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This Week in Games - A Good Week For Dragons And Novels


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whiskeyii



Joined: 29 May 2013
Posts: 2245
PostPosted: Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:14 am Reply with quote
Hmmm, ever since I dipped my toe into and got hooked by the 999 franchise, VN’s have been the one bit of media where I willingly engage with the horror genre, bonus points if you mix in my favorite genre, mystery, on top. I’ll probably have to check out Kara no Shoujo.
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AQuin1904



Joined: 13 Nov 2021
Posts: 264
PostPosted: Fri Jun 02, 2023 11:09 am Reply with quote
Man, the tempting mystery VNs keep piling up. And I haven't even started that complete Switch edition of The House in Fata Morgana, which I bought nearly a year ago now.

I've also barely touched Tears of the Kingdom, but I have to say that the improved framerate (and more importantly, more stable framerate) has made it a much better experience for me than BotW. That game is a performance miracle, considering how much it's constantly tracking and what it's running on. I'd love to read some of the technical details about how they got that physics engine working, but I doubt that info will ever go public.

People tend to lump framerate in with whining about reflections in puddles not looking good enough or whatever, but it can really affect ability to enjoy a game. My eyes are not the best, and very low or (especially) inconsistent framerates a) make it hard for me to track moving objects and b) give me splitting headaches beyond a certain point.
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b-dragon



Joined: 21 Apr 2021
Posts: 452
PostPosted: Fri Jun 02, 2023 1:49 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, a stable framerate is really my visual pet peeve. I'm less concerned about what that rate is, as long as it maintains consistency. Thats a bit genre dependent though- in my fighting games- ones that require quick reactions- I do demand higher consistent rates.
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AiddonValentine



Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 2207
PostPosted: Fri Jun 02, 2023 3:48 pm Reply with quote
The new DQ Monsters being for the Switch really brings home how that thing might take as long to retire as the PS2 did. What I hope is that it also makes Square-Enix release or remake the older titles.
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 5927
PostPosted: Fri Jun 02, 2023 7:01 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai was a manga made back in 1989 (when I was born!) that lasted for seven years, detailing the adventures of the Dragon Knight Dai and his friends as he traveled the world and faced off against threats both familiar and unique to their own story. Written by Riku Sanjō, who would go on to make Beet the Vandel Buster,


That’s some unfortunate bit of history.

Quote:
As mentioned earlier, there are tons of fun Dragon Quest spin-offs that have been left by the wayside when it comes to localizing them (ask any fan of the Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime games to see some serious pain).


Did you have to open this wound again?

Why couldn’t you mention the Yangus/Torneko Mystery Dungeon games

Quote:
Here's hoping Konami is finally course-correcting.


Guess this isn’t a good time to mention that the Snake Eater 3 remake allegedly is going to be reusing the original game’s voiced dialog as in they’re not re-recording anything.

Quote:
will be their iconic outfits, from Ryu's white gi to Juri's bodysuit.


The funny part is that Juri’s bodysuit is the “alleged” original version of her outfit that shows her cleavage instead of the one that had a rash guard edited onto it.
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garfield15



Joined: 06 Apr 2009
Posts: 1517
PostPosted: Fri Jun 02, 2023 9:45 pm Reply with quote
Could have hit a 3-fer with that Shiravune part as they just recently announced they licensed the original WHITE ALBUM visual novel
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 28 Oct 2018
Posts: 498
PostPosted: Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:15 pm Reply with quote
garfield15 wrote:
Could have hit a 3-fer with that Shiravune part as they just recently announced they licensed the original WHITE ALBUM visual novel


Oh, believe me, I was kicking myself when I saw the news late last night about White Album! I had even talked about it a few columns back when I mentioned some news about its studio, Leaf. But it came in far too late after the deadline, and I think this column had run long enough. Don't fret, we'll discuss it next column!
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WoodDude



Joined: 22 Dec 2022
Posts: 64
PostPosted: Sat Jun 03, 2023 2:09 am Reply with quote
As one who complained, I'm pleasantly surprised Cammy's OG outfit is back. And now I can laugh at all the usual news sites being upset over it and bemoaning that Capcom caved to the Gamers and are holding the character back. Laughing The game is still a microtransaction riddled mess with sneaky intrusive stuff being added post launch after the reviews dropped, but I'll take what I can get. At least the single player stuff is more interesting this time around.
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ThatMoonGuy



Joined: 13 Oct 2017
Posts: 364
PostPosted: Sat Jun 03, 2023 4:03 am Reply with quote
Gotta say I don't particularly like some of the discourse around Cammy's classic outfit being "a victory against wokeness". Specially not whrn this world gets thrown around to talk about Video game character design and, you know, the basic human rights of people. Pretty disgusting stuff.

Also, I can't help but find Jean Karlo's disdain for Starfield (not Starfall, that's a movie) kinda funny, specially considering that Bethesda's last two games were pretty well received critically.
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invalidname
Contributor



Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2447
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Sat Jun 03, 2023 6:24 am Reply with quote
Of course, any mention of Tokimeki Memorial requires that we acknowledge Tim Rogers’ six-hours-long-but-never-boring YouTube review of TokiMemo, which has probably convinced a generation of viewers that the explosion sound effect from DOOM is somehow part of the game.
Quote:
and even earned anime adaptations that were entirely lost on fans in the US because turning a 50-hour VN into a 12-episode anime is a fool's errand.

Sorry, but I need to give this a serious 14-episode Rumbling Hearts side-eye. I did a panel years ago on VN-based anime and as a format, it had challenges much worse than just how complete the adaptation was. Besides, in an era when we have too little time and too much to watch already, insisting on absolute completeness in an adaptation is a fool’s errand. We might be a lot better off with adaptations that fully capture the sense of the original material — enticing viewers to seek out the original if they want more — rather than to insist that there’s no way to do justice to a given VN in anything less than four cours (looking at you, fellow Muv-Luv fans).
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DKL



Joined: 08 May 2005
Posts: 1945
Location: California, USA
PostPosted: Sat Jun 03, 2023 11:41 am Reply with quote
WoodDude wrote:
As one who complained, I'm pleasantly surprised Cammy's OG outfit is back. And now I can laugh at all the usual news sites being upset over it and bemoaning that Capcom caved to the Gamers and are holding the character back. Laughing The game is still a microtransaction riddled mess with sneaky intrusive stuff being added post launch after the reviews dropped, but I'll take what I can get. At least the single player stuff is more interesting this time around.


Funnily, the Cammy DLC costume is kind of why I was driven to get better with the character:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuV7ONYzxHg

(the other, probably more relevant reason, was because I was sort of messing around with Zangief and enjoyed that type of gameplay style since it's more in line with what I like doing, but I need to learn how to pressure people that actually know how to block with my buttons as opposed to SPD spam and Cammy, after the initial novelty of looking at her ass wore off, offers a bunch of interesting tools to play with that I autopiloted ranked with)

I don't know about this conquering woke stuff or whatever mindless thing people like spewing out since I'm more likely to joke about esports at this point.

(but I do see the value of esports, despite lightheartedly joking about it... FGC spent so long being broke, so of course it's nice to have money since I personally don't see the appeal of spending so much time getting better at these games only to get enough money to get a happy meal after placing 3rd like my friend normally did at Marvel tournaments way back when)

Even the "woke" thing felt kind of stupid in the context of the original state of the game with all the various redesigns: one of the highlight videos I came across in my youtube algorithm was a showcase of Chun's thigh jiggle or whatever, which I liked very much.

Something something Juri's feet.

Beyond that, if you were in the horny fanbase aimed at by characters like Ryu and Zangief (whose name I've apparently been saying wrong all this time), I imagine you were very happy.

I think Zangief in particular is really cool and they did a good job giving the character a bunch of personality despite having an established archetype long before. I would like to continue playing him seriously, but one of my friends would hate on me for playing grapplers, so Cammy is a good alternative.

As for the actual game, I really enjoy how the drive meter is designed since it offers a lot of customization to your pressure and is balanced in an interesting way: I feel like I get to do what I want, but not to an unreasonable degree since the resources are priced just right.

Admittedly, I spent $25 to get the DLC costumes, but I found it cool that the game offered a pathway to getting these via the singleplayer... it's just that I literally don't have any time to mess around with singleplayer at the moment if my expectation is to actually be decent at the game: despite thinking that story mode was going to be the first thing I do when I got the game, I instinctively went to training mode and started messing around. That said, the game offers a fantastic amount of resources to help you get better without having to go to someone's youtube channel: there's a bunch of character guides and move explanations everywhere in the game, which I thought was really cool.

That said, I'm now realizing more and more that it's probably important for fighting games to have in-depth singleplayer content for people that are not interested in being competitive.

(not that I'm competitive...I normally just mash a game for 2 weeks and just move onto the next thing, but I think I might actually long haul this game since I really like it)

I recently got through the very fantastic Tears of the Kingdom and once I got beyond all relevant spoilers, I started watching what people were doing in the game: it occured to me that the game is a GOAT because it actually offers a lot to players of all skill levels.

I have a very dry and "efficient" gameplay style, so it was cool to browse my youtube algorithm and see all the dumb stuff people would make... but the high-level speed runs were also really interesting. The game has a very long media presence ahead of it.

Street Fighter tossing in heavy singleplayer content, party modes and having a lot of fun social interactivity in the battle hub goes a very long way in delivering content to people that just want to push buttons, I feel like.

Now you have that party fighting game you can play your drunk friends with besides Smash Brothers.

Even if all you wanted to do was dick around, I would actually recommend the game.
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14763
PostPosted: Sat Jun 03, 2023 6:10 pm Reply with quote
Diablo 4 has had the smoothest launch so far. Only issue just the PSN license error.

Everywhere else:

  • Got in mins before scheduled launch time

  • No login queues, errors, or disconnections so far

  • Maxed settings 150fps at all times outside cutscenes, no lag or rubber banding

  • Cross-play is stable

  • Game even plays great on Steam Deck, ReShade working to make it look better

  • World Tier 2 difficulty feels good during leveling
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 28 Oct 2018
Posts: 498
PostPosted: Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:32 pm Reply with quote
ThatMoonGuy wrote:
Also, I can't help but find Jean Karlo's disdain for Starfield (not Starfall, that's a movie) kinda funny, specially considering that Bethesda's last two games were pretty well received critically.


Critical reception on-the-spot isn't always the best metric for these matters. Remember, people were nuts for Bioshock Infinite at launch; took them a few years to realize, "Actually, wait, no, that game was actually kinda bad. Especially since Bethesda's latest release was... Redfall.
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FeelMyBlade



Joined: 11 Aug 2012
Posts: 142
PostPosted: Sun Jun 04, 2023 4:52 am Reply with quote
BadNewsBlues wrote:
Guess this isn’t a good time to mention that the Snake Eater 3 remake allegedly is going to be reusing the original game’s voiced dialog as in they’re not re-recording anything..


That's a good thing, in my opinion. Nothing wrong with the original dialog or voices. Plus it lends credence to it being an actual faithful remake. Most remakes using new voices and dialog tend to be worse off than the OG.
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Thaumana



Joined: 08 Jul 2017
Posts: 120
PostPosted: Sun Jun 04, 2023 12:58 pm Reply with quote
One of my favorite column series on ANN. Thanks a lot for this thorough overview, as always.

This has been a crazy game year so far and despite some anticipated games that will come out in the next months I think TotK will probably keep me busy for the rest of this year. I already knew that we can expect a lot of great clip compilations from it, but that sheer amount of creative potential that comes with its game mechanics and massive content alongside with the performance magic really makes it a guarantor for a lifetime distributor of videos and memes. I'm just glad that I was able to finish Trails to Azure and Fire Emblem Engage before its release, since I’m rather of the slow-paced type of gamer who prefers to keep sticking with one game at a time for a while - and the new Zelda is predestined for it.

I remember getting in touch with the DQ Dai manga volumes in my parent's home country long before I knew the actual game series, but already couldn't deny its Dragon Ball resembling vibes back then. It was also my first aha moment when I learned about interconnected media based on franchises years later when I recognized the monster designs from the game, although I think I started to understand this multimedia concept genuinely when the Pokémon hype took over.

I went along with almost every VN hype during the good old /vn/ lurking days but despite my soft spot for mystery games I kept my distance from the Innocent Grey titles, mostly because of its pretty gory visuals in comparison too many other popular titles of that time. Now that I don't feel too sensitive about it over all the years, I might give their games a try.

It can't be stressed out enough what a great contribution Iwata's presence to the game industry and community was. Just the fact alone that he was one of the rare big Japanese names of Nintendo who was willing to show up in front of the camera and speak to the western audience in English while also being open to all kind of funny shenanigans in promo clips from time to time already leaves a strong impression on fans. His Iwata Asks constructive columns and interviews with several game staffs on the Nintendo website are very insightful and worth the read until this day, you won't find a passionate, fan and quality dedicated, approachable CEO like that again anytime soon.
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