completely changed. Thus, my goal for that month, is to get get back remake everything that was lost, and more : by the end of this month, I hope to have :

placed every cities and keeps of importance (about 300 in the previous version and I expect many more in this new one thanks to the added detail)

Named each of those cities, accordingly with the local language, which I have yet to really work on outside of their "vibe" (7 non-english languages, but luckily inventing toponymy isn't too hard)

Established a quick lore for each location, with more lore the bigger the location gets : who built it, when, why, what's its current importance, quick description, maybe even a little sketch if it's really important (that is, if I can draw something decent and I can't draw for shit) or at least pictural references (that's why you can see me reblog things with "something-something reference".)

Same thing for the duchies : delimitate 'em, name 'em, determine who rules and/or ruled 'em etc... (about 200 in the previous version, luckily this number shouldn't move too much in the rework)

If by the end of this month I manage to do all that, I'll call that a resounding success, though I do doubt I can pull it off in one month, I doubt a year would even suffice, but who cares, defenitly not me : the objective of the Nanowrimo is to get shit done.

So prepare youself for a heap of random screenshots and detailed histories of a 2000 soul fishing town that has 0 plot relevance and hails from a world you know nothing of, because I count on posting everything I do here : time to finally turn this writing blog into a blog that's actually about writing. If at any point you have questions, curiosities or whatever, don't hesitate, and if to the contrary I'm clogging your dash with those, feel free to block #cat writes.

Wish me luck, and good wishes to anyone who does Nanowrimo as well !

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-pokemon-fan]

My Thoughts on Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

Uh oh, someone else's take on these controversial ass games. I'm sure everything that can be said about them, has. But as is my custom, I need to vent. For a bit of background, I have never played Diamond or Pearl. I got Platinum for Christmas in 2008 and have only ever played that for my Sinnoh experience, up until this month when I borrowed Brilliant Diamond from the library and hardcore Nuzlocked it.

First, let's talk about the ways BDSP is better than DPPt, because it would be flat out dishonest to pretend that they offer nothing to Sinnoh and are completely horrible.

HMs are gone. Thank god. HMs have always been bad, but with 8 of them in Sinnoh, it's especially bad in DPPt. It actually fundamentally changes how you can build a team when you don't always need to have a Surfer and Flier with you.

EXP All. I love to see it. Majorly cuts down on grinding. I really wish I could turn it off just for purposes of not accidentally overleveling, but that's kinda okay because of...

Access to your boxes anywhere. Honestly probably the best contribution that SwSh made to the series. I love this feature. Aside from when you're in gyms, overleveling isn't always a problem. It's easier to switch up your team to try out new mons and experiment, too. If you liked the difficulty of having to make it through a dungeon or route with the team you went in with, that's the best part: it's optional. Options are never a bad thing.

The music and sound effects are in higher fidelity. There's a charm to the Nintendo DS sound font, but the remastered soundtrack sounds great (I generally prefer Zame's remasters though). Don't get me started on the unpatched Day 1 soundtrack, though.

The Grand Underground is neat. It doesn't do much good for me in a Nuzlocke, but I can appreciate its value for vanilla runs. There's more to do on the singleplayer side, and Scarlet and Violet have me totally roaming-encounter-pilled. For all purposes besides making encounters straightforward in Nuzlockes, fuck random encounters.

You can register four key items instead of just one. Switching between fishing and cycling was never easier. They took the Gen VI approach of directional registration, which works off of muscle memory instead of Gen V's list. I like it.

Boss fights are now harder. They have better held items (including super effectiveness nullification berries), better abilities, and trickier coverage moves. They're harder to plan around and I like that minor bump in difficulty.

The town map moving from being a key item to a button on the pause menu, and being able to fly from the town map screen. Both things just make navigating Sinnoh a bit easier (which you know it needed). Also a welcome addition from SwSh.

That's it. From here on out, it's just complaining. Those complaints fit into two camps. 1) Quality of life updates aside, BDSP is a poor remake of DP, and 2) BDSP is a remake of DP, not Platinum. The direction of the game seemed to be "make it as faithful as possible to Diamond and Pearl, but also make it worse in random and baffling ways." I can go off about the Platinum problem later, so let's go over the ways BDSP is just a bad remake.

The friendship rework. Gen VI introduced Pokémon Amie, and anyone who bothered to put enough time into it would find their Pokémon randomly doing better in battle. Having high affection created a chance that your mon will either dodge an attack, tank a fatal hit with 1 HP, or land a critical hit. This has been folded into the friendship mechanic, so now any Pokémon who hits the newly-raised friendship cap will now have these buffs. I'm of two minds with this one. I think it's neat that the Pokémon you spend the most time with can do better in battle. It rewards sticking to a team of your favorites, which is what NPCs usually encourage you to do. Thing is, I think this should be optional. Anything that makes the game easier or harder via RNG should be in the player's control, and this isn't. Where this becomes a real nuisance is that once a Pokémon reaches the point of using these buffs, using them is battle is a slight but cumulative time loss. Every time you send them out, the game takes the time to shake them back and forth and put up a dialogue box with pointless flavor text. Every turn you do an attack, there's another useless and repetitive dialogue box. Every time the buff PROCs, a little heart animation plays. Bro. Just shut up and let me play the game. It's actually very annoying, especially during grinding sessions when I. Just. Want. To. Kill. My. Opponent. Jesus Christ.

As a side effect of the friendship rework, the friendship checker Pokétch app is now tuned to the higher cap. That means it's just about useless when checking on your friendship evolution mons. Your Golbat, Budew, and Buneary will all evolve before they show two big hearts. Now they'll have two big hearts when they have access to the RNG buffs, but you'll know that anyway because every battle just got several seconds longer.

The art direction. I won't spend too much time on this because it's been torn to shreds already, but I do need to mention it. Come on. The chibi style worked in DPPt because the DS required it. At every opportunity, they showed characters at true scale. They were intended to be life-size and just appeared small when they had to. I'm sorry, I just can't take Cyrus seriously when he's talking about his plan for recreating the world because he just looks like an angry little Funko Pop. And that little waddle that everyone has... ugh. Gross.

This is truly a tiny nitpick, but it looks like chibi Lucas's textures were applied to the T-posed model without consideration as to how they looked when he is standing normally. Look closely, his vest looks like it has tiny sleeves that come over his shoulder. It probably wouldn't bother me if I felt better about the game as a whole, but now every little problem sticks out like a sore thumb.

The bicycle has some weird problems. In high gear, it can't move just one tile at a time. It has a long windup time on low gear. It can't maintain speed when making a 180 turn on one tile. It's just weird and functions worse than it used to. The cycling outfit is also not as stylish as the defaults, but that's not major.

Registered key items are activated with Start, not Y. Uh-uh, no. Not having it. DP took advantage of the new buttons on the DS and functionally replaced Start with X and Select with Y. This was the format all the way up through SwSh, and they just randomly decided to fuck it up. They didn't even map something different to Y! It's just a useless button now! Sure, it just means I have to move my thumb a bit further, but it's frustrating that they threw away over a decade of precedent for a less convenient system. (P:LA and SV get a pass for changing things because they alter the whole control scheme)

Pokémon have their Gen VIII movesets. Some of the changes are non consequential, like how Zubat now has Absorb because Leech Life got buffed. Some are sucker punches, like Jupiter's Skuntank having Belch at Spear Pillar. Others fuck up how Pokémon function. Mime Jr needs to know Mimic to evolve, meaning it is now a useless baby until Lv 32 instead of 18. Infernape used to learn Flare Blitz at Lv 57, giving it a powerful STAB move in the very late game. Now it's at 68, making Flame Wheel its most powerful Fire move by level up until the post game.

That's all that comes to mind right now. I'm sure I'll pile more nonsense onto this. I just want to be done with this game but there's so much grinding before the Elite Four. Psh.

[sonic-mania-mods-downloadar]

sonic mania mods download 100% working LX2#

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 This tool allows you to use mods and cheat codes in Sonic Mania. Make sure to extract the .7z file into your Sonic Mania game folder! Not doing so will result. Top 15 Best Sonic Mania Mods (All Free) ; S1 Ending Flowers in Green Hill ; S2 Signpost, HUD, Star Post ; Hedgehog Music Sprites ; Better Sonic. Once you downloaded Mod Loader .zip file, go to your Sonic Mania installation directory. The default path is usually. Download and install Mania Mod Manager · 2. Download Sonic Mania Mods · 3. Place the level folder into 'Mods' · 4. Enable the level in Mania Mod. 9 Or simply change the tone of it by adding a few graphical enhancements to your Sonic Mania title. In any case, there are many types of Sonic Mania mods out there. Check Out This Mod. It brings back the flowers that you can see near the end of the first popular Sonic title and adds them to the Green Hill Zone in Sonic Mania. Interesting note: this mod is an entire creation by its author, as the assets are all made by hand to mimic those that were included back in the older Sonic titles. A fantastic mod, no doubt about it. And one of the best you can add if you used to play Sonic 2 back in the day. These replace the traditional Sonic victory dance with something a tad more inappropriate, putting it mildly. This is one of those mods that changes almost nothing in the game, but you just feel compelled to adding it to a list just in case anyone wants so mindless fun in their Sonic games. But this one still deserves a spot — even if not in one of the highest-ranking positions of my list! It simply makes Sonic falling look really, really cool. Awesome visual-themed mods are a fun addition to spice things up. We can all be zoomers if we truly believe…. The creator of this mod had enough of that crap and decided to make entire new blue sphere maps. This mod basically adds an entire zone to the game based on The Lion King franchise. The creator of the mod has made sure to replace all of the sprites in the game and turned Sonic into Shadow. And they blend quite naturally. You might think that downloading this mod will give you a complete rework of Sonic Mania and add new maps, adventure, and quests; but nope. Talk about useless fun. This mod changes every single asset in the game that was present in S1 and adds it to Sonic Mania, making the game feel much more like its original counterpart. There are no changes to the gameplay included here — all you get are new sprites to be used in the game. Why play with Sonic when you can play with the Internet legend that is Sanic? The mod is pretty new and only the first act has been done as of the time of writing of this article , but be sure to check it out now. Sonic Gold is a complete rework of the game. It tells an entire different story and comes packed with dozens of new areas to explore. And this will likely be re-worked many times over in the coming years so keep your eyes on this as time goes on. This mod attempts to tell a new story about Sonic that has never been told before. Obviously a fan-made one, but still working around the classic lore. Born in the first half of the 90s, video games have been a part of my life ever since I was introduced to Age of Empires I by my dad. I'm a Mass Communications graduate with a specialization in Marketing, as well as a hardcore gamer. My aim is to bring you quality content so you can get the best out of your games and take your experience to the next level! If you buy something we may get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more. Image source Challenge yourself with the best remake of Sonic The Hedgehog that exists. And the vibes alone make it deserving of a spot on my list. Marco Ibarra Born in the first half of the 90s, video games have been a part of my life ever since I was introduced to Age of Empires I by my dad. Stay Connected.

[sonic-mania-mods-downloadqp]

sonic mania mods download mod HKPR#

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 This tool allows you to use mods and cheat codes in Sonic Mania. Make sure to extract the .7z file into your Sonic Mania game folder! Not doing so will result. Top 15 Best Sonic Mania Mods (All Free) ; S1 Ending Flowers in Green Hill ; S2 Signpost, HUD, Star Post ; Hedgehog Music Sprites ; Better Sonic. Once you downloaded Mod Loader .zip file, go to your Sonic Mania installation directory. The default path is usually. Download and install Mania Mod Manager · 2. Download Sonic Mania Mods · 3. Place the level folder into 'Mods' · 4. Enable the level in Mania Mod. 9 Or simply change the tone of it by adding a few graphical enhancements to your Sonic Mania title. In any case, there are many types of Sonic Mania mods out there. Check Out This Mod. It brings back the flowers that you can see near the end of the first popular Sonic title and adds them to the Green Hill Zone in Sonic Mania. Interesting note: this mod is an entire creation by its author, as the assets are all made by hand to mimic those that were included back in the older Sonic titles. A fantastic mod, no doubt about it. And one of the best you can add if you used to play Sonic 2 back in the day. These replace the traditional Sonic victory dance with something a tad more inappropriate, putting it mildly. This is one of those mods that changes almost nothing in the game, but you just feel compelled to adding it to a list just in case anyone wants so mindless fun in their Sonic games. But this one still deserves a spot — even if not in one of the highest-ranking positions of my list! It simply makes Sonic falling look really, really cool. Awesome visual-themed mods are a fun addition to spice things up. We can all be zoomers if we truly believe…. The creator of this mod had enough of that crap and decided to make entire new blue sphere maps. This mod basically adds an entire zone to the game based on The Lion King franchise. The creator of the mod has made sure to replace all of the sprites in the game and turned Sonic into Shadow. And they blend quite naturally. You might think that downloading this mod will give you a complete rework of Sonic Mania and add new maps, adventure, and quests; but nope. Talk about useless fun. This mod changes every single asset in the game that was present in S1 and adds it to Sonic Mania, making the game feel much more like its original counterpart. There are no changes to the gameplay included here — all you get are new sprites to be used in the game. Why play with Sonic when you can play with the Internet legend that is Sanic? The mod is pretty new and only the first act has been done as of the time of writing of this article , but be sure to check it out now. Sonic Gold is a complete rework of the game. It tells an entire different story and comes packed with dozens of new areas to explore. And this will likely be re-worked many times over in the coming years so keep your eyes on this as time goes on. This mod attempts to tell a new story about Sonic that has never been told before. Obviously a fan-made one, but still working around the classic lore. Born in the first half of the 90s, video games have been a part of my life ever since I was introduced to Age of Empires I by my dad. I'm a Mass Communications graduate with a specialization in Marketing, as well as a hardcore gamer. My aim is to bring you quality content so you can get the best out of your games and take your experience to the next level! If you buy something we may get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more. Image source Challenge yourself with the best remake of Sonic The Hedgehog that exists. And the vibes alone make it deserving of a spot on my list. Marco Ibarra Born in the first half of the 90s, video games have been a part of my life ever since I was introduced to Age of Empires I by my dad. Stay Connected.

[miloscat]

[Review] The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS)

A scuffed classic, slightly smoothed.

It’s Ocarina of Time. Much celebrated, often imitated... highly overrated?? Perhaps familiarity has bred contempt for this game that was a childhood constant for me. Its relative simplicity has made it a good candidate for randomisation; I have watched and enjoyed many shuffled runs under different parameters. It also has laid a solid foundation for the series to build off, whether it be the subversion of Majora’s Mask, the iterative depth of Twilight Princess, or just the additions of lore, creatures, and people that persist and enrich the later stories.

But as I age my critical eye has gazed at the underdeveloped stock characters, the barrenness of its early 3D world, the tedium of required backtracking and slow, repetitive tasks. These complaints really only revealed themselves in hindsight, as my fresh eyes were only enchanted by the possibility and scope of this world. I was hoping for a little of that sense of wonder by finally visiting this remake. But I think I’ve been too desensitised by watching speedruns; my own fault of course! I did take some interest from the graphical enhancements on this more powerful handheld: smoother models, higher quality textures, added details, not to mention the more stable framerate.

Compared to the more liberty-taking MM remake, this one is very straight. The only actual tweak to the game world is some slight retexturing in the infamous Water Temple, although you still have to go through all the boring motions to clear it. The control changes are perhaps the most significant: the addition of touchscreen buttons, letting you bind an extra item as well as a permanent ocarina button and live-consultable song list (plus the boots more conveniently use the item button system now). Reaching across to them is not as comfortable as the N64 controller’s C buttons, though. The second screen being used to display maps is also welcome.

Apart from that there’s a boss refight mode, the Master Quest maps as a bonus after completing the main game (maybe I’ll check those out in another ten years or so...!), and an overbearing if highly-ignorable extra hint system. The visual upgrades are a plus, although amusingly my friend Laura pointed out that both the original N64 game and this remake on the 3DS’s dinky screen are technically running at 240p! Overall it’s one of those remakes that makes me question “Did this need to exist? Could Grezzo have been better served creating original titles in this style?” For me my preference would be no and yes, respectively, but here we are. The original game holds up just fine, but this is a neat way to play it if you don’t mind hand cramps over long sessions, I guess.

[stuffman-main]

are you wondering what i’ve been up to? shit has been very busy at home so i was making little progress on astrolancer, and although things have calmed down i only have about two months left before i go back to work, which isn’t enough to finish the game, so i changed plans once again.

i’m a much better programmer than i used to be, so i’m going to use my remaining time to remake the wots engine and try to finish all functions and animations, then hopefully by the time i have to go back to work all that’s left to do is make maps, write story, and draw the art.

what’s different this time? i managed to program a window system, so instead of wasting hours calculating pixels and margins and placing every UI element manually onscreen, and completely fucking it up every time i need to add a new button or something, i just make a list of all the things in it and it puts the window together on the fly. (it looks ugly right now because i haven’t drawn window textures and borders yet, but once I do it’ll draw all that automatically too.) it also has a standardized system for interacting with buttons, toggles, lists etc so i won’t be constantly hacking those together either.

some features are gonna have to be scaled back though. i’m getting rid of fog of war because i’m not ready to tackle programming an AI that doesn’t cheat in it, and dropping the iconic AW side view battle scenes in favor of short and punchy on-map attack animations.

i’m also revisiting some design decisions about how powers work, which in retrospect were overcomplicated and dumb, so maybe the delays will have been better for the game in the long run.

[rpgsandbox]

Sapience is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game set in a distant cluster of stars that has been populated by huge sleeper ships fleeing system-wide wars back at Earth. Humans are the dominant species; along with them are the Gorillas, Orangutans, Dolphins, and Octopuses they genetically uplifted to intelligence, plus the only sapient alien species ever encountered (who mysteriously look a lot like old Earth legends of Goblins!)

The cluster has been embroiled in a Cold War very like the American Civil War for more than a century now, between one side who treat the uplift species as servants and slaves, and the other who treat them as equals.

There are many colonisable (and colonised) planets and systems in the Cluster, terraformed by a long vanished species who left behind enigmatic ruins and mysteries, and a very strange plant that only rarely fruits, but those who eat the fruit, well, it changes them...

Characters can involve themselves in the war, in trade or piracy, in treasure hunting and Indiana Jones type escapades, in espionage or politics, in scientific research, or simply explore the cluster and the many cultures that have sprung up since the arrival from Earth.

We believe that the best fiction (and especially science fiction) holds up a mirror, so that we can explore facets of our own lives safe behind the allegory of "make believe".

Star Wars was really about the Vietnam War. Godzilla was about the atom bomb. The Battlestar Galactica remake was an answer to 9/11. And, of course, there’s The Planet of the Apes - its message was about the hubris of man, and how people use science and religion to prop up inequality.

Sapience was designed in-part as a way of exploring the increasingly rampant discrimination, racism, privilege, and inequality in our own society. Throughout much of the setting, non-humans are treated as second-class citizens at best (and often, much worse). The game asks the question "I'm sapient now, shouldn't that mean I have autonomy and the right to self-determinization?". Further complicating this is the very recent development of AI, raising further questions about whether biological sapience is more important than mechanical - should we still own machines if we've allowed them to think?

Of course, these themes wont be for everyone, and there's certainly no rule that says the game must be played that way. Take out the darker aspects, and it's a Space Opera where you can travel through space meeting new emerging cultures, trading and exploring, treasure hunting, solving mysteries, wooing great beasts and battling women. Or should that be the other way around?

Sapience uses a brand new die system known as the Focus Engine. Characters build a die pool with three different colors of D6 dice based on their Mental, Physical, and Social attributes. When a skill check is made, a number of dice equal to the skill level are drawn from the die pool and rolled. The dice then generate two completely different results at the same time - Effort and Focus.

Your Effort is the number of dice that roll 4 or greater, and they determine your level of success (or failure) at your skill check, compared against a static difficulty or an opponents' Effort.

Your Focus is the number of dice you pulled that match the color of the Attribute your skill is keyed to. It is used to modify your skill through what are effectively adverbs - you might use Focus to perform your skill Quietly (making it hard for people to hear you doing it), or Quickly (improving the speed it's performed at) and so on. In combat? Focus adds to damage, because you did it Violently. Various uses of Focus are described in the book, but players and GM's are encouraged to come up with new ways to modify skill usage with Focus.

Wounds add other dice into your die pool. Any wound dice drawn during a skill check don't add to Effort or Focus, so the more wounded you are, the less likely you are to succeed at a skill. Better get some healing to remove those bad dice from your pool!

The Sapience rulebook has all of the rules you need to play the game, including:

Rules for creating and advancing your character, with 6 playable species' and a "guided freeform" method of skill and trait selection and development.

A detailed timeline of the history of the colonization of this new region of space, and all you need to know about the current state of the Cluster, its politics, many of its colony worlds and asteroid settlements, the factions and guilds involved in the cold war, and much much more.

Rules for creating and crewing your own spaceship.

Melee and starship combat

A discussion on the darker themes of the game, how to incorporate them into your own stories and campaigns, and how to not use them when all you want is a fun space opera where you're a talking Ape whose best friend is an Octopus.

A whole bunch of starship battlemaps (which you could even use in other sci-fi games, I don't mind), a Cluster Map, Personal and Starship character sheets, quick guides, and much more. You'll also gain access to a webpage where you can download all of those things in PDF form in color and text-free and printer friendly, to print out and use at the gaming table (and they're high res, so you can use a VTT)

And so much more!

Kickstarter campaign ends: Thu, July 1 2021 7:00 PM BST

Website: [Sapience RPG] [facebook] [twitter]

[smokeybrandreviews]

Smokey brand Retrospective: The Gift and the Curse

Brendan Fraser has seen a resurgence lately and i love every bit of that. Dude has been one of my favorite actors for decades. I’m an Eighties kid who grew up during the Nineties so i was right there when he came onto the scene. I was a massive fan f all of his early work; Bedazzled, George of the Jungle, Encino Man, Airheads, Blast from the Past, and even Monkeybone. Dude hit his stride right around the Aughts and then completely disappeared. We found out later it was because of some really f*cked up sh*t but he made it through and proved he still had with Robot Man on Doom Patrol. I’m so glad this guy got another shot at this movie star sh*t but i wanted to revisit the franchise that put him on the map: The Mummy.

The Mummy

I love this campy ass flick, man. I saw this one in the theaters because, at the time, i was super into CG. It had only been a few years since Jurassic Park blew that sh*t out the water and only a few months after The Matrix made everyone sh*t the bed. The Mummy just missed that window but it was still incredibly enjoyable. This was my Indiana Jones because i didn’t care about Indy for a long time. It’s not that they were bad movies, i was just too young to appreciate them. The Mummy came out right at the time i started to really understand why i liked cinema, what a good permanence truly was, and how beautiful a film could be. The Mummy covered almost all of those bases. Fraser did an excellent job as Rick O’Connor and Rachel Weisz stunned as Evelyn Carnahan. F*cking Evie, man. I was already a fan of Fraser but this movie made me really pay attention to Weisz and she became one of my favorite actresses. It helps tremendously that she is f*cking gorgeous! Rounding out the cast is John Hannah as Evie’s brother, Johnathan and Arnold Vosloo as the titular mummy, Imhotep. Also, i can’t not mention the scummiest of scumbags, Benny, portrayed so effortlessly by Kevin J. O'Connor.

I absolutely adore this film. It’s a not the best example of Nineties cinema, how can it be, and it’s a terrible remake of the original Universal Mummy but it does what it wants to do very well. I love the ideas and the world they built with this campy clusterf*ck. It shouldn’t work, it should be terrible, but it’s one of the funnest films i have ever seen. It has it’s issues, absolutely, but they are minor compared the non-stop action, the incredible cinematography, the dated but ambitious CG effects ,and solid performances from every principal actor. They really let Fraser do his thing and that energy carried over to the rest of the cast. Evie is every bit the bad ass as Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley but is still a very girly-girl; Something that seems to be frowned upon nowadays. Imhotep id an unrelenting, vicious antagonist who controls powers from long ago, literally willing the seven plagues of Egypt into modern times. This movie is all over the f*cking place but it worse so well and every time i see it, i have as much fun as i did way back when i was a ripened fourteen years old.

The Mummy Returns

Boy, this one suffers terrible from Sequelitis. It does nothing new and is an almost exact retread of the first film but we have new characters and a new villain in the guise of... The Scorpion King! Yes, this is the first film that titular Arachno-Monarch makes his first appearance portrayed by a very young, very beefy, and later, very poorly rendered, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson! That’s right, long before he was Franchise Viagra, way before he was punching out Dom into a stalemate in them god awful Fast flicks, The Rock got his start here, in the sequel to The Mummy and he’s f*cking terrible! Oh my god, is he bad but it works. His awful, awful, performance fits right in with the utter camp of this ridiculous franchise ans, to no one’s surprise, i loved every second of it. Now, as much as i love The Rock in this thing, i have to absolutely give it to Patricia Velasquez as Meela Nais, the physical reincarnation of Imhotep’s regicide partner and f*ck-buddy, Anck-Su-Namun. I didn’t talk about her much in the entry about The Mummy but that as mostly because she was more a plot device rather than a character. She isn’t much else in this one either but at least we got to actually see her for more than ten minutes. Plus, that fight between her and Nefertiri was f*cking glorious. Sixteen year old Smokey appreciated the f*ck out of that.

The returning cast hits their points perfectly. That chemistry never falters. Fraser, Weisz, and Hannah are exceptional together and Vosloo is, somehow, both far more menacing and hilarious at the same time. There’s this scene toward the end where he is utterly defeated and it’s the funniest sh*t i have ever seen. I also really enjoy both Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bay far more in this one than the last because he gets to do sh*t finally. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje was also a welcome surprise as  the muscle, Lock-Nah. Dude just kinds of stands around and i think he gets into a fight with Fehr that was pretty cool but a little trite. Obviously, as a film from the early Aughts, it has it;s problems. There’s a ton of culturally insensitive sh*t that Zoomers would probably be upset about but, you know, f*ck em. It’s like a sense f humor is illegal nowadays. That said, having Rachel Weisz, as gorgeous and half-naked as she is and was, portray an Egyptian is a little much nowadays. At least Patricia Velasquez is a type of Brown? An attempt was made. This thing is a mess and i enjoy every second of it. The Mummy Returns is substantially worse that the first but, at the same time, just so batsh*t that it is equally as entertaining. But f*ck that kid, though. Every time he’s onscreen all of the good times are thrown right out the goddamn window!

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

I gave this one the hard pass for years. It looked like trash. Like straight up dog sh*t. This thing came out seven years after Returns and i just didn’t care. I was one hundred percent in my hipster film snob era and couldn’t be bothered. For a full f*cking decade and some change. Seriously, i just watched this thing the day before yesterday. For the first time. It was the inspiration for this retrospective because, after seeing this train wreck, i went back to check out the first two just to get the taste of dogsh*t out of my mouth. There are several changes made to the formula that immediately take me out of this film. First, and most egregiously, no more Rachel Weisz! She didn’t come back for the third. The reason behind her absence has run the gambit from vanity, to scheduling conflicts, to literally never getting a script. I don;t really care why, all i know is that her absence was felt. Maria Bello did her best but she isn’t MY Evie. Another “choice” was to age up that awful f*cking kid into an awful f*cking adult. That’s right, this is a “passing of the torch flick” and Luke Ford’s Alex O'Connell was supposed to take over the franchise going forward. That didn’t happen because this is Rick’s franchise. The Mummy would be nothing without Fraser and the at was proven when this thing tanked. It wasn’t all bad though. I really liked the new mummy, Han. They did some really fin things with his abilities and Jet Li never once phoned in an action scene. Unfortunately, even with the strength of the brand and outstanding lead performances, this thing still sucks.

I had a time with Tomb but it wasn’t like the time i had with it’s predecessors. I don’t know if it’s because I'm so much older and hardened by life but all i see is the flaws in this one. It doesn’t have the nostalgia goggles like the first two so i can’t enjoy it like i enjoy those. I just see plot holes instead of camp. Bad CG instead of rustic attempt. Poor set pieces instead of Nineties jank. Bad character writing instead of unfortunately hilarious dialogue. Tomb isn’t terrible but it ain’t good wither. It;s mediocre and i know the first two aren’t great but they’re better than whatever this wanted to be. It’s weird to see because there are a lot of great ideas here. I can see the vision that lays outside the margins and it’s frustrating. Fraser does is in his element as Rick and Li’s Han is a physical powerhouse but that’s not enough. As awesome as this movie gets when those two are on screen, literally everything around them is dismissible and i don’t understand how or why. I think a lot of the chemistry was lost when the focus was shifted to Alex from Rick and the recasting of Eve really didn’t do this film any favors. However, even with all of my frustrations, i can’t say i had a terrible time with this thing. It was entertaining, if a little bogus.

[gaphic]

@geeeny02 @ivehadanapophany @lastoneout

THANKS FOR ENABLING ME YALL

ok so, this isn't a criticism of the movie Raya so much as an observation of a corner disney have been steadily painted into with their most well-known IP: The Princesses.

It's pretty clear the studio has been struggling with their princesses for a while now- all of their live-action remakes have made painstaking (and painful) attempts to 'update' their female protagonists, and a lot of those changes are taking aim at the same problem: being a princess needs to like,,,, Mean something nowadays

Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Belle, Tiana, and Rapunzel all essentially become princesses as a reward for being Good. Their royalty is completely meaningless, it's just the romantic idea of 'being a princess' that little girls love.

Ariel goes from being a princess to being a princess and it means nothing, Jasmine's beef with her station in life has barely anything to do with being a princess (forced marriage isn't exactly exclusive to royalty!) and Merida just gets the exact same conflict but worse

Pocahontas stands out as the first princess to not really be a princess, but she's also the ONLY princess based on a person we objectively know existed, and thus a huge outlier. Mulan is the real change. She isn't royal at all, and I get the sense she was only included in the princess brand because... what else were they going to do with her? All their other animated leading women were united, one IP under marketing, amen. So it was either market Mulan alone, which would be strange, or sneak her in with the princesses and really push her more feminine outfits. Breathing a sigh of relief, disney went back to their usual fodder with Tiana and Rapunzel

...Then there was Frozen.

I honestly think it was a coincidence, but Frozen introduced the idea of the princess doing actual royal activities. There's a coronation, a state dinner with ambassadors, a hint of power struggle when Elsa leaves! And then the movie was a SMASH fucking hit and revitalized the hell out of disney's image.

By this time the romantic image of The Disney Princess has long lost its shine, so the mouse is RABID to recapture that success.

Moana gets an aesthetic stand-in for a coronation with the shots including her headdress, and the first act of the movie sets up that she's being groomed to take over one day. She makes executive decisions and helps solve problems, but her being a princess still doesn't really matter to the story, and while the movie was a huge hit, Princess Moana didn't quite slot into the brand like her predecessors did

Frozen 2 got weirder. More vague allusions to governing with evacuating Arendelle, then Elsa is hastily de-princessed and Anna becomes queen offscreen with NO buildup

The live-action remakes? Well. They change the characters a lot. But their relationship to royalty stays very much the same. At first. Frozen comes out in 2013, Moana 2016, in 2017 Beauty and the Beast said nothing substantive about monarchy (just like the live action Cinderella + Maleficent) and everyone on earth hated it, and in 2019? We got Girlboss Jasmine. Oh dear.

Girlboss Jasmine is a PRINCESS alright! She wants to be the sultan! She has no formal policy in mind, but she gestures at slogans like 'my people make the city beautiful' and does complex political maneuvering like... reading maps. But nobody really likes that either

Mulan 2020 basically offloads the princess angle entirely and everyone hates that too

ENTER RAYA.

Did you even notice Raya is a princess? Raya is a princess. She's like the combination of both Frozens and Moana, having the vaguest possible allusions to the responsibility of her position (through her father, NOT herself!!!) and then rushing off on an adventure where her royalty is utterly irrelevant (the movie would actually be better if Raya wasn't a princess- if she was a servant in the palace who didn't know exactly what happened and thought she'd been betrayed by her leaders. If her rival was the princess of her country and that betrayal was the source of her distrust, rather than a broken 30-minute friendship with a total stranger) and doesn't even provide any glamour or romance. And then the movie bombed.

I highly doubt disney will stop trying to do princesses because of this, but I do think they're officially out of ideas. The only way to REALLY justify a character being a princess going forward would be to incorporate it into the story (because nobody is interested in that 'princess as a reward' shit anymore) and there's just no way to do that without a lot of bad press. Cause once you acknowledge a character's responsibilities as a royal in the plot, you're kinda forced to portray it either positively or negatively. Negative depictions ain't marketable. Positive depictions would be pro-monarchist propaganda

You might say 'well they could just go the Mulan route, and use 'princess' as a figurative term' and they are sure as fuck trying to do that in some of their marketing initiatives, but it's just not hitting. Not like they want it to. You can really only play that game with literal babies, because any girl over the age of 10 has developed enough cognition to feel condescended to by the insistence that every woman who accomplishes something is a 'princess'

Committing to that direction would constitute an admission that disney doesn't know or care how to market female protagonists without slapping a crown on them and adding them to the monolith. That's bad press disney doesn't need.

im sure some people will be disappointed by this but i hate monarchy so

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

Final Fantasy IV Review

Year: 1991

Original Platform: Super Nintendo (Originally introduced to Western audiences as Final Fantasy II, since the real II and III were not released outside of Japan at the time.)

Also available on: Nintendo DS, PSP (Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection), GameBoy Advance, Playstation One (Final Fantasy Chronicles), Steam (DS remake)

Version I Played: PSP

Synopsis:

Cecil Harvey is Batman a dark knight who follows orders from King Baron. The king tasks Cecil and his partner Kain with taking the crystals from the surrounding nations and cities. Cecil questions his king’s motives, leading to the revelation of a grand conspiracy. Cecil then goes on a quest to right his wrongs.

Gameplay:

The novel feature of this game was the ATB system – Active Timed Battle. This means that instead of you and the enemy waiting for your respective turns one at a time, each character takes their turn according their respective speed. One character may be slower than the other, so they will take longer to be able to perform an action. Basically, with ATB, if you wait too long to think about what to do on your turn, the enemy can hit you - JUST AS IF YOU WERE REALLY BATTLING IN REAL LIFE.

While Final Fantasy IV introduced ATB, it did not utilize the ATB gauge in actual battles. The ATB gauge is a visual bar during battle that shows your character’s speed. Whenever it’s filled, your character can perform an action. The gauge itself was first seen later in Final Fantasy V. Later remakes of Final Fantasy IV displayed the ATB gauge. Some configuration options were introduced later to give you the ability to change the battle system to active or wait. Putting it on wait would allow the timed battle to pause while you thought about what to do during your move.

Final Fantasy IV forsakes the customizable Job System and introduces characters with individual jobs. Kain is a dragoon, who can jump in the air and deal destructive damage. Rydia is a summoner. Yang is a monk. Etc, etc.

The Super Nintendo and PSP versions are more or less on par with each other in terms of difficulty. The Nintendo DS remake is really hard. Like REALLY hard. Like “throw-your-DS-across-the-room hard”. I myself have had trouble finishing it.

Graphics:

I haven’t played the original SNES version of Final Fantasy IV, but judging by the images it appears to be in this liminal state between NES and SNES. Not quite NES but not quite utilizing the full power of the SNES either.

The PSP version is somewhat reminiscent of the Anniversary Editions of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II, but it still has its own flair that outshines them.

Final Fantasy IV DS is pretty much a 3D remake in the same vein as Final Fantasy III DS, with an awesome opening FMV. The in-game cutscenes however now have VOICE ACTING. 

Now, the PlayStation One version has a FMV sequence that hasn’t aged well at all. We’re talking worse than the Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II FMV sequences from PlayStation One. I can’t even find a good snapshot from Google Images, probably because nobody wants to look at them ever again. You can find it on YouTube though.

Story:

Final Fantasy IV is well known for being the first GOOD story in a Final Fantasy game. Cecil’s personal journey of redemption rung in the minds and hearts of audiences. There’s a nice balance of focusing on individual struggles and an epic adventure to save the world.

The cast of characters is pretty wide. Like Final Fantasy II, several secondary characters come and go. There is one difference but I don’t want to spoil anything. I guess the least I could say is that Final Fantasy IV subverts what to expect after having played Final Fantasy II.

Like Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV includes crystals as an important plot device. This time they hold enormous power that the villain Golbez wishes to obtain for nefarious means.

While the story is infinitely superior in storytelling to Final Fantasy II, there are still some silly moments. I could best describe the bulk of the story as “Cecil and friends are on a race to capture each crystal around the world but something always gets in the way at the last minute.” While for the most part the story is done well, there are seemingly cartoonish moments involving random trapdoors and bewitched dolls. One particular moment I found myself thinking, "So you're just going to stand there while he does that?"

But I think the most admirable part of the story is how they approach Cecil and Rosa’s romance. While most RPGs, especially today, try to hash in a childish romance subplot, Cecil and Rosa are that rare couple that are already together at the beginning of the game. Their love is tested throughout the story.

The most popular quote from this game involves a complicated matter of translation. Western releases of Final Fantasy games (and Japanese games in general) often had awkward translations. “You spoony bard!” is one such awkward translation that originates from this game.

The character who spoke this line, Tellah, is arguing with the character Edward. The translation came out at “spoony” due to the Japanese writers believing it was still used today in English. It’s an archaic term meaning “enamored in a silly or sentimental way”. It technically fits, but clearly, nobody uses that word anymore, and players laughed at how nonsensical it seemed.

While I don’t want to spoil why Tellah is angry at Edward, the scenario in question is dramatic, and so Tellah saying “idiot” or “moron” wouldn’t quite suffice. The original Japanese word that Tellah uses is “kisama”, which in the given context is akin to telling someone they are a “son of a bitch” or “bastard.” Western releases, especially North American, were very often censored and demanded less or no profanity.

Overall, Final Fantasy IV is the first notable story in the Final Fantasy series, way better and much more original than Final Fantasy II.

Music:

 With the Super Nintendo, Uematsu was able to play with more sounds. The drumming that Uematsu had wanted in his battle themes is more apparent. He also added an accompaniment to the Prelude. The main theme of Final Fantasy IV is scattered throughout the score, just like a motif in a movie score. The main theme is the map theme, and I like how, for example, the theme changes to a different beat when you venture into the underworld. The main theme even pops up in the final battle, which to me is awesome because it illustrates the heroes collectively trying to banish evil.

In one interview with Uematsu, he stated he was a huge fan of Elton John. For some reason, after I read that, I totally see the main theme of Final Fantasy IV having an Elton John vibe, especially in the epilogue with the drums and the bass.

Red Wings, which is the theme for Baron’s elite air force of the same name, is notable for its unorthodox time signature. I swore I read that somewhere years ago but now I can’t find it, so if someone happens to come across it – let me know. The theme for the Red Wings sounds both heroic and sinister, referencing Baron’s underlying motives and Cecil’s dual nature.

Cecil and Rosa’s love theme is actually taught for schoolchildren in Japan as part of their music curriculum.

Uematsu pretty much matured at this point, in my opinion.

Notable Theme:

There are so many but my personal favorite is “Dreadful Fight”, a.k.a “Battle with the Four Fiends”.

I’ll also highlight the “Theme of Love”, because it needs to be out there as the first love theme for the Final Fantasy series.

Verdict:

Hands down, the perfect place for a beginner. You want to start getting into Final Fantasy? Start with Final Fantasy IV. The gameplay is easy to pick up. The story is simple and straightforward compared to the rest of the series but still effective. To those having played the later games first, it could seem trite. Unlike most of the Final Fantasy games, the different re-releases can be quite offer a different experience due to the translations, graphical changes, and differences in difficulty. At the end of the day, I would say any 2D version is fine, the best is probably the PSP version, but save the DS remake for later, since it is more difficult.

Direct Sequel?

Yes. Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection was released on the PSP in 2011. This is the version that I played. Square created two sequels for that collection: Final Fantasy IV: Interlude and Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. I haven’t played them myself yet, but there is criticism surrounding their stories, which apparently pale greatly in comparison to Final Fantasy IV.

By the way, the PSP version starts by showing the new FMV opening to Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, not the one shown in Final Fantasy IV DS. That’s a minor change but it really irked me, because the sequel’s FMV opening therefore spoils some of the story if you never played it before. I guess they wanted to distance themselves from Final Fantasy IV DS. Even so, why not just play that opening when you select The After Years?

[doomonfilm]

Ranking : Christopher Nolan (1970 - present)

From the moment he kicked the door down on the scene with the breathtaking Memento, the name Christopher Nolan has rung synonymous with high thinking, high level and high entertainment film.  He always finds fresh and unique ways to tell stories, be it visually, narratively, or some combination of the two, and many of his conceptual deep dives have opened real conversations in regards to different aspects of space and time.  For an artist, the impact the Christopher Nolan has had on the populous as a whole is impressive, which is why after recently seeing Tenet, I felt it necessary to take a look back at all of his films and determine where they stood in relation to one another (in my eyes). 

11. Insomnia (2002) As stated with every instance of ranking the work of a director, there’s always one film that’s got to take the bottom of the list hit, and for Nolan, it was Insomnia.  The film in itself is not a bad one, and it does offer some strong visuals in regards to the unrelenting amount of sunlight that one experiences in Alaska, but it does suffer not only from being a remake, but a remake that pales in comparison to the original.  For my money’s worth, Nolan works best with original ideas, with one specific trilogy standing as an exception to that notion.

10. Memento (2000) While not his debut film, this was the film that put Nolan on the map.  The story is unique and intriguing, and the manner in which it is told really makes it work, as a standard A to Z telling of the film would eliminate much of the dramatic tension felt.  That being said, this film suffers from a similar fate to that of films like The Sixth Sense : it’s cool the first time you see it, it really wows you the second time you see it, and then further viewings find diminishing returns in regards to the experience of the “gimmick” (for lack of a better word).  Definitely worth seeing if you’ve never seen it, or are looking for a gateway into the work of Nolan, but underwhelming when held up against his future work.

9. Batman Begins (2005) As previously stated, Nolan (in my opinion) works best as a writer/director of original ideas, so like many, I was slightly surprised when he was tapped to handle the Christian Bale edition of the Batman movie canon.  There wasn’t so much doubt about his ability to pull things off visually, but with such a beloved franchise and character in his hands, there were thoughts about whether or not his style would translate in a way that an already dedicated fanbase would appreciate.  Batman Begins was an effective table-setter for his Dark Knight trilogy, but due to the necessity of having to address an already familiar backstory, many of Nolan’s best ideas would have to wait until the sequel.

8. The Dark Knight Rises (2012) This film found itself the unfortunate victim of an all too familiar national tragedy in the form of a mass shooting during an early screening, forever putting a sort of black cloud over the film as a result.  That being said, the film was a stellar entry in the Dark Knight trilogy, anchored by an instantly iconic Tom Hardy performance.  If this film was attributed to any other director, it would possibly stand as one of their top works, but Christopher Nolan is a man of such depth and style that The Dark Knight Rises merely stands as above average output from a creator who is pulling back a bit to fit the Hollywood ideal (or his version, anyway) of a comic book film.

7. Following (1998) Quite possibly the most personal of all Nolan films, which makes sense, considering it was his first.  It was the buzz that this film generated during the 1997 festival season, along with an already completed script for Memento, that turned Nolan from an aspiring director to a household name.  Following gives us a bit of insight into Nolan’s creative process, presenting us with a highly stylized version of an observational writer, forever receptive to the stimulus around him.  The look of the film displays Nolan’s eye for location and cinematography, and the non-linear nature of the story served as a sneak preview to a format of storytelling he would soon master and manipulate beyond our ability to initially understand.  Though a bit on the short side for a feature film, it is certainly a fun ride with much indication of where its creator was headed.

6. Interstellar (2014) Throughout the 2010s, it seemed that Nolan was hell-bent on warping our brains through the entertainment medium, and after the warning blast that Inception was, Interstellar served as a sort of thematic and spiritual double-tap for our psyche.  Nolan took the basic structure for a story of familial, unconditional love and skewed it by thrusting our protagonist into the uncharted depths of space, skewing his perception of time so radically that the people he loved became old while he did not age, which in itself is enough of a heartbreaking concept to build a film off of.  Add to this the fact that we are presented with (to the best of our knowledge, anyways) the most photo-realistic depictions of a Black Hole and a tesseract, and the end result is a powerful genre-blending journey that stands in rare company, with films like Tarkovsy’s Solaris and Kubrick’s 2001 : A Space Odyssey serving as the closest points of comparison.

5. Tenet (2020) When you have a track record like that of a Christopher Nolan, it is inevitable that people are waiting on your downfall, and with 2020 changing the way we take in films, many tried to seize this opportunity and label Tenet as this moment in time.  To me, this is an absurd stance to take... not only is Tenet one of the most intriguing films I’ve seen in years, but its efficiency in storytelling trims away so much fat that we are left with archetypical characters with subtle amounts of depth shepherding us through a narrative line that folds in and overlaps on itself numerous times.  With this premise set and our characters deeply devoted to their functionality (though not at the expense of performance), we are left with the spectacle of some amazing choreography and in-camera special effects work that makes you really and truly have to stop at times just so you can try and process what it is you are seeing.  Hopefully, in repeat viewings, the “gimmick” won’t take precedence over the film itself, as I believe there is enough going on outside of the visual trickery to keep one interested time and again.

4. Dunkirk (2017) It’s no secret that Christopher Nolan has the talent to build vast, textured and deeply imaginative worlds with his films, but up until the point of Dunkirk, Nolan had not attempted a “period piece”.  Luckily for us film lovers, Nolan decided to try his hand at that style in the form of a war movie, and the result was the extremely moving and powerful experience of Allied troops in World War II caught in a situation where death seemed inevitable.  Despite the vastness of the beach and sea we are shown, the feeling of being trapped permeates through and through, and it is enhanced by stellar cinematography and practical effects.  Even with a cast full of familiar names and faces, the experience of hopelessness created soon eliminates the familiarity that comes with star power, and we are left with nothing but our investment in the story.   

3. The Dark Knight (2008) Simply put, The Dark Knight really has no business being as good as it is.  You’d think that its placement between the two trilogy bookends would give it a transitional nature, potentially only existing to move the story forward to its conclusion.  What we are given, however, is one of the most nuanced looks at heroes, villains, anti-heroes, and just how much those roles can alternate based on the perspective of those applying the title.  For all of the horror that the Scarecrow character brought, or the pure intimidation of Bane, The Dark Knight gives us a complex agent of chaos in the form of Heath Ledger’s instantly iconic (and tragically final) performance as the Joker.  All of the pacing issues that weigh down the other two films are completely absent in this middle offering, and the movie hangs around in your mind well after the final credits roll.  To many viewers, this film set the artistic benchmark for what a so-called “comic-book” movie had the potential to be.

2. Inception (2010) For many, Inception marks the culminative peak of all that Christopher Nolan brings to the table as a director and storyteller.  His ability to coherently weave together a narrative that deals with the perception of time as one goes deeper and deeper into the psyche is impressive in its own right, but the amount of breathtaking nuance, visual effects and mental gymnastics used to tell the story would bring a lesser director to their knees.  If The Revenant and 2015 served as the culmination of Leonardo DiCaprio finally receiving much-deserved recognition as an actor via an Academy Award, then Inception feels like the starting point for that final leg of his journey.  Everyone brought their A-game to this table on both sides of the camera, leaving us with a true visual and storytelling spectacle for the ages. 

1. The Prestige (2006) Irony is a funny thing... I bring that up because Christopher Nolan has literally taken on (and, in some ways, conquered) space, time and perception in his films, all of which would be incredibly lofty concepts to illustrate and visualize, let alone make entertaining.  With all of that in mind, it’s ironic that his best film would be one that does not rely on all of the aforementioned lofty aspects and visual tricks.  The Prestige, at a base level, is a story about jealousy and how it can drive you mad, but it’s the way that this story is told that makes it possibly the best film in the Nolan canon.  Christian Bale’s performance (or performances, at the risk of spoilers) is enough to put this film in a class of its own, but the balance that Hugh Jackman’s performance brings to the overall equation keeps you guessing on whom we are supposed to root for right up until the final frame.  The triangle of love triangles in this film further serve to build up the eventual scale of damage that is presented when everything falls completely apart on both sides of the narrative coin.  Most importantly, like any good magic trick, the film sets you up with expectations, only to wow you in the end.  If you had to pick one Nolan film to watch, this would be the one that I recommend, hands down and without question.

Who knows where Christopher Nolan plans to take us next.  I, for one, would not consider myself clued-in enough to hazard a guess on this, but I would almost certainly put money on the fact that wherever he chooses to take us, he will entertain us and amaze us, if not both at the same time, as he always does.

[aion-rsa]

Back to the Future Not Being Planned as a Trilogy Is What Makes It Great

https://ift.tt/34hAAGt

In the last decade, it’s become a common refrain among fans and industry players alike: the filmmakers should’ve “planned it better.” This trilogy could’ve been mapped out; those five sequels needed to be outlined first. Perhaps this is inevitable in an era where “shared universe” is part of the everyday vernacular, yet I cannot help but be amused when folks grow wistful over sequels with allegedly concrete roadmaps: franchises like Star Wars, Godfather… and the Back to the Future trilogy.

Whenever social media discussions about sequels or franchises that most smoothly told their sagas rear, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s little trio of time traveling adventures always spring to the forefront. With their economy of storytelling and strong fixation on characters, particularly lovable Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and eccentric Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), the three movies’ narrative is as stainless as the steel doors on the DeLorean. Even innocuous, seemingly throwaway details in the first movie turn out to have unexpectedly delightful payoffs in the sequels, such as the Doc’s interest in discovering who will win the next 25 years’ worth of World Series games.

Of course the irony in this is that Back to the Future was not planned as a trilogy; this was a “universe” structured around only one story, with its sequels acting as mere expansions on those initial foundations. Even the “cliffhanger” ending of the first movie, with Marty, Doc, and the original Jennifer Parker (Claudia Wells) piling into a now flying DeLorean to “do something about your kids,” was never meant to be more than a gag.

“We never designed the first Back to the Future to have a sequel,” director Zemeckis confirmed on the 2002 DVD release of Back to the Future Part II. “The flying car at the end was a joke, and it worked as a great joke and a great payoff. Everyone assumed we had this grand design like George Lucas did about Star Wars and had all these sequels. My only hope for Back to the Future ever was that it would make its money back.”

He goes on to say that if he had planned on doing a sequel, he would’ve never put Jennifer in the final scene—hence why in the sequel, the character (recast with Elisabeth Shue) spends most of the film asleep on a front porch.

Said Zemeckis, “I would’ve had only the Doc and Marty be in the car, and then I could’ve put them on any adventure. But what happens when you make a movie this successful is it becomes a piece of real estate, it becomes a franchise. And the reality comes at you very quickly, which is ‘we’re making a sequel. You can either help us or not, but the sequel is going to be made.’”

Fortunately, that sequel was made with most of the key players who turned the 1985 film into an enduring classic still in place, including Zemeckis and his co-writer/producer, Bob Gale, at the top of that list. Indeed, it’s even fair to look at the success of the trilogy and conclude that world-building is overrated. What makes Back to the Future shine all these decades later, both as a singular film and an appealing trilogy, is it was always about developing an intriguing story, as opposed to an open-ended milieu of content.

The first movie was originally conceived of by Gale based on a simple epiphany. While going through his father’s old high school yearbook, he came across a photograph of the old man that revealed he’d been elected class president.

“I had no idea,” Gale told Den of Geek last year. “And I’m looking at this picture of my dad, and he’s very proper and straight. And I’m thinking about the president of my graduating class who was just somebody I would have nothing to do with. We were just in completely different circles.”

This raised a million-dollar question: Would he have been friends with his dad in high school?

The dawning realization every young person must come upon, when they realize their parents and authority figures really were young folks like themselves once upon a time, had never been captured on screen before, much less in a mainstream movie through the prism of science fiction. But that’s what the original Back to the Future script did with its yarn about an ‘80s teenager inadvertently traveling 30 years into the past to spend the week with his mother and father in high school.

Granted, it’s more than the premise that makes Back to the Future so winsome. While the movie unquestionably benefits from the striking social distance between 1950s teenagers and their ‘80s counterparts—with the sexual revolution, Vietnam, civil rights, and second wave feminism between the two eras—it still plays to kids another 30-plus years later because of its intelligence and timeless universality. Taking the concept of “Chekhov’s gun” to its breaking point, there is not a single element, character, or detail set up in the first act in 1985 that isn’t paid off once Marty travels back to 1955, and then paid off again when he returns home in the denouement.

Marty’s mom, Lorraine (Lea Thompson), attempting to micromanage her children’s love lives with apparent 1950s social values? Well, in the actual ‘50s, she was smoking, drinking, and had no problem “parking” in cars with boys. Mayor Goldie Wilson running for reelection in 1985? He’s a young ambitious man on the make in ’55 (and with a keen eye for a good campaign slogan). The clock tower that hasn’t worked since it was struck by lightning 30 years ago? It becomes the gosh darn centerpiece of Back to the Future’s climax.

Everything flowed together with the precision of an actual, working clock tower, and it worked in service to the self-awareness which springs from young people seeing their parents in a different light. Plus, Alan Silvestri’s musical score just made everything Marty and Doc did seem to have the import of charging across the frontlines.

Read more

Movies

Back to the Future: Why You’ll Never See More Eric Stoltz Marty McFly Footage

By Chris Cummins

Movies

Why Fan Response to the Back to the Future Sequels Changed

By Chris Cummins

So this proverbial little ‘80s teen comedy overperformed at the box office after ending on a teasing note that left viewers hanging. Zemeckis and Gale did not write Back to the Future to lead anywhere but the line “where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” but audiences (and the studio) wanted to see what was at the end of that skyway.

Thus Back to the Future Part II and Part III came into existence—but with the ambition of its creators to make them every bit as narratively complex as the first film they were borne out from. While the sequels were very much designed on the conventional wisdom that audiences want to see their favorite characters get up to the same shenanigans, Back to the Future Part II particularly subverts this. The sequences of the film set in the future of 2015 plays into “the same but different” by bringing nearly every actor from the first film back to play their same character at a more advanced age—or younger in the unnerving case of Fox being asked to play all of Marty and Jennifer’s children—but that sequence is then quickly jettisoned for something closer to It’s a Wonderful Life than Back to the Future.

Even when Gale first began conceiving of the sequels, he imagined Marty and Doc winding up in 1967 to “correct” the future. There Marty would again see his parents, George and Lorraine McFly, in shocking ways: George would be a college professor while Lorraine would’ve become a flower child, joining the hippie movement.

However, it was Zemeckis’ input that had the story fold into itself. Instead of just playing with different time periods and doing the same setup again, the director suggested using the third act of the sequel to enter the first movie from a different vantage point. He actually did what mainstream audiences supposedly want—basically remakes of the same story—but with a much more skewed sensibility with two Martys and two Docs running around, and all of them converging on a plot that involves further cliffhangers and switchbacks on the first movie, like an ending where the sequel’s Marty surprises 1955’s Doc Brown moments after Doc had sent Marty home. Now the Marty we’ve followed for the whole second film runs up behind the Doc to say, “I’m back from the future.”

Also in a quaint departure from how sequels are conceived today, the absence of Crispin Glover as George McFly in Part II and Part III stemmed from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment failing to lock actors into sequel clauses. Back then, it was assumed movies were a one-off experience, and when Glover decided he didn’t want to appear in a sequel… well, there’s a reason George McFly had to die in the alternative 1985 ruled over by a Trumpian Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson).

All of these concessions and choices made on the fly were not preordained or sketched out, but the talent involved was so keen on connecting their limitations to previous successes that they made a satisfying three-part whole out of a one-off, and without getting bogged down by fan service or further world-building. Nearly every choice made in the Back to the Future sequels—with exception to the inexplicable development of Marty being unable to withstand the insult of “chicken”—organically built off character traits or story concepts in the first one, flowing into a self-perpetuating circle.

Sure, there are inconsistencies. Consider the way the third movie is seeded into the second; it betrays a looseness to the world-building when Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen’s photo in Part II looks nothing like the character design in Part III. But it doesn’t ultimately matter. The elements that really determine the films’ quality, such as character, structure, and dialogue, are airtight across all three pictures.

Strangely though, this connective tissue was hidden at the time of release. As Gale told Den of Geek last year, there was a resistance at Universal to let general audiences know a third movie was on the way until after they’d seen the second one. There was even a fight to exclude the trailer of scenes from the third film at the end of Part II (at Gale’s suggestion).

“The biggest fight that I had with the president of Universal when we were planning the release of Part II is that I was adamant that I wanted to advertise this as part two of the three-part Back to the Future series, part two of the trilogy, and he didn’t want to do that,” Gale said. “He just wanted to say, ‘This is part two. Let them find out about part three later.’”

Gale is convinced that lack of understanding that Part II was setting up Part III led to both films being somewhat underappreciated during their releases. Now their legacy is as tightly woven with the first film, as well, those early Star Wars movies are. To the point where Back to the Future is often singled out as this rare thing—a near perfect film trilogy. That might be true, but it wasn’t set up that way. There’s a lesson in that.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post Back to the Future Not Being Planned as a Trilogy Is What Makes It Great appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3vDXwKK