Official Nintendo Fanboy Smugness & Gloating Thread

Acronym · Post by **Acronym** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:21 am 0

GeeZa wrote:gaming-robot-machines?

First time I met Sickboy in person, he chained all of Level 1 whilst, at the same time, we were chatting about some band or other. Your explanation's better than any I can come up with for how he does it...

GeeZa · Post by **GeeZa** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:20 am 0

Acronym wrote:
GeeZa wrote:gaming-robot-machines?
First time I met Sickboy in person, he chained all of Level 1 whilst, at the same time, we were chatting about some band or other. Your explanation's better than any I can come up with for how he does it...

It's the score on Level 2 that I can't handle.

I shall carry on my own merry way.

Deckard · Post by **Deckard** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:36 am 0

Said it before and I'll say it again - Ikaruga is Pac-Man - no skill involved just sheer pattern learning it doesnt deserve to be even spoken of in the same breath as Defender or Robotron and frankly I was bored shitless with it in 30 minutes - Please remove me from your Xmas card lists now !

HGFB · Post by **HGFB** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:29 pm 0

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=11864

Following the North American release of the Wii on November 19, officials from Nintendo have confirmed that the console has sold more than 600,000 units in its first eight days of availability.

In addition, the company noted that, when taking into account first-party software and accessory sales, Wii sales have thus far amounted to an impressive $190 million.

Nintendo also added that sales of the Wii's highly anticipated launch title, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, has already has achieved sales of more than 454,000 units in the Americas, a figure which it notes represents in excess of of 75 percent of all hardware purchasers.

TFO · Post by **TFO** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:35 pm 0

Deckard wrote:Said it before and I'll say it again - Ikaruga is Pac-Man - no skill involved just sheer pattern learning it doesnt deserve to be even spoken of in the same breath as Defender or Robotron and frankly I was bored shitless with it in 30 minutes - Please remove me from your Xmas card lists now !

Oh dear, that's some fightin' talk...

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:42 pm 0

Deckard wrote:Said it before and I'll say it again - Ikaruga is Pac-Man - no skill involved just sheer pattern learning it doesnt deserve to be even spoken of in the same breath as Defender or Robotron and frankly I was bored shitless with it in 30 minutes - Please remove me from your Xmas card lists now !

If you want to get really high scores at it then yeah - you'll need to know the levels like the back of your hand, but you can survive without that knowledge. I'm as ragged as hell when I play, but it's the moments when I scrape through despite my lack of knowledge that make it the game it is. And because I enjoy playing it, I keep playing it and inevitably some of it sticks. All it does is move the bits that I don't know further along the course of the game, and I get a higher score early on, and the edge-of-the-seat thing happening half a level later.

I don't think anyone sets out to learn these games - certainly not initially. They just play them because they enjoy them, and acquire the knowledge to play them better as they go - same as with most games. I didn't try to memorise the map of Liberty City for example, but I can take you from A to B by the quickest route even today simply because I played the game to pieces, and got to know "my turf".

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:14 pm 0

Had my first hands-on Wii experience this morning.

Externally, it looks nice. It's very, very small and the sensor bar is much smaller than I thought. The shiny white finish looks a bit plasticky compared to the matte 360 and the PS3 clearly outglosses it, but at the same time it's completely dwarfed by the two of them. The controller is small and comfortable, but that wrist strap is as bad as they say.

Pointer control is awful. Really, really bad. Pray that all games allow you to navigate menus with the D-pad. The buttons are big enough and easy to hit... with practice (and I saw it on a 40" plasma too, I can't imagine how it would be on a small TV). Users will use the D-pad for quick selections once the novelty wears off.

Wii Sports is pretty good fun. I saw Tennis and Bowling. You have quite a bit of control, but not in the way you expect. By that, I mean that when you bowl you're not using the same movements you would while you bowl, and when you hit the ball you're not using the same movements that you'd use when you're playing tennis (you don't have full control of your racket). It takes some getting used to. Also, there was some confusion about what buttons you needed to press and when (and why); the controls still needed to be explained, no matter how accessible the controller is. The games are quite energetic and certainly good fun. Miis are some of the ugliest game characters I have ever seen though.

Anyway, I'm off to play Zelda now.

Deckard · Post by **Deckard** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:20 pm 0

TFO wrote:
Deckard wrote:Said it before and I'll say it again - Ikaruga is Pac-Man - no skill involved just sheer pattern learning it doesnt deserve to be even spoken of in the same breath as Defender or Robotron and frankly I was bored shitless with it in 30 minutes - Please remove me from your Xmas card lists now !
Oh dear, that's some fightin' talk...

I just like my schumps random really - Im an old school boy thats all - If I wanted to learn patterns I would play Dragons Lair !

GeeZa · Post by **GeeZa** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:53 pm 0

Deckard wrote:Said it before and I'll say it again - Ikaruga is Pac-Man - no skill involved just sheer pattern learning it doesnt deserve to be even spoken of in the same breath as Defender or Robotron and frankly I was bored shitless with it in 30 minutes - Please remove me from your Xmas card lists now !

Total and complete nonsense.

teamonkey wrote:Pointer control is awful. Really, really bad. Pray that all games allow you to navigate menus with the D-pad. The buttons are big enough and easy to hit... with practice.. Also, there was some confusion about what buttons you needed to press and when (and why).. Miis are some of the ugliest game characters I have ever seen though.

Absolute rubbish.

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:31 pm 0

Had a quick go on Zelda at lunch time. Unfortunately the long, unskippable cut scenes and line-by-line dialogue chains meant that we weren't able to get much of an impression of the action. It's definitely a game to take time over. The Zelda fans were impressed by how Zelda-ish it feels, but most were in two minds about the look. Stylistically it's not sure whether it wants to be Shadow of the Colossus or Windwaker, and I don't think it manages to look as lovely as either of them. The horse controls feel clunky compared to Colossus, but I only played in the first few minutes of the game and never got to do any of the sword or archery stuff.

The speaker in the controller is great. Really, surprisingly, brilliant. It's amazing hearing sounds coming from your hand, especially when it vibrates. I thought it was a gimmick but it's not.

GeeZa wrote:Absolute rubbish.

Well the design of the Mii is obviously subject to opinion, but I saw a lot of different people try out Wii Sports for the first time and almost everyone stumbled at the same points. Selecting a button is tricky for caffeine-addled hands and everyone needed to be told when to hold and let go of buttons, or when to twist the controller (and then why). Plus you get the "so which one's the B button? Oh, you mean the trigger?" confusion. Cleverly, if you bollocks it up a few times the Wii Sports help screen appears.

Deckard · Post by **Deckard** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:03 pm 0

GeeZa wrote:
Deckard wrote:Said it before and I'll say it again - Ikaruga is Pac-Man - no skill involved just sheer pattern learning it doesnt deserve to be even spoken of in the same breath as Defender or Robotron and frankly I was bored shitless with it in 30 minutes - Please remove me from your Xmas card lists now !
Total and complete nonsense.

teamonkey wrote:Pointer control is awful. Really, really bad. Pray that all games allow you to navigate menus with the D-pad. The buttons are big enough and easy to hit... with practice.. Also, there was some confusion about what buttons you needed to press and when (and why).. Miis are some of the ugliest game characters I have ever seen though.
Absolute rubbish.

Just popped downstairs to have a quick blast in between OOT and sorry I take it all back - its a lovely reaction based, play it how you like piece of loveliness and then just for a contrast - Robotron - which frankly is just wave upon wave of pattern learning monotony - whoops I seem to have those the wrong way round

GeeZa · Post by **GeeZa** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:48 pm 0

Warning: Grumpy mode engaged.

teamonkey wrote:Had a quick go on Zelda at lunch time. Unfortunately the long, unskippable cut scenes and line-by-line dialogue chains meant that we weren't able to get much of an impression of the action. It's definitely a game to take time over. The Zelda fans were impressed by how Zelda-ish it feels, but most were in two minds about the look. Stylistically it's not sure whether it wants to be Shadow of the Colossus or Windwaker, and I don't think it manages to look as lovely as either of them. The horse controls feel clunky compared to Colossus, but I only played in the first few minutes of the game and never got to do any of the sword or archery stuff.

It's a slow game, not one for twitchy console attention decificit gamers. It's story-driven, methodical, and most of all, gentle. It demands your attention and will suck hours of your life away. By the time you've finished the first dungeon you've probably been playing for five hours plus. I'm about twelve hours in and it still feels early doors. Personally, look-wise, I think it's superior to both Windwaker and Colossus and is probably the pinnacle of "last-gen" technology. The twighlight environments have a beautiful Colossus-style dream quality about them and the first night transition and storm in Hyrule Field is gorgeous. Those early reviewers who described it as ugly (and one or two on this forum) need to be taken out back and shot. Also the sound is first class.

teamonkey wrote:The speaker in the controller is great. Really, surprisingly, brilliant. It's amazing hearing sounds coming from your hand, especially when it vibrates. I thought it was a gimmick but it's not.

It works well in Tennis with the "whoosh" of the racket but works less well imo in Zelda and Excite Truck. It's a bit too over-bearing and tinny, and developers should use it subtley if they're going to really do it justice. But yes, the potential is interesting and new.

teamonkey wrote:Well the design of the Mii is obviously subject to opinion, but I saw a lot of different people try out Wii Sports for the first time and almost everyone stumbled at the same points. Selecting a button is tricky for caffeine-addled hands and everyone needed to be told when to hold and let go of buttons, or when to twist the controller (and then why). Plus you get the "so which one's the B button? Oh, you mean the trigger?" confusion. Cleverly, if you bollocks it up a few times the Wii Sports help screen appears.

But describing the pointer control as "really really bad" is just plain unfair. Anyone who's used an analogue stick for a pointer knows it's a pain. And d-pad navigation unless done well (like Advance Wars) can also be labour-intensive. If the remote plainly didn't work, I'd agree with you, but for equipment management and combat in Zelda I don't miss the d-pad at all. Likewise for Wii interface navigation. Sure, someone's gonna mess up a control scheme sooner or later, but let's be fair about it.

Also the buttons are just right, if anything this is the simplest configuration since the SNES. Why you think it takes practice (which implies a significant portion of time) to figure them out has me at a loss. Wii Sports, apart from Bowling which has a slightly involved gesture, is eminently pick-up-and-play. If you can't work out how to swing a tennis racket, a baseball bat, or a golf club then you probably require assistance feeding yourself. Like wise for throwing a punch. The buttons take a few minutes to grasp and the rest is easy. And I'm no gaming Nazerene. We'll disagree on the Miis, but I think they're great and the way they move around in tennis and boxing in particular is comedy. What's especially cool is you can send them to each other (I have Jamesac's) and get the occasional Animal Crossing-style visit from a random Wii user. I'm currently working on a Black Sabbath set. Horses for course I spose.

Deckard wrote:Just popped downstairs to have a quick blast in between OOT and sorry I take it all back - its a lovely reaction based, play it how you like piece of loveliness and then just for a contrast - Robotron - which frankly is just wave upon wave of pattern learning monotony - whoops I seem to have those the wrong way round

Hilarious. If you honestly think Ikaruga is just about learning the patterns then you've not actually tried to play it. It has basically two shades to it, one is surviving the levels, the other is chain maximisation. The former plays like a regular shooter, the latter requires super-human memory and dexterity. Learning the patterns and *then* executing them perfectly are two different ball-games. And even then, there's patterns and then there's Ikaruga. If you can max-chain the paper-plane bit on Level 2 then I take it all back. Really it's a game that only the superficially-minded could see as basic, it's got bags of depth and is damn hard to boot. I spent three long hours on level one last night and still only managed to chain the first three mini-sections. Really I despair of other people's opinions sometimes.

/Stu Campbell mode disengaged. Sorry you two, I'm angry with the world today.

Samus · Post by **Samus** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 7:08 pm 0

But still, uh-oh...

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 7:23 pm 0

GeeZa wrote:It's a slow game, not one for twitchy console attention decificit gamers.

Yes, it's Zelda. I was just trying to get some initial impressions.

Geeza wrote:Those early reviewers who described it as ugly (and one or two on this forum) need to be taken out back and shot.

That's a bit harsh. It's not the prettiest Gamecube game by a long way, and it lacks the style of previous Zeldas. Compared to other horsey game Colossus, the scenery looked very polygony, flatter and less open (but the framerate is smoother

). It's a minor disappointment for a game that doesn't focus on graphics, but pretty it ain't. Unless it has a Wizard of Oz-style graphical makeover a bit further on in the game.

Geeza wrote:But describing the pointer control as "really really bad" is just plain unfair.

I completely disagree. Intuitively it's great, you know exactly what you need to do - move the pointer on to the button and press the trigger. Easy, except the pointer keeps dancing all over the place. Getting the pointer in the general area is easy, but then you have to concentrate to hold it steady and accurate enough to squeeze the trigger. It's like a minigame all in itself trying to hit an "OK" button. It reaches "Oh fer fuck's sake" level in mere seconds. It does work better in Zelda than in the main Wii menu though.

Geeza wrote:/Stu Campbell mode disengaged. Sorry you two, I'm angry with the world today.

No need to apologize, my curmudgeon mode has been frozen in the "on" position for many years now.

[EDIT]
Actually, after yet another go just now, I've changed my mind about the pointer. If you're sitting down and resting your arm on your leg then your arm has enough support to keep it fairly stable and you can enter stuff on the on-screen keyboard easily enough. That's swung it in my opinion from being a potential system killer to being "not bad". Just don't use it that way while standing up.

Samus · Post by **Samus** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 8:06 pm 0

teamonkey wrote:[EDIT]
Actually, after yet another go just now, I've changed my mind about the pointer. If you're sitting down and resting your arm on your leg then your arm has enough support to keep it fairly stable and you can enter stuff on the on-screen keyboard easily enough. That's swung it in my opinion from being a potential system killer to being "not bad". Just don't use it that way while standing up.

Hehe, keep cool buddy, it will all open up in time ;P