#(and if you tweak the core transformation mechanic it would even more)

[elementroar]

Analysis of Paracelsus' initial bloodlust and its longlasting effects on A.B.A (Part 2)

Analysis behind the backstory and personal story arcs of A.B.A. and Paracelsus (part 1)

So this actually started out more of a 'funny' post, but I realized that it really is a very important insight into how A.B.A. and Paracelsus function and interact, especially for his earlier days in XX/Accent Core +R

And I wasn't joking about the vore. It's not in the erotic sense...but it certainly is in the 'literally eating parts of your partner ' sense...

Also apologies for the long word dumps, it got wordier and longer than I expected.

Paracelsus (used to) REALLY love blood

It goes without saying, Paracelsus really loves blood. Well he used to anyway.

By STRIVE, he says he felt he lost his sanity whenever he gets hyped on blood in the past. To the point, he has sworn off blood (and violence) as if it was an addiction. Basically, he has managed to go clean sometime between their last appearance and STRIVE.

To not go too far into his backstory again (which you can read here), Paracelsus is a magical axe that fed on blood and increased his own power with blood; and would use warriors as hosts to cause more bloodshed and thus gain more blood and power for himself. Paracelsus doesn't need to 'eat' blood to survive (he was left host-less for about 20 years, and now abstains in STRIVE and is just fine), making the addiction metaphor seem to be accurate.

Back in XX/ACCENT CORE, he needed to drink fresh blood to transform into his superpowered Moroha mode (this is mechanically replaced by Jealous Rage mode now). Similar to his current gameplay, he could get blood and transform by A.B.A. piercing someone with his bladed end; or if A.B.A. fed him one of three blood packs she'd have on her.

He reacts pretty much like a dog getting a treat, anticipating it when she reaches into her pockets for a pack too. And he truly didn't care where the blood comes from, even if it's from A.B.A. herself.

A.B.A. coughs up blood and all Paracelsus wants to do is have a taste. Note that he barely actually reacts to her or himself getting hit or fighting in the old games. It's kind of a stark contrast to his many reactions and concern for her wellbeing now.

Make no mistake, despite being "kinder and gentler" than how he treated his previous hosts - by not completely mind controlling her into a frenzy and caring enough that he doesn't want her to die - Paracelsus was truly obsessed with drinking blood still, and all the fighting skills and power he imparted on A.B.A. was to make her strong enough to defeat opponents and gather blood for him too. Hence the 'manipulation' he felt guilty of in STRIVE.

And he gets even more bloodthirsty in Moroha mode aka what Paracelsus is without his 'sanity'.

You're the worse you when on blood

Prior to STRIVE and Paracelsus' current sludgy form, his powered-up form gave him a goat's head and his persona changes into that of his old berserker self.

This increase in aggression and bloodlust also affected A.B.A. through their empathetic bond, making her also take joy in violence and also clearly hyperventilating and tweaking out in some animations, like she's high.

Not to mention that to fight in this mode, every time Paracelsus makes a successful attack, A.B.A. also gets damaged (hence 'Moroha' mode as it means 'double-edged'). In-universe, this could mean that Paracelsus is sapping both the blood of an opponent and A.B.A. at the same time, indiscriminately as he says.

And he seems somewhat crueler in this form, as he has an even more violent and vicious state above Moroha mode called Goku Moroha mode. He enters it by consuming another blood pack, but he also seems to bite down on A.B.A.'s hand without a care and holds onto it while he transforms.

The impact of all this on A.B.A

Picking up Paracelsus was truly a double-edged sword/axe for A.B.A. On one hand, he was older and savvier about the outside world (even though he spent like 20 years just rusting away on the ground somewhere) and having him as her emotional support key and literal weapon led her to actually daring to explore the outside world, and he provided and (attempted to) advised her on things she didn't know about.

On the other hand, Paracelsus' satiating his bloodthirst was still his main objective, and it was also hurting A.B.A. Although Paracelsus was making some effort to not outright get her killed, A.B.A's additional resilience as a homunculus probably also helped her survive take being Paracelsus' host as long as she did.

Paracelsus was the original toxic element in their relationship, and it's likely over the years he's come to realize and regrets the harm he was doing to A.B.A. constantly, and why he has completely sworn off blood and violence entirely by STRIVE.

However, his bloodlust fueled and amplified the worse tendencies of A.B.A. from early on, and this seems to have stuck with her till the present in STRIVE. Her current extremely violent reaction when feeling jealousy or anxiety is likely how she's been conditioned to do so by Paracelsus, even when he himself is no longer the source of that bloodlust.

The difference now is that A.B.A.'s new powered-up state of Jealous Rage is mainly fueled by her wrath and fear instead of Paracelsus' bloodlust. Paracelsus becomes sludge now, affected by the toxicity of her unstable emotions going haywire and her will becoming decidedly dominant over his. The one who is toxic has become inverted.

What's more, it seems that the skills Paracelsus imparted on her before also carried over and stuck with her, allowing her to fight independently since Paracelsus isn't trying to encourage her to violence this time. She's become so dominant that she now can even force a new form/transformation onto Paracelsus when she does her Overdrive The Law is Key, Key is King while in Jealous Rage.

In the game files, this red form is called the "Hyoui" form, meaning 'possession'. It being red is interesting because it seems to be a callback to Paracelsus' moniker of being the Sanguine Gale. The concept art also shows the pretty disturbing way he's being morphed into it by A.B.A. when she does the Overdrive.

When in her Jealous Rage mode, the bottom half Paracelsus' where his axe blade is, somehow becomes more axe-like than it ever has been in the games. In the earlier games, his blade half didn't change, only his head does into the goat-head. What's more disturbing is that eyes already started appearing on the axe half even while Paracelsus tries to maintain his original face as much as possible.

When executing the Overdrive, A.B.A. swings with the axe half as the sludge pulls from Paracelsus' face to form this new toothed red axe head. Is it a new persona? Is Paracelsus still conscious in his face half or in the axe half at all? Does 'possession' have double meaning where A.B.A. is possessed by her own wrath, but also Paracelsus is now the one being possessed by A.B.A.'s will into forming the red axe form?

The interesting thing too is that A.B.A. executes the Overdrive with precise strikes, liked a skilled warrior. IMO, at this moment A.B.A. ironically became the exact kind of warrior that berserker Paracelsus would have wanted and caused him to even revert back into that primal early form of his that was barely sentient. They gained perfect synergy for the attack, but both are literally out of their minds.

What started this post

Just a funny thing but the reason why I even thought of, and then looked into all this, was because of A.B.A.'s biting of Paracelsus at the top of the post. I was wondering why Paracelsus doesn't say a word of protest when she does this to him, then remembered that he used to kinda drink her blood (and turns out he too has bitten her before), and I think he's prolly thinking "I deserve this".

#guilty gear strive #a.b.a guilty gear #paracelsus guilty gear #long post is long #my analysis #paraba #arc system works #aba guilty gear

[neon-dynasty]

Lavos

Finally, the party faces off against Lavos. After a harrowing battle, the enormous parasite would prove to be no match for the heroes.

This piece is by the enormously talented Orioto, who's done some of my favorite fanart pieces of many different video games.

As for the mechanics, I wanted something that wasn't easy to summon. Magus spent decades trying to figure out how to do it, and his mother did it almost by accident. There are two cards that directly get this card out, and several others (albeit out of its color identity) that can suspend it. Whenever Lavos emerges, there is mass destruction around it, and it basically devours your permanents to power itself up.

In all, this is a scary, risky card to play, and even more terrifying to see across the table.

...

Except that's not the end of the fight. The shell cracks open to reveal an enormous cavity that the heroes crawl into. They find the huge living organism that controlled the outer exoskeleton. They defeat it, and it becomes the final, true form of Lavos.

I like how disturbing this piece by Mk-5 is. It's detailed, but not hyper realistic. The background is also a great rendition of the background in the game as well.

Once it transforms, it creates two decoy pods that ensure the true core remains alive. You have to destroy one or the other to be able to damage it. The boss mechanic reaches its own final form on this card. If an opponent defeats it, you lose.

I didn't mention it in the Queen Zeal post, but I made the DFC symbols specifically for Lavos. I really like how the second side turned out, with the various hands representing time not functioning like normal, and also evoking Lavos's shell.

I've been sitting on this one for so long. It's gone through so many tweaks and revisions, and I'm so excited to show it to you. There are a few more cards in the pipeline, so stay tuned!

#mtg #chrono trigger #custom card #magic the gathering #lavos

[mmorgiq]

Opengl 4.3 intel hd 2500

#Opengl 4.3 intel hd 2500 series

I left the second list unfinished on purpose. General Computing on GPU (OpenCL, CUDA, Compute shaders).Cooperating with the driver: locks, minimizing memory transfers, batching.Advanced memory management with buffers.Shaders (Geometry, Tessellation, Compute).3D Math - matrices, vectors, projections.Platform differences (PC vs Mobile vs Web vs Console).General knowledge about the computer graphics.I suggest the following topics for the beginning: OpenGL 4.5 (August 2014) can be compared to DX 11.1 or even supersede it. Tesselation shaders, draw indirect, ES2 compatibility, program binaries, separate shaders objects, Compute shaders. To illustrate this idea, I prepared two images: It can transform vertices, calculate color of fragments, delete or add more triangles and even more. Shader is a little program that can compute various things and is run on the GPU. There is a general form of the pipeline, but a lot of parts are fully controlled by you - thanks to shaders. Programmable pipeline is more like a white, transparent box where not only you put input data and wait for the result, but you can insert/change internal mechanisms as well. You could of course tweak this box to your needs but at some point, it was not enough. You inserted the vertex data in the front (at the input) and you got triangles written to the framebuffer (screen) at the end. What is the difference? This is quite a broad topic, but for now I think it is good to know that fixed pipeline was like a black box. Is there 'old OpenGL ' as well?īasically modern means "using programmable graphics pipeline", old means "fixed pipeline". The first question I would like to answer is why there is a term called 'modern OpenGL'. In this article, I will try to answer some of the questions above and create a guide to a wonderful world of graphics programming using OpenGL. Great! But what does it really mean and what options are available? Do you have to buy expensive books about this technology, or maybe some basic online tutorials are enough?

#Opengl 4.3 intel hd 2500 series

While GMA performance has been widely criticized in the past as being too slow for computer games, the latest GMA generation should ease many of those concerns for the casual gamer.ĭespite similarities, Intel's main series of GMA Integrated Graphics Processors (IGPs) is not based on the PowerVR technology Intel licensed from Imagination Technologies.Shaders + Cube Env Map + Phong Lighting Introduction Many of the advantages of the new GMA architecture come from the ability to flexibly switch as needed between executing graphics-related tasks or video-related tasks. The 4th generation of GMA combines fixed function capabilities with a threaded array of programmable executions units, providing advantages to both graphics and video performance. However, with the introduction of Intel's 4th generation of GMA architecture ( GMA X3000) in 2006, many of the functions are now built into the hardware, providing an increase in performance. The original architecture of GMA systems supported only a few functions in hardware, and relied on the host CPU to handle at least some of the graphics pipeline, further decreasing performance. Later, Intel integrated the i740 core into the Intel 810 chipset. The GMA line of GPUs replaces the earlier Intel Extreme Graphics, and the Intel740 line, the latter of which was a discrete unit in the form of AGP and PCI cards with technology that evolved from companies Real3D and Lockheed Martin. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This section needs additional citations for verification. Seventh generation (HD Graphics 4000, 5000) - EU * 8 * 2 * clock speedįor example, the HD Graphics 3000 is rated at 125 GFLOPS,  which is consistent with the formula (12 * 4 * 2 * 1,300 MHz).Sixth generation (HD Graphics 2000, 3000) - EU * 4 * 2 * clock speed.Fifth generation (HD Graphics) - EU * 2 * 2 * clock speed.Fourth generation (GMA 3, 4) - EU * 2 * 2 * clock speed.Codec used to encode the videoĬalculation The raw performance of integrated GPU, in single-precision FLOPS, can be calculated as follows: iMDCT: Inverse modified discrete cosine transformįull hardware acceleration techniques Intel graphic processing units employ the following techniques in hardware acceleration of digital video playback.iDCT: Inverse discrete cosine transform.VLD: Variable-length code (sometimes referred to as slice-level acceleration).Notes Acronyms The following acronyms are used throughout the article. Main article: PowerVR Specifications of Intel PowerVR-based series Graphics Main article: Intel HD Graphics Specifications of Intel HD Graphics series Graphics Intel marketed its second generation using the brand Extreme Graphics.

#Opengl 4.3 intel hd 2500

[sittingoverheredreaming]

Just watched Fruits Basket S3E5 and I am overwhelmed with feelings on reading Momiji as a butch lesbian because the breaking of his curse maps so well to my own feelings of coming into my own and leaving shame behind.

Especially with how being free and being true to yourself doesn’t mean you get the girl, but it’s still better and you can believe you’ll be happy even if you can’t see the way yet

#listen fruits basket has no small amount of queerphobia #but it also lends itself so well to queer readings #(and if you tweak the core transformation mechanic it would even more) #but also I just love momiji and so project #(Kyo and Momiji are my favorites and therefore. butch lesbians) #fruits basket

[noirapocalypto]

4, 12, 16, 36 for Embry on the cp77 questions :>

Thank you!! 💕

4. what tarot card from the major arcana would you associate with them?

I'm gonna copy/paste this one from a previous ask because I went hella in depth with it 😅

I’m still more or less tweaking his backstory, but from what I have so far, Embry is someone that is pretty much haunted by his past and the pain he’s endured (which he desperately tries to hide and ignore by cranking up the ‘happy and chill’ guy persona to the max). But things have generally gotten much better in his life after meeting Renato and the Twins. So for him, I would say The Star fits very well with how his story is developing.

As The Star follows The Tower card in Tarot, it comes as a welcome reprieve after a period of destruction and turmoil. You have endured many challenges and stripped yourself bare of any limiting beliefs that have previously held you back. You are realizing your core essence, who you are beneath all the layers. No matter what life throws your way, you know that you are always connected to the Divine and pure loving energy. You hold a new sense of self, a new appreciation for the core of your Being.

You may also want to find or rediscover a sense of meaning, inspiration, or purpose in your life. You are making some significant changes in your life, transforming yourself from the old you to the new you and, in doing so, you are bringing about a fresh perspective: “Out with the old and in with the new!” You are choosing the highest version of yourself. This is a profound spiritual journey that will bring greater meaning and purpose into your life and will renew your inner energy. Strip back any limiting beliefs, facades, or deceptions, and live in your authentic nature. Be open to new ideas and growth, and listen to the still voice within.

He’s on the path of healing and learning to accept that what happened, happened and nothing will change that. His new family has his back and supports him, which is what he truly wanted and was missing in his life for the past couple of years. He won’t stop being the happy-go-lucky guy, because he’s just naturally like that. But he won’t fake it as much anymore and his joy is pretty much genuine now.

12. what is their occupation?

At the moment, he can be considered unemployed. He's riding couches when he can, and living out of his car and motels. Since he's a bit new to Night City, he hasn't had much luck trying to get gigs as a merc. But the twins are trying to include him along whenever they can to show him the ropes and hopefully help get some rep to his name.

His long term goal, however, is probably taking up a job as a mechanic and open up his own garage.

16. how would you describe their style?

Embry is not the most fashionable guy. He dresses for function, comfort and ease. So jeans, sneakers/boots and t-shirts for the most part. Tank tops are usually a go-to for him, mostly because the lack of sleeves helps keep his arm from getting snagged in the cloth as well as more mobility. And of course, since he's a Nomad, gotta have some harnesses in there. Dunno what they're for, but they sure as hell look good lmao

36. who is their biggest enemy?

While not exactly an enemy, Embry has always harbored resentment towards the ringleader of the gang of bullies that tormented him throughout his childhood. Even as an adult, the dude was insufferable. One of the reasons Embry felt a sense of relief after leaving his Nomad family. The chances of running into him again are very slim, but never really zero. Embry's ready should it happen.

#cyberpunk 2077 #ᴏᴄ ⋆┊ᴇᴍʙʀʏ ᴇʟʟɪꜱ ᴋɴɪɢʜᴛ

[littlelovelyspiderling]

A Sinister Situation

This is why I’m not allowed to have free time. I just spend it all writing this crap. Oh well :P Last one before going back to requests, promise!!

Spider-Man is caught in the clutches of his worst nemeses. A deadly predicament turns into a fun little game, which turns out not so fun for the web-slinging hero.

word count: 2,285

This is bad. Really bad.

Spider-Man ducked to avoid a swinging tentacle, leapt to dodge a bolt of electricity, and flung himself behind a cabinet as an energy blast splintered the metal into crumbs. His heart hammered against his ribs. Blood dripped down the side of his face.

There’s too many of them. I’m too weak.

“Come out, Spider-Man!” Shocker laughed. “If you give up, we promise to kill you quickly! You won’t feel a thing!”

Flashes of light and waves of heat washed over the trembling hero. This was insane. All he’d been doing was tracking a lead on Shocker’s lousy posse, the Enforcers. It was meant to be a laid-back, low-key endeavor. Never had he anticipated accidentally stumbling upon the Sinister Six’s secret base. Thankfully, only three members of the gang had been home. Not-so-thankfully, Peter was just getting over a wicked case of the flu.

He didn’t feel sick anymore, but was still pretty fatigued and frail from the battle. Nowhere near ready to be fighting three of his most powerful enemies at once.

Gritting his teeth, Peter frantically adjusted the settings on his web-shooter, then darted into the open.

“Taser web!” he cried, firing a line from his wrist. The webbing hit Shocker’s right gauntlet, sending sparks flying from the weapon and a jolt through his body. He screeched, crashing into Electro, who only shocked him more. The pair collapsed into an electrified heap on the floor. Peter would’ve taken time to celebrate, were he not immediately met with a metal arm slamming into his chest.

Spider-Man flew across the room and crashed into a table of devices, gasping from the impact. Hardly a second later, the arm grabbed him by the ankle and launched him into a concrete wall. The hit rattled him to his core. He slid to the floor like a dead bug on a windshield, moaning in pain, delirious.

Octavius lifted the limp hero up and pinned him against the wall with all four of his mechanical limbs. Peter grimaced, struggling weakly against his hold.

“Oh, you are so in for it now,” Shocker spat. His gauntlets were blackened in places and his eyes were wild with rage. He marched up to Spider-Man, ripping the webbing off his fist.

“What should we do? Fry him? Let me fry him to a crisp!” Electro gathered a ball of electricity between his fingers, grinning from ear to ear.

“No,” Shocker hissed. “I’m the one who gets to do it. I’m killing him.” He flexed his hands at his sides eagerly, ominously. “And since you didn’t give in nicely like I asked, I’m gonna make it slow. Real slow.”

Peter’s blood was ice. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t get away.

“Use you gauntlets,” Doc Oc suggested. “Turn his insides into smoothie.”

Shocker smiled. “What a wonderful idea, Otto. With pleasure.”

This is it, Peter realized.

Shocker powered up his gauntlets and stepped forward.

I’m about to die.

He wrapped his hands around his ribcage. Peter knew how destructive the gauntlets could be from a distance; at this range, his body would shatter from the inside-out, mangled in seconds.

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

“Any last words, asshole?” Shocker asked. Peter was too afraid to speak. And yet, something was off, something wasn’t right. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but…

“Really? The most talkative prick I know has nothing to say on his deathbed?”

He blinked. Then it hit him.

My spidey sense isn’t going off.

“Wait—” he began to say, his brain a mush of terror and confusion. But then the gauntlets hummed to life.

“Too late,” Shocker sneered. The deadly devices drilled into his torso.

The sensation was…not what Peter was expecting, to say the least. Not what anyone was expecting.

Instead of blasting his entrails to bits, the gauntlets simply vibrated against his ribs. Before Peter realized it, the scream that had been building inside his throat transformed into an outburst of hysterical giggling.

“Wha—ahahaha! W-wait—whahat—ehehe! Hahahahehe!”

Electro frowned. “Uh…what’s happening?”

“What the hell?” Shocker exclaimed. He took his hands off Spider-Man’s ribcage and stared at them bewilderedly. The young hero was flushed with a mix of relief, embarrassment, and giggly confusion.

“Are your gauntlets malfunctioning or something?” Octavius asked.

“That stupid little freak must have fried them with his webbing,” he growled. “Give me a second.”

Electro turned back to Spider-Man with a curious smile. “Were you just…laughing? Were his gauntlets tickling you?”

Peter reddened even more. This was a very weird conversation to have with someone who was about to murder you in cold blood. “Um…I don’t know. I’m just glad they didn’t, y’know, turn me inside-out, like all of you were hoping.”

To Peter’s disbelief, Electro placed his hands on his stomach and started scurrying his fingers up his sides. He expected his touch to zap him, to hurt, but instead it just kind of tingled.

And tickled. A lot.

“Aha!” Spider-Man yelped, squirming and twitching to try to get away. “H-hehey, quihihit it! Ehehahahaha! Whahat are you doohoohing?”

“Aw, look! The big bad Spider-Man is ticklish! How cute is that?”

“Gehehehet ohoff!” Peter squeaked. This sure was going to be a sad way to go—humiliated by his enemies, followed by death by implosion. Things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

“Alright, fixed,” Shocker said, pounding his gauntlets together. He turned back to Spider-Man, gaze cold as stone. “Now take off his mask. I want to watch the light leave his eyes.”

Peter paled. Never mind. They can.

“Ooh, smart!” Electro agreed. “Now we can finally see the face of the freak who’s been causing us so much trouble. And then, y’know, kill him.”

Peter didn’t even have time to protest before Electro yanked the mask off his head. He gaped at his nemeses, his secret demolished, his messy, curly hair sticking up in all different directions. His nemeses gaped back, stunned.

“He looks…” Otto began.

“Twelve,” Electro finished.

Peter didn’t know whether to be terrified, shocked, or insulted. “I…I’m not twelve,” he managed to say. He strained uselessly against Octavius’ grip.

“He’s a…kid,” Shocker said. “You’re a kid.”

“Your face is a kid,” he shot back. He was too afraid to come up with anything clever.

“Spider-Man?” Electro snorted, fluttering his fingers against his belly. “More like Spider-Nugget. Did you come up with that name yourself?”

Peter fought so hard not to laugh, but it was simply impossible. It was so much worse now that his face wasn’t hidden. His pink cheeks and giggly smile were free for all diabolical eyes to see.

“Mhmmhehehe! S-screhew yohohou Mahahahaxwell! Ehehehahaha!”

“Aw. He’s trying so hard to be tough. But Spidey’s just too tiny and ticklish, isn’t he?”

The teasing was just as bad as the wiggly fingers skittering across his skin. Octavius rolled his eyes and looked over his shoulder. 

“Shocker? Any day now.”

Schultz hesitated, glancing between his hands and Spider-Man’s face. “Uh…right. Okay.” He strode forward, nudging Electro out of the way, who had rendered the kid breathless with laughter. The happy spark in his eyes vanished instantly when the Shocker’s gauntlets lifted towards him.

Schultz recognized the look. He recognized it all too well.

Peter could tell Shocker was acting a lot more reluctant than before. Then his gauntlets hummed back to life and clamped on to his torso. Apparently, he wasn’t reluctant enough.

But, once again, bone-crushing pain didn’t follow. Instead, the gauntlets started vibrating again. More than before. A lot more.

And Peter Parker was, once again, rendered a laughing, wriggling mess. It tickled so much, he thought he might implode anyway.

“Ahahahahahehehaha!” He shrieked. He thrashed helplessly, curling his hands into fists. “Stohohahap trihihicking mehehehe!”

“Uh oh, looks like they’re malfunctioning again,” Shocker said robotically. He started moving his hands all over his torso, kneading his fingers into his sides, tummy, and underarms. “Give it a minute. Maybe they just need to warm up.”

Tears threatened to spill from his eyes as Spider-Man laughed and laughed and laughed. He’s doing it on purpose! he realized. Oh thank God. He isn’t going to kill me. At this point, however, he didn’t know which one was crueler: murdering him, or more of this.

Because the gauntlets weren’t just buzzing anymore. They were sending out little pulses, which were attacking every inch of Peter’s torso. Normally, the pulses hurt, like miniature explosions. Right now, the pulses were like tiny tickle-bombs going off every second, wrecking his entire midsection with unbearable sensations.

That combined with the ten buzzing fingers squeezing and tweaking his most ticklish spots, Peter was going absolutely mad.

“HEHEHEHEHEHELP!” Spider-Man cried. Every other giggle was interrupted by bouts of hiccups. “PLEHEHEHEHEASE! I CAHAHAHAHAHAN’T BREHEHEHETHEHEHAHA!”

“Schultz,” Otto snorted knowingly. Shocker glanced back at him.

“Hold on, they’re getting there,” he assured him. His gaze returned to the squealing, beat-red kid in front of him, and he hinted a smile. “See? Spidey’s about to burst. They’re not even working properly, and he’s already begging for mercy.”

“EHEHAHAHAHAHA SHIHIHIHIHIT! MAHAHAHAHAKE IHIT STOHOHAHAHAHAP! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“Yeah, it’s definitely killing him,” Electro giggled.

Nicked with sympathy, Shocker finally relinquished his tickle attack. Spider-Man was nothing but a red, giggling blob. His whole torso tingled from the energy pulses, like a bunch of tiny feathers were brushing his skin.

“Well darn. I guess my gauntlets really are broken.” He turned away and shrugged. “Oh well. I suppose someone else will have to kill him instead.”

“Why won’t you finish the job?” Otto growled. “Five minutes ago, you were ready to pulverize his entrails into jelly.”

Schultz winced shyly. “I know, but…” He crossed his arms against his chest with a sigh. “Look, I have a niece who looks close to him in age. I can’t just go murdering a kid like that, no matter how much he’s pissed me off.”

“You literally kill people all the time,” Octavius said.

“Yeah. But not kids. I mean, look at him.”

With his pink face, messy hair, and listlessly giggly smile, it was hard for anyone to deny how adorable Spider-Man was. Otto scoffed.

“Fine. Electro, you do it.”

Electro blinked. “Oh. Um, alrighty.”

The super villain approached the young hero, who was still recovering from Shocker’s vicious tickle torture. When he saw Electro coming toward him, he cringed.

“Oh man, plehease,” he whimpered. “I hate this so muhuch.”

“Really? I think it’s pretty fun.” Clearing his throat, Electro gingerly raised one finger and pressed it to Peter’s chest. “One bolt through the heart should, uh, do the trick.”

A flash of terror glinted in the teenager’s eyes. He could feel the static heat seeping from his fingertip through the material of his costume, burning against his skin, moments from frying him to death. He met the villain’s ice cold stare.

Then Electro huffed.

“Dammit! I can’t do it!” His hands suddenly pounced on Peter’s belly, scribbling it with tickles. “He’s just too cute!”

Peter giggled wildly, throwing his head back and wrenching against his restraints. Electro’s tickling was less intense, more playful, but still just as insufferable.

Not to mention embarrassing. So. Freaking. Embarrassing.

Why couldn’t they just kill him already?

“Ehehehahahagh! Stohohopstohahahapstahahahap it!”

“This is ridiculous,” Otto grumbled.

Electro stepped back and gestured toward a very loopy and winded Spider-Man. “If you’re so eager to kill him, then be my guest.”

“Yeah, Doctor Octopus,” Shocker called. “You kill him.”

Octavius tilted his chin toward the ceiling. “If I let him go to kill him, then he will get away. It has to be one of you.”

Shocker waved him off. “You don’t want to kill him just like we don’t. Admit it.”

“Well if we don’t kill him, then what will we do with him? We can’t just let him go; he knows where our base is.”

Schultz tapped his chin in thought. A sinister smile spread across his lips. “Well, we’ll just have to make sure he never tells anyone about this place. And that he never comes here again.”

Shocker turned back to Spider-Man, walking slowly. Even though he knew he wasn’t going to kill him this time, Peter still stiffened in fear.

“Listen very carefully, Spidey. In exchange for your silence, we will set you free. If you promise to never speak of our lair to anyone, and to never return here, we will not kill you today. Understand?”

Peter nodded eagerly. He was lying. He was sure they knew that. Still, he just wanted to get out of here. He couldn’t take another second of this back-and-forth, heart-attack-inducing game of ‘murder or tickling’.

Shocker continued toward him.

“Good,” he said with a smile. “Because you do know what will happen if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, right?”

“I do,” Electro snickered.

Peter blushed even more than he already was. He hoped it didn’t show. “Mmhmm. Yep. Got it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re positive?”

“Yes!”

“You don’t need me to explain?”

“Yes! I mean—no! I mean—” He grimaced at his mistake. “You know what I mean!”

Shocker tilted his head to the side. “Mm, no, I don’t think I do.”

“Shocker, I swear…”

Schultz held up his gauntlets with an evil grin. “I think I’d better demonstrate, just to make certain that everything’s clear.”

“I think I’d better help,” Electro concurred.

“Nohoho!” Peter pleaded. They weren’t even touching him yet, and he was already helpless with giggles. “Guhuhuys—come ohohohon—plehehehease! Gehehet awahahay! I swehehear—I swehehear I’m gohohonna—ehehehaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!”

By the time they finally set him free, Peter was in shambles. If any of his other villains found out about his weakness, he was absolutely screwed. He decided if he did break his promise and return to the Sinister Six’s secret base, he’d best be at his full strength. And he’d definitely bring backup.

#ticklish!peter #ticklish!spiderman #avengers tickling #ticklish!peter parker #ticklish!spidey #sfw tickle fic #sfw tickling #avengers #Avengers infinity war #infinity war #sinister six #marvel #mcu #spiderman #spiderman fanfiction #spiderman homecoming #spiderman tickle #spider-man #spiderman far from home #ffh #spiderman ffh #sm:hc #tom holland #peter parker #peter parker tickle #marvel cinematic universe #shocker #doctor octopus #electro #spectacular spider-man

[secretgamergirl]

RPG Campaign Setting Thoughts - Alignments, Death, and Outsiders

Continuing on from this post here, tonight we have some VERY sketchy notes about the Outer Planes and associated stuff, which is going to spill over from world-building into mechanics and this is all too loose for me to bother with anything resembling in-book presentation.

The Outer Planes have traditionally always served two purposes in this cosmology of D&D and its derivatives which are honestly somewhat at odds with each other. They are both the actual afterlife of the setting, where the souls of the dead end up, theoretically for eternity, and they’re where all the demons and devils and daemons and angels and maybe gods and a bunch of other really weird things that exist mainly for the sake of symmetry generally hang out when they aren’t being summoned so they tend to prominently feature as a way to go bigger and more epic late in a campaign. It’s also very much a tradition (which is weird because I can’t think of a single religion that actually works like this) where all of these supernatural creatures are what the souls of the dead BECOME in the afterlife. If you’re neutral good, when you die you become an angel. If you’re lawful evil, you become a devil, etc. (and there’s a lot of weird exceptions because there’s way more outsider types than alignment combinations, and that’s before also factoring in undead and reincarnation and so on).

The problem here of course is that sometimes, the PCs are going to end up dying, and having friends who die, and when you’ve established that that turns you into one of these cool types of monsters, and that those monsters can be summoned, dying turns into this weird sort of power-up, and this was fixed with a very... game designer sort of solution. Namely, when you die, you completely lose all your memories, skills, personal connections, and really by any reasonable standard straight up cease to exist, being replaced with some new outsider springing into being on whatever other plane who’s really just a different character doing their own thing. And, yeah, that solves that problem, but it creates the new one that WOW, THIS AFTERLIFE REALLY SUCKS!

Now, I did already establish for this setting the concept of a layered prime material plane, where you can essentially have your high level alternate universes as weird little pocket dimensions you can honestly just walk right into without even using magic... but I mean, visiting the outer planes is still a cool fun thing to do, and fighting demons is a cool fun thing to do, and your soul transforming into some weird thing in the afterlife is just neat. So I don’t want to drop any of that, but I want to make some tweaks.

Also? Death sucks game mechanics wise. Players, as it turns out decades down the road from when this whole RPG thing first began, tend to be really attached to their characters, and don’t want to just rip up their sheets when they die. They want to cheat death. Which is fine. But the way you cheat death is you pay a bunch of money and either have your cleric cast a quick spell (or rush back to town to find one) and tada, you’re back with some temporary experience penalty you either kinda walk off or buy off. Which is all very... weightless. And straight up losing cash sucks if you’re saving up to buy fancy magic stuff. AND you don’t even get to visit the afterlife really.

So... the standard raise dead spells? They’re gone or at least getting alterations (gotta keep reincarnate in some form because I have a soft spot for it). Plane shift? Also gone. Instead we are going to dust off our old pal Astral Projection, have it at a reasonable level, and no, when someone gets killed, you have to cast that sucker, chase them across the astral plane, maybe to one of the outer planes, and have this whole mini adventure of rescuing their soul and shoving it back in their body.

Also? I am sticking to a hard and fast rule that the material plane is the physical plane, and all the outer stuff is all souls and magic. Nobody gets to bring their body with them which also means you don’t get to bring all your fancy equipment. You’re either a ghost getting sucked into hell or you’re a demon that used to be a ghost or you’re still alive but effectively a ghost tethered to home by a silver cord.

By the same token, outsiders can’t just physically come over to the prime material plane. This is kind of a big fundamental shift in things, but at the end of the day, isn’t it just freaking weird that there’s never really been a place in D&D for demonic possession?

So, tada. That’s a thing now. Outsiders on the material plane need to borrow something to use as a body. A willing person to possess, or an unwilling person subjected to a proper ritual first, or a recently sacrificed corpse, maybe some kind of magical focus stone. This is one of the sketchier parts of the idea here, but no matter how it works out it’s a built in adventure hook, and it doesn’t really change a ton because obviously being possessed by a whatever dramatically transforms the host into the standard existing stat block until its defeated. Summon spells kinda need a material component or a focus I guess, or maybe even not because like you’re calling up a whatever but you can’t really anchor it so it just has this unstable body made of dust and debris and temporarily conjured matter.

I’m also tempted to straight up invent a new divine caster class to fit in with this theme that’s all about having some outside pal they let possess them in combat. Get the whole Devilman sorta thing going, Maybe in a little subsection with a really dex-y fighter and a different take on an arcane type and a rogue type for a really non-standard but complementary core 4.

Back on the side of dying and visiting the other planes though, I say this is a good place to wedge in a good ol’ corruption mechanic. If you die,and your friends manage to catch up to you while you’re streaking across the astral plane, cool, no harm, no foul. Once you end up in whatever plane though, you gradually start to turn into whatever sort of outsider. Subtle cosmetic stuff at first, sprouting horns and getting weird colored hair and maybe a tail first, some slight shifts in personality, and over months or years you just kinda naturally lean into that, and your class levels fade away, and you just kinda naturally go all in on being a mephit or an azata or whatever the hell thing.

And then when your friends do get your soul back and shove it into your body again, that weird metaphysical transformative soul corruption deal doesn’t just go away. That’s partially demonified you possessing your old body now, so, you keep the horns and the flaming eyes and stuff as a permanent reminder of that time you died for a bit and you can be all angsty about it and maybe rededicate yourself to something because that’s not an afterlife you want to go back to, and honestly if you’re the sort of person with a real thing for dramatic mid-campaign transformations and you want a character to look all furry or glowing or be a hot demon gal at higher levels without the mechanical baggage of transformation magic, hey, the door’s open a crack for you.

Also speaking of succubi, while I’m playing around with outsiders, this one has always bugged me. Say we’re going all 7 deadly sins. We’ve got our wrath demons- big angry spikey jerks, maybe on fire. We’ve got our sloth demons- big gross sluggy things who can barely move. Our gross-Kirby gluttony demons, etc. But then we get to lust and it’s this super hot seductress. That breaks the pattern and I hate it. I am definitely kicking them out of that niche and replacing them with proper lust demons, evoking super creepy long-fingered horny dudes.

And really there is room from there to expand into a two-tiered system of outsiders for every plane where there’s the things that are there because they’re what happens to the average person who had this alignment as their reward/punishment, and then there’s the things that are their to make sure things run the way they’re supposed to, are generally more powerful, and are formed from the souls of people who really actively served their patron deity in life. I’m mainly looking at this from the angle of “do the members of the cult of this demon lord realize that in the afterlife they’re all going to become lemures and realize how much that sucks?” but even on the good side, you have to figure the average paladin doesn’t want the blissful retirement package after death, they want to do the whole holy avenging archon sort of thing and continue to kick evil’s ass, right?

Which segues me into alignments. A lot of people absolutely hate the traditional law/chaos good/evil alignment system, but I find as long as you’re careful to use it descriptively rather than prescriptively and you don’t use really messed up alignment definitions (AD&D 2nd ed had some DOOZIES), it’s cool. There is one missing element I would like to formally add in though- An extra variable for mundane and divine/committed/radicalized versons of each. Breaking this down with specific examples...

First and foremost, I am a big big fan of neutral as the default alignment nearly everyone falls into, with everything else being a bit of an outlying extreme. On the good/evil axis then, neutral if for people who you would generally describe as basically good people. They know right from wrong, and generally always try to do the right thing, but they have a strong sense of self-preservation. Truly good people go past that and will, as a general rule, really stick their neck out and take major personal risks or do full-on self-sacrificial things to help people. Evil people are all about looking out for themselves first. Or put more simply, seeing someone being attacked/persecuted/in great need, a neutral person will think “someone should do something,” a good person will think “someone should do something and I’m that someone” and an evil person will think “sucks to be that person” and try not to think about them much.

Meanwhile on the law/chaos axis, lawful people have an unflinching commitment to some form of faith in the system/some particular authority/a rigid personal code of some kind.and will always work within that framework. If that’s always obeying the law, any plan that’s explicitly illegal is off the table, and if the law is unjust, working to change it is the way to go. If they’re super religious, doubting their own deity is never on the table. If they’re strict adherents to a code, they don’t make exceptions. “I’ll never allow suffering” never gets a quiet clause of “unless the person suffering is a scumbag who deserves it” they’re really going to intervene over that.

Someone who is chaotic meanwhile actively has a chip on their shoulder about any sort of bureaucracy, full stop will never “have faith in the system,” generally assume any sort of authority figure is a power hungry scumbag, and while it’s hard to translate this into fantasy terms, be the sort of person who always jailbreaks their phone and has a strict no-DRM stance on all their software.

The vast majority of people are, again, neutral, falling between those extremes. Follow the law, trust that calling the cops will usually get things sorted out, but when push comes to shove, most rules are really guidelines and you can make exceptions where you have to.

All of these represent real, realistic attitudes normal real-world people have. Most are true neutral. The corner alignments are the rarest (always going by the book and always sticking your neck out is demanding, looking out for number 1 without bowing down to the powers that be really requires a certain sort of lifestyle, etc.) but there should be people you can point to at all 9 points on the grid, and none of them should really clash so hard that people can’t be friends or live in the same society, and they should all be functional alignments for adventurers since a good adventure should have a mix of personal stakes and rewards and a good party should all like each other enough to stick together through whatever comes up.

Then there’s the more extreme versions of these alignments. Where neutrality becomes about “maintaining the balance” or actively rejecting society as a whole, evil is actively causing harm for harm’s sake, chaos is constant change, law is absolute rigidity and caste structures and such, and good gets really extreme about scope. These are still worldviews actual humans CAN hold, but more typically these are the sort of things supernatural forces get bent out of shape about and have as sources of constant conflict.

Again, lots of loose sloppy notes here, but you can hopefully see where I’m going as far as moral philosophies and cosmology driving games in fun directions, right?

#game design #worldbuilding #rpg campaign setting #D&D

[aion-rsa]

15 Best Nintendo Franchises Ranked

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Sony and Microsoft super fans will have a hard time admitting it, but Nintendo has created the most incredible catalog of properties in the history of gaming. They may get made fun of for their slow development time and occasionally repetitive entries within their biggest franchises, but people just can’t get enough of that feeling they get when they re-discover Mario jumping on Goombas or Kirby transforming into his nemeses.

With nearly four decades of game creation to explore, it’s hard to rank the absolute best franchises from Nintendo’s considerable history, but that’s exactly what we’ve set out to do. To clear up any confusion, this isn’t a list of the best characters in Nintendo’s history, so you may see Mario starring in multiple entries in this hierarchy (he’s dipped his gloves into just about everything). This also isn’t a ranking of individual Nintendo games, though the overall quality of the individual games within these franchises obviously influenced their ranking.

From sci-fi foxes and pink puffs to mascot brawlers and pocket monsters, these are the 15 best Nintendo franchises ever:

15. Mario Party

Board games have sometimes struggled to battle the popular perception that they’re an outdated form of entertainment. People (sometimes falsely) believe kids don’t have the attention span required to sit still and enjoy them for more than a few minutes, and adults sometimes get tired of trying to get enough people together to play one. Of course, before Mario Party, few people realized how strong the relationship between video games and board games could be.

For over two decades, Mario Party has been delighting families (and driving them crazy) with its wild hijinks, creative minigames, and whimsical board designs associated with the Mushroom Kingdom and its colorful inhabitants. Some entries are obviously more memorable than others (Mario Party 2 is the arguable high point of the franchise), but all of them have the same objective: to encourage in-person multiplayer gaming with people you care about.

14. F-Zero

Before he was known as a Super Smash Bros. staple, Captain Falcon and his iconic Blue Falcon racer led a franchise that many racing fans still call one of the most intense ever. The franchise combines strong gameplay with revolutionary characterization and world-building in a genre that typically isn’t known for either of those qualities. 

Sadly, it’s hard to talk about F-Zero without eventually addressing the fact that it is a mostly defunct relic from Nintendo’s past. There still hasn’t been a mainstream series release since the critically acclaimed F-Zero GX for the Gamecube in 2003, but the fire that fans have for this series’ unique futuristic environments, blazing speed, and racer backstories still burns bright in 2021. 

13. WarioWare

Humor is sometimes severely lacking in gaming, especially at a time when so many violent and cinematic franchises command the attention of the masses. Thankfully, Wario has always had enough fart jokes, snarky comments, and crude companions to make up for the dearth of humor on the gaming market. Of course, WarioWare is so much more than a few laughs and the five-second microgames that compose the core gameplay of the series. 

The franchise has been a pioneer in creative character building, multiplayer functionality, and innovative game design since 2003. Up until the Wii U, audiences could expect Wario, Jimmy T, Mona, and Dr. Crygor to showcase the technological potential of a new Nintendo console. We’ll all be treated to that zaniness again when WarioWare: Get It Together! launches on September 10 for the Switch.

12. Star Fox

It’s hard to emulate the sci-fi/fantasy mix of Star Wars with anthropomorphic animals and not have the whole thing feel corny, but Shigeru Miyamoto pulled it off when he created the Star Fox franchise in the early 1990s. Fox McCloud and his ragtag cohort of pilots introduced sharp-as-nails on-rails shooting to the Nintendo universe, and the gameplay of the first two (officially released) titles in this series has been hard to beat in the decades since. 

This franchise briefly attempted to explore third-person action gameplay with Star Fox Adventure and Star Fox Assault, but the series sadly fell into the abyss in the 2010s. Despite those recent shortcomings, the furry friends that fly through space will always hold a special place in Nintendo gamers’ hearts for as long as people can access a SNES and Nintendo 64. Do a barrel roll! 

11. Pikmin

The Pikmin series is one of Nintendo’s most daring ventures. It’s essentially a mish-mash of genres that ultimately feels like a strategy/adventure/platform/puzzle/collect-a-thon game. Against all odds, the series combines all of those unique elements rather well and even adds a surprising amount of emotional baggage to the equation. There’s nothing quite like the horror of watching the nickel-sized Captain Olimar and his resilient Pikmin soldiers get snuffed out in a second by a Red Bulborb (shudders). 

The franchise has only had four true entries (three on consoles, one on handheld), but that just keeps everyone hungry for more. The third title was also re-released for the Switch in 2020, and there have been rumors of a fourth console entry in the works since 2015. Hopefully, that sequel becomes a reality soon, because few games in the Big N canon offer so much variety. 

10. Donkey Kong

This franchise essentially gave birth to the entire Nintendo empire as we know it today. After all, the original Donkey Kong arcade game gave Nintendo the financial resources it needed to go on to do even bigger and better things. Better yet, DK became a charismatic fan-favorite character in his own right who has been severely disrespected and forgotten about in recent years.

Always in the shadow of the Mario platformers, and even occasionally demoted to sports and party game fodder, the Donkey Kong franchise still features some of the best games in Nintendo history. Donkey Kong Country and its sequels on the SNES revolutionized 2.5-dimensional graphics, Donkey Kong 64 was a peak 3D experience on the Nintendo 64, and Donkey Konga forced millions of parents to buy plastic bongo drums for their living rooms. It’s too bad we didn’t get anything good for this series’ 40th anniversary this past summer. 

9. Kirby

The “Super Tuff Pink Puff” and his large library of games have an enormous following largely because they can lay claim to being the ultimate representation of what gaming should be: flat-out fun. Kirby’s joyful exterior pairs with a fierce interior to create the perfect balance of a cuddly badass. His trademark mechanic (acquiring the abilities of his enemies on the fly) was revolutionary in the 1990s though it admittedly grew a little stale in the three decades since. 

Nintendo seemed to eventually realize that the franchise was growing repetitive and has since tried to spice things up with entries like 2010’s Kirby’s Epic Yarn (an artsy alternative to the typical platforming in the series) and several brawling-style games (i.e. Kirby Fighters Deluxe and Kirby Fighters 2). No matter the genre, this franchise remains one of the most accessible properties in Nintendo’s portfolio.

8. Animal Crossing

There’s no way Nintendo could have known that was initially seen as their spin on The Sims would turn into such a phenomenon. That title effectively introduced many of the hallmark traits of this series that both casual and hardcore fans have come to adore, such as a real-time internal clock and the ability to interact with animals of all kinds as a curious villager in a town that you get to mold and watch grow.

Most recently, Animal Crossing: New Horizons demonstrated gaming’s ability to bring the world together even when they’re separated by thousands of miles and incredible circumstances. The coronavirus pandemic destroyed lives, careers, and economies, but 32 million copies of that title circulated the planet and even provided a little bit of carefree immersion amongst some very dark days. There’s really no greater feat that a video game can possibly accomplish. 

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7. Mario Kart

The racing genre is hard to get right, but sticking Mario and all of his friends into some wonky karts and letting the items fly has been simultaneously fun and infuriating for decades now. The franchise has brilliantly found ways to tweak and improve a tried and true formula with each new installment, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe may just be the perfect racing game. 

We all know that Nintendo has had a difficult time competing with the other major players in the industry when it comes to online play, but Mario Kart 8 is one of the only examples of the Big N creating a truly great experience in that department. Ruining someone’s morning with a blue shell halfway across the world right before you go to bed is something that can’t be replicated in any other game series. 

6. Fire Emblem

Long before Marth and Roy joined the Super Smash Bros roster, the Fire Emblem franchise became the pinnacle of tough-as-nails strategy gaming in Japan. As the strategy series started to trickle into the homes of more gamers, the entire Western world finally got to experience its brilliantly designed character development, storytelling, and tactical game boards set in visually creative fantasy lands. 

Fire Emblem Awakening essentially saved the entire property when it exploded in sales for the 3DS in 2013, and it’s only been up from there. Fire Emblem: Three Houses expanded the series’ secondary and tertiary elements to great success, but we all know that the foundational reason for the fun is always the chess match between the gamer’s army and the CPU’s enemy faction. This franchise has one of the brightest futures in the industry. 

5. Super Smash Bros.

When Masahiro Sakurai led development on the original Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 he probably had no idea he was working on the ultimate fighting event in gaming history. Every sequel that has followed has expanded on the original’s revolutionary mechanics and style that quickly broke the boundaries of what many believed multiplayer fighting games could be. 

By the time we got to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it became clear to everyone that this series is now a celebration of not only Nintendo as a company but characters previously outside of the conglomerate’s giant grasp. The franchise’s inclusion of Sonic the Hedgehog, Solid Snake, Cloud Strife, and many others demonstrate the power of Smash‘s orbit to bring the entire industry together for one very special gaming experience. 

4. Metroid

Nintendo’s incredible catalog lacks atmospheric, dark, science-fiction properties. Thankfully, Samus Aran’s three-decade-long struggle to take down Space Pirates and battle Ridley has always filled the void. There’s nothing else in gaming that quite challenges Metroid’s ability to combine adventuring, platforming, and puzzle-solving into one incredible entity. 

The series features multiple games that are in the running for the best of their generation, and the anticipation for Metroid Dread shows that fans desperately want to explore the moody depths of Brinstar, Zebes, and Tallon IV for as long as Nintendo will allow them to. 

3. Pokémon

We’ve finally hit the big three Nintendo properties. If you account for all the Pokémon apparel, TV series, movies, trading cards, and more that have spawned from the video games, it’s certainly easy to argue that this franchise is worthy of the top spot on the list. Honestly, though, this series is worthy of at least the third spot on this list based purely on the brilliance of its original adventure. 

Pokémon is special because it focuses on the relationship between humans and animals. Even though the pocket monsters you capture aren’t technically your pets, they sure feel like it after you’ve formed a connection with them after hours and hours of play. This franchise will continue to flourish for as long as Nintendo can think of new types of Pokémon for us to catch in each new generation of games.

2. Super Mario

Nintendo’s mascot has expanded into so many different waters that we sometimes forget just how brilliant his main franchise is. The Super Mario platformers have grown gaming’s potential with nearly every new release, and they have made millions fall in love with the medium for 35 years now. 

It would be easy for Nintendo to rest on Super Mario’s laurels and pump out the same thing year after year, but that almost feels sacrilegious. Instead, every new entry has its own signature style that is ultimately duplicated and admired for years to come. Super Mario continues to open up countless possibilities for platforming and the rest of the gaming industry.

1. The Legend of Zelda

Link’s adventures in Hyrule get the slight edge over Mario’s adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom because no other franchise in gaming has demonstrated that videogames are art on the same level as literature, film, or television as consistently or for as long as much of The Legend of Zelda has. This franchise is more than a game; it’s an experience.

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Boss battles, weapon upgrades, niche characters you meet along the way, and complex dungeons that double as playgrounds for the mind are all trademarks of this series that will never grow old. With this series’ recent evolution into an open-world experience that is changing the ways we think of that genre, there’s no telling how many more incredible gaming experiences we will ultimately owe this franchise in the coming years.

The post 15 Best Nintendo Franchises Ranked appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE FEEDBACK YOU GET FROM ENGAGING DIRECTLY WITH YOUR EARLIEST USERS WILL BE THINKING, WHY DEAL WITH INVESTORS WHILE THE OTHERS KEEP THE COMPANY MOVING FORWARD—RELEASING NEW FEATURES, INCREASING TRAFFIC, DOING DEALS, GETTING WRITTEN ABOUT—THOSE INVESTOR MEETINGS ARE MORE LIKELY TO SEE IN RESEARCH PAPERS THAN COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE, BUT NOT ALWAYS AS QUICKLY AS OPTIONS VEST

It's very valuable in practice to have a deep understanding of what you're doing is an extraordinarily powerful force. Instead of developing a product for some big company in the expectation of getting anything in return. They were in effect arguing about artifacts induced by sampling at too low a resolution. Mihalko, everything was different. Ideally you transform your life so it has other defaults. Kids in pre-industrial times started working at about 14 at the latest; kids on farms, where most people lived, began far earlier. But there is no external pressure to do this is to get there first and get all the users, instead of spending all our time playing an exacting but mostly pointless game like the others. I didn't learn any magical truths compared to which everything else was mere domain knowledge. If you let the difficulty of being a gotcha left to be discovered by the investors you're currently talking to, who will be proud of and thus attached to their discovery. So at Viaweb the developers were always in close contact with support. This is why some software costs more to run on Windows, and deliver software running on Unix direct to users through the browser.

Surely all smart people would be interested in a company with a valuation any lower. My final test may be the most restrictive. It would have taken a deliberate lie to say otherwise. But can you think of technology as something that's spreading like a sort of Valley within the Valley, lightning has a sign bit. So at Viaweb the developers were always in close contact with support. And since a startup that succeeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies getting rich is doable too. I can predict is conflict between AOL and Microsoft. Simula: Algol isn't good enough at simulations. The initial user serves as the form for your mold; keep tweaking till you fit their needs perfectly, and you'll usually find you've made something other users want too. At sales I was not very good. It took me a while to grasp this, but when I did it myself in college. My test was to think of startup ideas.

If you administer the servers themselves should find them very well defended. Isaac Newton and Jonathan Swift both lost money in the South Sea Bubble of 1720. I don't always try as hard as this though. The programmers become system administrators, but without the sharply defined limits that ordinarily make the job bearable. IBM dropped it in their lap five years later, I still don't understand Berkeley. All you can say with certainty about Jaynes is that he was utterly relentless. Since we did continuous releases, our software didn't actually have versions. If you want to be running into trouble, and that was when he was an expert on startups, but possibly somewhat dangerous. It's that startups will build on, they have no idea how horrifying software seems to normal people. But in at least some of the time we were all, students and teachers both, just going through the motions of starting a company, but they sounded like they were en route to the big company. What matters, though, is the beginning. That doesn't mean 16.

One argument says that this would be impossible, that the smart kids are unpopular because the other girls would make fun of her. Well, it doesn't. It's a fine idea in principle to finance your startup with its own revenues, but you can write a spreadsheet that several people can use simultaneously from different locations without special client software, or that can page you when certain conditions are triggered. But few technology startups are in the way. And in that department, there are probably adjacent territories that have more. When a startup grows fast it's usually because the product is only moderately appealing the growth never comes. I realize I've made startups sound pretty hard.

You'd think it would be clear that in practice socialist countries have nontrivial disparities of wealth, because they can't afford to hire a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad. So if you're developing technology for money, you're probably not going to be even a fraction of the company you're giving up, the deal is a good one if it makes sense. And a good thing for investors that this is the third counterintuitive thing to remember about startups: starting a startup just doesn't seem real. Even if you're designing something for the most sophisticated users, though, is the problem so bad in most other countries. But the Collison brothers weren't going to wait. But even the most general truths? Not recent ones; you wouldn't find those in our high school library. But even that may be overrated. All you need from a launch is some initial core of users.

They think what they're building. To make a startup hub, unexpected good things will probably happen to you, especially if you have no ideas. With server-based software does require fewer programmers. Since we hosted all the stores, which together were getting just over 10 million page views per month in June 1998 I took a snapshot of Viaweb's site. It applies way less than most people think of startups, but to make a billion dollars a year. C the only option you can count on. Our startup, Viaweb, was built to be sold. If someone had told me that at the time was that she was surprised. They were also a kind of proxy focus group; we could ask them which of two new features users wanted more, and impose more onerous conditions. Steve Jobs People alive when Kennedy was killed usually remember exactly where I was at Yahoo, we got an email from Filo, who had been crawling around our directory hierarchy, asking if it was really necessary to store so much of our data on expensive RAID drives. The other major technical advantage of Web-based applications is the lameness of Web pages as a UI.

I've described above. And most importantly, their status depends on how ambitious you feel. Advanced users are more forgiving about bugs, and you've even set up mechanisms to compensate for it e. The complacent middle managers may not be the right plan for every company. It's not as painful as raising money from investors is harder than selling to customers, because there are no versions. Design doesn't have to be new. You can pick any group of users you want. I think these two paths converge at the top spammers. It's a longshot, at this point not just how to avoid the fatal pinch. A couple months ago, one VC firm almost certainly unintentionally published a study showing bias of this type. Y Combinator but part of its raison d'etre. It's hard to stay interested in something you wrote six months ago the average case if you release once a year is a lot younger than it seems.

There's something wrong when a sixty-five year old woman who wants to use a computer for email and accounts has to think about. They're either calling you about a known bug, or they're just doing something wrong and you have to resolve disputes immediately or perish. But he turned out to be valuable for hardware startups. Whatever the procedure for reporting bugs, it is a huge standard deviation among 26 year olds with good ideas will count for more. But even investors who don't have a rule about this will be over that threshold. Being friends with someone for even a couple days will tell you that the right way to write every program, but it's woven into the story instead of being pasted onto it like a pilot scanning the instrument panel, not like a detective trying to unravel some mystery. The answer that springs to mind is Usenix, but that was the optimal path to dominating microcomputer software. You never really know what's happening inside it. If so, could they actually get things done. Which is exactly what they're supposed to think.

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[catwhite7-blog]

This match is much harder compared to the first, and you will receive on its own degree or thankfully die trying.

hentai games is never to be trifled with. Construction on the initial tough-as-nails reputation, crew Ninja's second samurai action rpg extends the original's penchant for penalizing and exceptionally nuanced combat. The sequel hones the initial distinctive spin about the Souls-like devoid of entirely obliterated it self. The end result is a lengthy, hard slog that will push even the maximum challenge-hungry gamers into their breaking points since they struggle for each inch of earth and eventually become grasp samurai. Inspite of the name, hentai games can be a prequel, showing that the secret history of a decades-long period of warfare from medieval Japan. Since the hushed, customizable hero Hide, you fight to find the trick nature of"spirit stones," that grant unnatural ability, and defeat hordes of Yo Kai around the country. The plot, which you mostly listen through cut-scenes and exposition amongst missions, has an interesting historical bent, however, it is really merely glue to carry precisely the degrees with each other. Historically applicable names such as Nobunaga and Tokugawa perform into the saga, however whatever flavor they put in in the moment fades the moment you require control and it is the right time for you to get started killing demons. But that's okay. hentai games's narrative gives only enough time for you to follow along and make you truly feel as though you're making advancements without becoming back in the way of this game play. hentai games's authoritative element is its own challenge. With core mechanisms elegant from your bones of Dark Souls, hentai games boils right down to a succession of conflicts and duels in all kinds of conditions. These conflicts demand intense precision: Maybe Not only will you your strikes and techniques tied to means of a stamina meter--named Ki--however any extra attack or mistimed movement will render you exposed, usually to a attack that'll cause you a significant sum of health. As with other Souls-like games, there's really a debilitating joy in mastering all rivals that the game throws your way. hentai games assembles to the beautifully diverse variety of options for creating a individual battling fashion. The original systems come: Every one of those nine weapon types provides a distinctive balance amid speed, power, and scope, which you are able to fine the fly by switching among a few stances (very low, mid, and large ). Each weapon type has its own personal skill tree along with progression, for which you earn points using it. The core weapon beat continues to be largely unchanged by the original, outside a few new talents and two fresh weapons types, the speedy two-handed Switchglaive and very speedy double-hatchets. That saidthe beat is really accurate. hentai games requires which you get a deep comprehension of most of the strikes your weapon(s) can do, but there is a variety of attacks and also they each put their spin on the best way to struggle. Additionally, there are multiple overall power timber, also personality levels that improve your stats in line with earning Amrita from murdering enemies. Furthermore, hentai games is really a loot match, so you'll always be looking at brand new weapons with trade-offs that tweak your stats. It has much to handle, but it will become manageable since you locate your specialty and concentrate on upgrading the skills you would like you prefer using. For hentai games vets, that is all old hat: hentai games's most significant additions revolve around the thought that cover can station Yo-Kai spirits. The most essential is that a difficult parry named the Burst Counter, which permits one to counter powerful enemy strikes. Every enemy gets a minumum of a single attack which is exposed to this counter; they are frequently big, effective motions you'll be tempted to complete. Fighting that impulse and also throwing yourself in your enemy to turn the wave of struggle for an instant is essential, making the beat feel more tactical and aggressive. In the moment should you spot a enemy trapping a burst strike, you feel powerful, as if you've gotten one on your competition, even for a moment. Because the match is very difficult, these modest successes help induce you forward. You also learn Yo Kai abilities through equippable Spirit Cores that let you to temporarily transform to the enemies you've murdered to use one of their attacks. Greater than Ninjutsu and magic, that return from the initial, Soul Cores add a much wider assortment of contextually abilities that are useful. For instance, because the Monkey Yokai Enki, you jump in the air and toss away a spear, which is quite book as hentai games doesn't have a jump button. As soon as the Yo-Kai get greater --each and every boss offers you a Spirit Center -- occasionally a giant fist or head or foot magically appears to maim your own enemies. They aren't so powerful you may lean on them to acquire a struggle, but these capabilities widely expand the range of matters you can do. Last but not least, hentai games includes a super-powerful"Yo Kai Alter" transformation, that temporarily makes you faster and stronger. Triggering the conversion doesn't obviate the demand for approaches. Though you are invulnerable, the two using attacks and shooting damage decrease the total amount of time you have in your more healthy shape. A unsuccessful assault in Yo Kai mode not just wastes a powerful, slowly and gradually charging asset, but might also leave you unexpectedly vulnerable when you revert to a old self as your competitor captured you off-guard. In true hentai games mode, even your greatest advantage could become a opportunity for your own enemy to obtain the top hand. It's lots to know and, once more, you want to receive it down perfectly to over come exactly what hentai games throws at you. You may probably earn a whole lot of blunders and perish many, many times. Some times it's going feel like you have hit a solid brick wall and simply can not win. In many scenarios, you want to have a deep breath, figure out why you are neglecting, and correct the strategy to match. Refusing to change firearms or shoot challenges or otherwise be thoughtful about the best way to play will soon leave you disappointed. The more frustrated you get, the more the more likely you'll lose again. Learning your own skillset is merely a portion of their experience. To actually excel, in addition you will need to understand hentai games's large universe. There is an astounding amount of variety across an extremely long effort. Its winding, multi-area missions interval a myriad of surroundings, from burning temples and castles, to army camps, to woods and mountain sides. A number of them change dramatically because you research these giving you a excellent awareness of"traveling" and accomplishment for masking what feels as though a lengthy period. 1 historical level, for example, commences to the hillside outside a castle plus finishes in an significant underground cave. Even if the degrees seem similar--you only siege four to five castles round 20 marketing campaign assignments --diverse degree layout in both pathing and depth make each and every one feel distinct and worth conquering. It will help the maps are somewhat more than pleased, turny dungeon crawls. Many have at least one area having a single snare or environmental conundrum. In 1 forest amount, for example, a giant owl Yokai patrols specific locations, alerting enemies if it sees you. Throughout a castle siege, it's necessary for you to dodge artillery fire as you duel enemy soldiers. Additionally, you'll find Black Realm zones, white and black spots haunted by Yo Kai that provide a much greater challenge by slowing your Ki regeneration, sprinkled all through each degree. It is simply by beating a specific enemy in a Dark Realm it will dispel permanently, injecting more ways for you to make advancement which does not refresh once you employ a shrine (or expire ). Even for all its own variety, hentai games stretches all its content as much as possible. For every assignment in its core campaign, there are two to three side assignments, a number of which remix a part of a story assignment. In addition to there, you will find rotating Twilight Missions for high end players. In addition, upon completing the campaign, you're going to receive entry to an issue degree with higher-level enemies along with equipment. While it's really a small annoying inprinciple to engage in exactly the same area of a level three to four situations, each variation finds modest techniques to change your path along with pose new challenges to keep things new. If you are enthusiastic about wringing absolutely everything out of hentai games--master each and every weapon, get the highest level loot--that there are enough mission configurations to proceed until you've had your fill. Likewise, hentai games never appears to run out of new enemies to throw at you. Nearly every degree has at least new sort of Yokai that you study and also struggle versus. They run the gamut, from Deadly giant spiders into animalistic superhero soldiers such as the Enki, a huge monkey with a spear, and also the harpy-like Ubume. Every enemy has got its own selection of abilities, and you need to know about these as a way to expect their attacks and receive the top hand. This approach takes a while --you won't have it on the first try, or even after the first victory. Every enemy, although the little Gaki demon, that looks like a balding, redeyed child, may eliminate you when you're not bringing your A-game. Dissecting enemy layouts and figuring out how exactly to counter them would be your most adorable pleasure hentai games delivers: That there are so many enemies having therefore many diverse strikes to navigate make certain the game never ever loses its flavor. Even if the degrees seem like you simply siege a few castles across 20 campaign missions--varied level design in either pathing and depth make each and every 1 feel different and values conquering. You find this most clearly when you move up against each of the game's extremely tricky supervisor experiences. Much like the numbers, the bosses range broadly and therefore are sights to behold. From a giant spider with mini-snake arms to your three-story spider using a bull's head, each and every flagship enemy style and design has lots of personality and is unlike anything else you have observed from the game before. All of them have one thing in common, even though: They're incredibly tough. Even more than ordinary battles, the bosses effectively require perfect drama for a protracted period of time. You need in order to recognize every move they make since they allow it to and know just how exactly to respond instantly. Very few took me less than a dozen attempts, and a number took me a while.

Occasionally , I wondered if maybe a number of those directors ought to be described as a touch briefer, because you can find lots of bosses in which I felt I'd mastered their patterns but could not finish as they landed a single one-hit-kill late in the struggle. Eventually, that agonizing trouble and also the feeling it evokes are baked to hentai games's DNA, although, and its supervisor struggles stay compelling even as they vex and frustrate. Although it feels like a curse because you can play, it's really a testament that hentai games productively grabs and keeps the entire focus so close to such a long time .

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[tenorbox0-blog]

This match is much harder compared to the initial, and you will receive on its degree or thankfully pass away trying.

hentai porn games is maybe not to be trifled with. Construction on the initial tough-as-nails reputation, Team Ninja's second samurai action rpg extends the original's penchant for penalizing and highly nuanced combat. The sequel hones the initial distinctive spin about the Souls-like without entirely obliterated itself. The outcome is a long, tough slog that will push the many challenge-hungry players to their splitting things as they fight for every inch of ground and become master samurai. Inspite of the title, sexgames can be really a prequel, showing the secret background of the decades-long phase of war from ancient Japan. Since the quiet, glamorous hero Hide, you struggle to uncover the trick character of"spirit stones," that grant unnatural power, and defeat hordes of all Yokai round the nation. The plot, which you chiefly hear through cut scenes and exposition in between missions, posseses an intriguing historic bent, but it is really just glue to hold the degrees together. Historically pertinent titles such as Nobunaga and Tokugawa engage in into the saga, but whatever flavor they add from the minute hastens the moment you require control and it is the right time to start killing elephants. But that's okay. adultsexgames's narrative gives just enough time that you check out together with force you to truly feel like you are making progress without getting in the method of the game play. gamesofdesire's definitive element is its own challenge. With center mechanisms refined from your bones of dim Souls, adult online games boils down to a series of battles and duels in a myriad of conditions. These conflicts demand powerful precision: Not only are the attacks and skills limited by a stamina meter--termed Ki--but some excess attack or mis-timed movement will probably leave you vulnerable, often to a attack that'll give you a significant quantity of well being. As with other Souls-like games, there's a painful joy in controlling all rivals the match throws your way. game of desire builds to the beautifully diverse scope of options for having a personalized fighting fashion. The original systems return: Each one of the nine weapon types supplies a distinctive balance amid rate, electricity, and range, that you simply may fine the fly by either switching one of several stances (lower, mid, and higher ). Each weapon type has its own personal skill shrub along with development, for that you earn points by using it. The center weapon fight remains mainly unchanged against the original, outside a few brand new skills and also two brand new weapons types, the speedy two-handed Switchglaive and really speedy double-hatchets. Nevertheless the fight is extremely precise. sex games necessitates that you are in possession of a profound comprehension of most of the attacks your weapon(s) could do, but there is a wide range of attacks and also they each set their own spin on how you fight.

Additionally, there are multiple general skill timber, plus temperament degrees that raise your stats based on earning Amrita from murdering enemies. Additionally, adult games online can be a loot game, and that means you'll always be looking at brand new weapons using trade offs that tweak your own stats. It has a lot to control, however, it becomes manageable as you find your specialization and focus on updating the knowledge you would like you like making use of. For 3d hentai games vets, that's all old hat: adult porn games's biggest additions revolve around the notion that conceal can station Yokai spirits. The most crucial is a hard parry referred to as the Burst Counter, which permits you to counter powerful enemy attacks. Every single enemy has a minumum of 1 attack which is vulnerable to the countertops; they're usually big, powerful motions that you'll be enticed to complete. Fighting that impulse and also throwing your self at your enemy to reverse the wave of struggle for an instant is vital, which makes the combat feel more tactical and competitive. At as soon as when you set a enemy squeezing a burst attack, you are feeling successful, as you have gotten one more on your opponent, even for a moment. As the match is very hard, these minor successes help induce you forward. You also learn Yokai abilities via equippable Spirit Cores that make it possible for you to momentarily transform into the enemies you have murdered touse among of the strikes. Greater than Ninjutsu and magical, which return from your original, Soul Cores add a much wider selection of contextually useful skills. For instance, as the Monkey Yokai Enki, you jump into the atmosphere and toss a spear, that will be quite novel as sex games will not have a jump button. When the Yo-Kai capture greater --each and every boss offers you a Spirit Core--sometimes a giant head or fist or foot appears to maim your enemies. They aren't so powerful which you could lean onto them to win a fight, however these expertise widely expand the array of things you could do. Last but most certainly not least, gamesofdesire includes a super-powerful"Yo Kai Alter" transformation, which makes you stronger and faster. Triggering the conversion doesn't obviate the need for tactics. Though you're invulnerable, equally using strikes and taking damage reduce the quantity of time you've got on your stronger shape. A failed attack in Yokai manner not just simplifies a strong, gradually charging strength, but might also leave you unexpectedly vulnerable when you revert to a previous self as your competitor caught you off-guard. In true adultsexgames fashion, even your best advantage could develop into a chance for the own enemy to get the top hand. This is lots to learn and, once again, you need to receive down it to over come exactly what adultsexgames yells at you. Now you will likely earn a whole lot of mistakes and die many, many times. Some times it will feel just like you've hit a solid brick wall and also simply can not triumph. In many circumstances, you have to have a deep breath, determine the reason you're failing, and adjust the strategy to match. Refusing to modify firearms or take dangers or otherwise be considerate about how you play will render you annoyed. The more frustrated you get, the more likely you are going to drop again. Learning your skillset is simply part of this adventure. To really shine, in addition you need to know hentai porn games's extensive environment. There's an immense quantity of amount across a very long campaign. Its twisting, multi-area missions interval a myriad of surroundings, from burning off temples and castles, to armed forces crews, into forests and mountain sides. A number change radically because you research themgiving you a good sense of"travel" and achievement for covering what feels like a long period. One early level, by way of instance, commences to a hillside outside a castle plus ends at a enormous underground cave. Even when the levels seem like you only siege a few castles across 20 campaign assignments --diverse degree design in both pathing and detail make each one feel distinct and values conquering. It will help that the maps are somewhat more than twisty, turny dungeon crawls. Many have a minumum of a single area having a exceptional trap or environmental conundrum. At 1 forest amount, for instance, a huge owl Yo Kai patrols certain places, alerting enemies if it sees you. During a castle siege, you have to dodge artillery fireplace as you duel enemy soldiers. Also, you can find Black Realm zones, black and white spots haunted by Yo Kai that provide a level increased challenge by slowing down your Ki regeneration, then sprinkled throughout each level. It truly is only by defeating a specific enemy at a Black Forest that it will dispel eternally, injecting more ways for you to earn progress that doesn't reset when you use a shrine (or expire ). For many its variety, hentai porn games stretches all of its content just as much as it can. For every mission in its core effort, you can find just two to 3 unwanted assignments, many which re mix a part of the narrative mission. In addition to that, you will find rotating Twilight Missions for high end people. Plus, upon finishing the campaign, you are going to receive entry to a difficulty degree with higher-level enemies along with gear. When it can be a bit annoying in-principle to play exactly the same part of the level a few instances, every variation finds modest strategies to modify your course and also present new problems to keep things clean. If you should be interested in wringing out everything out of game of desire--learn just about every weapon, get the maximum degree loot--that there are more than enough mission configurations to proceed and soon you have had your fill. Likewise, 3d hentai games never seems to run out of fresh enemies to throw . Almost every degree has a minumum of one new kind of Yokai that you study and fight in opposition to. They run the gamut, from Deadly giant spiders to animalistic sonic soldiers such as the Enki, a huge monkey having a spear, and the harpy-like Ubume. Every enemy has got its own assortment of skills, and also you want to know everything about them to be able to anticipate their attacks and receive the upper hand. This practice takes timeyou won't obtain it on the first take to, and even following the very first victory. Every enemy, even the tiny Gaki demon, which resembles a balding, redeyed little one, can eliminate you when you're not attracting the a game. Dissecting enemy layouts and figuring out out how to counter these would be the sweetest joy hentai porn games provides: That there are many enemies using so many distinct strikes to navigate be certain that the game never loses its own flavor. Even if the degrees seem similar--you just siege a few castles round 20 marketing campaign assignments --diverse degree design in both pathing and detail make each and every one feel distinct and values beating. You see this most certainly when you move up against each of the match's extremely difficult boss experiences. Like the numbers, the bosses fluctuate broadly and so are typical sights . In a giant spider having mini-snake arms into some three-story spider with a bull's head, every single flagship enemy style and design has a lot of character and so is similar to anything you have seen from the match before. All of them have something in common, though: They are incredibly tough. Even more than ordinary battles, the bosses effectively require perfect drama for a protracted time period. You have to be able to recognize every movement that they make as they make it know just how exactly to respond immediately. Hardly any took me less than several dozen attempts, and several of them took me multiple hours. Sometimes I thought if maybe a few of these bosses ought to be just a little shorter, since you can find many bosses wherever I felt I had mastered their own patterns however couldn't finish as they landed one one-hit-kill overdue at the fight. 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[furederiko]

Countdown Counter: 7. Does having doubt and hesitation a good thing when the universe is on the brink of an all-out annihilation? Kyuranger 42 demands Lucky to firmly answer said question...

- Having cleared out the Hell's Gate, the Space Rebellion immediately moves forward through the tunnel to enter Planet Southern Cross. Last episode's bait and switch twist worked out nicely, but what kind of repercussion would it bring to the team? Well, thanks to the reveal that Aslan is an actual puppet of Don Armage, Lucky is now completely out of his zone. I think it would have been easier for him had Aslan has already been dead like Kukuruga said. But things like this is definitely Armage's sly way of doing things. And this doubt and hesitation lingers on throughout the mecha battle too... - Prior to the cool galactic battle, Tsurugi tells Lucky to resolve his mind: choose the universe, or his father. Tsurugi himself seems to be dealing with his own ordeal, with that mysterious chest pain lingering ever since he saw Southern King's vision. Further more, Mecha-Madako also delivers a secret message from Armage to him. The Shogun wants to meet him in person! This could be another confirmation that Armage is indeed someone... 'familiar' to him. Just a theory but... I don't know, perhaps someone who stole his immortality? Which might explain why he seems to be reaching his limit. - By the way, the first mecha sequence is against Jark Matter's special welcoming committee. A horde of giant Tsuyo-Indavers, Consumarz, Unit-00, along with Mecha-Anton new creation: the hideous and enormous Akyacchuga. As the name suggests, that's Akyanba + Tecchu + Kukuruga as one unit. In the words of Spada later on, a "three-course" offering. Yikes! - There's an even bigger problem at hand. Apparently, a huge amount of Planetium stolen from various other planets is being stored inside the planet's core. Naga and Raptor who stays on board the Battle Orion Ship to analyze the core (as well as tending wounded Garu at bay with Caesar), discover that it is acting as a huge planetary-sized bomb with the potential to wipe out the entire universe! Since the Summer movie took cues from "Star Wars" and its Death Star plot, I wonder if this Planetium Bomb is also another homage to that space opera? Or could this be a nod to "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" instead? Hmmm... - Suffice to say, they need to shut down the planet's core right away. Unfortunately, Akyacchuga is NOT a force to be reckon with, since even Kyutamajin (with 4 people short though) couldn't handle it. To make matters worse, Masked-Aslan uses the opportunity to blast Orion Voyager's cockpit. Creating a hole wide open on the right shoulder, he then invades the Battle Orion Ship to personally exterminate Leo Red Orion. Yep, it takes 42 episodes to admit, but this is undoubtedly the most fatal design error of not just one, but ALL of Kyuranger's mecha. - Leo Red Orion is too focused on freeing Masked-Aslan from his mind control. Both Naga and Raptor are injured because of that, so Phoenix Soldier jumps out to aide them by throwing Masked-Aslan off bridge. This forces Draco Commander to downgrade Kyutamajin to Ryutei Kyuren-Oh amidts its battle against Akyacchuga. Of course, that means things aren't looking good so there's no other choice for the team but to retreat into the shadow using the Vulpecula Kyu Globe. NOTE: I'd argue that Naga could have used his freezing glare to stop Masked-Aslan. It would be far effective than trying to transform. But perhaps he got caught up by the moment and couldn't pull it off... - We get a quiet 'stealth' moment before the action heats up again, and it's a strong one that showcases the strength of the team. Minor details that remind us how close they have become as a family. Tsurugi keeps up his role as the strict but caring figure with his 'tough love'. Hammy continues to be the voice of conscience and logic for them, in this case for someone she initially disliked. Stinger openly reminds him to the time he had a similar situation with Scorpio, and returns the favor. While Naga (with the help of Balance's mechanical expertise to tweak machines) devises an utterly clever plan to use his very own Black Hole Kyu Globe to swallow the Planetium Bomb's explosion. They wouldn't have been able to do this, without experiencing growth throughout the series. So it's a strong point for the show, and proof of good writing that brings everyone together. - Thanks to everyone's help (including Garu who has woken up thanks to new BFF Caesar's energy), Lucky is back to his usual self. He makes up his mind that he doesn't have to choose. Because as always he's going to rely on his fortune to save both the universe and his dad at the same time. It seems Tsurugi is doing the same, for he soon will be heading out to address Don Armage's private invitation, and get the answer to the Shogun's outrageous ambition to annihilate everything. - Phase 1 is Round 2 between all mechas against Akyacchuga! Each part of the MotW showcase their unique abilities. Kukuruga's trick to absorb attacks. Akyanba's sound sorcery to take control of Orion Battler. And poor Tecchu with... I guess his thing is that chainball bit? LOL. The Vice Shogun's Triangle Burst is no match to Orion Big Bang Cannon, so this is their final moment in the show. - Phase 2 is the team sans Tsurugi landing on the planet's core to infiltrate the main base. Their goals are: set up the Black Hole Generator created by Balance, and rescue Aslan. With Commander Xiao and Raptor guarding the Battle Orion Ship, will the remaining 9 members (oh hey, KYUU-ranger!) succeed? We'll see...

Overall: Dynamic mecha battles at the start and end of one episode? That's a pleasant surprise. Not to mention the long absent formation of Ryutei Kyuren-Oh's reappearance. I admit that half of the episode was focused on Lucky's ordeal. That might have scratched several audience the wrong way. But I personally just loved how the bits and pieces from earlier stories were neatly piled up and connected to one other, as we got to see Lucky's friends returning the favor and leading him out of his hesitation. That deserved a thumbs up, even if it played a bit like dejavu to the first half of episode 12. Inspite of that, the entire episode felt intense, the stake was dire, and the plot built up wonderfully to what would be the best episode of the series. This felt like a penultimate episode, and I honestly hope that's not the case... Next week: An explosive climax in the Southern Cross... PS: In case you haven't noticed, this recap is more than a week late! I sort of 'lost' my internet connection some time around December 13th, and inevitably was forced to be completely OFFLINE ever since my last post. Took me almost two weeks to finally back online! With that said, recap for episode 43 which had already aired on Christmas Eve will also arrive later today. At the very least, I'll push for it to go up before the year 2017 ends... *sigh*

Episode 42 Score: 8,3 out of 10

Visit THIS LINK to view a continuously updated listing of the Kyutama / Kyu Globes. Last Updated: December 29th, 2017 - Version 3.10. (WARNING: It might contain spoilers for future episodes)

All images are screencaptured from the series, provided by the FanSubber Over-Time. "Uchu Sentai Kyuranger" is produced by TOEI, and airs every Sunday on TV-Asahi. Credits and copyrights belong to their respective owners.

#tokusatsu #SuperSentai #kyuranger #uchu sentai kyuranger #uchuu sentai kyuranger #review

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Floating World

by Wardog

Tuesday, 06 September 2011

Like everyone else, Wardog has been playing Bastion.~

Kid sits down, tries to write a review, but the words ain't coming.

Let's try this.

A silent, nameless, white-haired protagonist wakes up one morning in a bed in a shattered room floating de-anchored in a swirl of coloured space. “Proper stories supposed to start at the beginning,” growls a narrator reminiscent of the cowboy in The Big Lebowski, “here a kid whose whole world got all twisted, leaving him stranded on a rock in the sky.” A tap on the gamepad and the kid is out of bed. “He gets up,” continues the Narrator, “sets off to The Bastion, where everyone agreed to go in case of trouble.” There's nowhere to go except a door-shaped hole in the hole so that's where the analogue stick takes him. Coloured paving stones fly into a path. “Ground forms up to point the way,” comments the Narrator. “He don't stop to wonder why.”

So begins Bastion, an isometric action-RPG, available for PC or Xbox for just under a tenner. It seems to be the game everyone is talking about at the moment (even a

surprisingly uncritical Yahtzee

) and I can see why. There's lots to love about Bastion, from its gorgeous presentation to the elegance of its mechanics, and, make no mistake, I do love it. Best “just under a tenner” I've spent for a while.

In terms of gameplay, it's a fairly standard action-RPG. You run along, gathering up XP, and laying the smackdown on a variety of rapidly spawning enemies but the various places you visit, are sufficiently streamlined and differentiated that the experience never grows stale. Everything is beautifully detailed and carefully contextualised: you start to recognise the various creatures, and learn something of their background. The places, ruined as they are, all have their own history and the visual device of the forming and breaking pathways creates a atmosphere of change, variety and transience. And there are so many exciting ways of tweaking your character, spending your XP and customising your weapons that you're always finding new ways of approaching the game's challenges. XP is a straightforward bar; every level allows you consume a new “spirit” created in your distillery. These have a range of interesting effects, as well as characterful descriptions and amusing names – my personal favourite being “Stabsinthe.” Over the course of the game the Kid acquires a small arsenal of weapons, ranging from his “old friend” (a big hammer) to a chaos cannon, all of which play slightly differently, and have a wide array of strengths, and weaknesses, and can be upgraded by collecting memory fragments, found by exploring the world and defeating monsters. You get a choice of two alternative paths per weapon, and a total of five upgrades, each requiring the appropriate material and enough fragments, but the game is wonderfully liberating in letting you change your upgrades around once you've paid the cost. This encourages experimentation and makes you genuinely fond of your equipment – since you're never just swapping one generic longsword of the badger for another generic broadsword of the piranha. The Bastion serves as the main gameplay hub. From here, you'll explore the game map while bringing back the cores and fragments that allow you to build, and then upgrade, the various structures of The Bastion. The pattern is slightly repetitive, and the plot is basically a series of not very subtle MacGuffin hunts, but the pleasure of restoring The Bastion, and deciding whether you want to build a shrine or upgrade your forge, keeps the experience engaging. The emphasis seems to be very much on choice. You can choose to worship one of the Gods, for example, when you've built a shrine, which will make battles harder (in a variety of ways) but give you greater rewards. The point is, this offers you an extensive degree of customisation for your game experience, right down to how challenging, and in what ways, you want to make it. The thing is, the gameplay is sleek and non-offensive, but at its heart its a straight-down-the-line action-RPG. You go places, you collect things, you kill stuff, you get more powerful, you make your equipment more powerful, you rinse and repeat. But there's been such an amount of love and attention poured into the game that playing is a constant delight. I absolutely loved the colourful, shifting world, the charming descriptions of pretty much everything you encounter, and the soundtrack is a little piece of a perfection all on its own, contributing such a lot to the mood of the game. There's even a song:

This song absolutely typifies Bastion: you have the juxtaposition of the country guitar and the Eastern strings, melding two unlikely traditions, deceptively simple lyrics underscoring a theme of racial division, and that poignant combination of beauty and melancholy, bitterness and hope.

The story of Bastion, which I will shall try to explain without too much spoilering, concerns the mysterious “Calamity” which has led to the shattered world in which the Kid first awakes. As you progress through the game, your goals are simple enough: find survivors, restore The Bastion, stay alive. But the Narrator mixes commentary with memory so that the further into the future you get, the more you understand about the past. I've mentioned the Narrator already – you meet him soon enough, a old man called Rucks – and he is the primary mechanism through which the story is delivered and filtered. And it works astonishingly well, bridging the gap between ludo and narrative (ouch, can't believe I wrote that) in a coherent and cohesive way. Rucks tells you about the places you visit and the people you encounter, making the world, and its ruination, feel real, but he also validates and contextualises your in-game actions. For example, the first time I missed my step and plummeted off the edge of a path, he observed “And then he falls to his death. I'm just fooling” which made me chuckle and on subsequent occasions, he would throw out some circumstance-specific statement, such as “Kid had to watch his step in The Cauldron” or whatever.

He also makes your game-play choices feel like genuine in-world choices, as the narration seems to dynamically react to how you play. For example, early on you come to a crossroads while searching for one of the cores. I set off randomly in any old direction because there didn't seem any reason to act otherwise: “Kid figured heading down would take him to the core...” explained Rucks. I loved having my gamerish disregard transformed into strategy by the alchemy of narrative. Rucks will also comment on your weapon choices and combinations, and on your general approach to the game, among other things, which, once again, embeds gameplay in storytelling, providing a diegetic framework for the decisions you make. There's also an extent to which it functions almost as a meta-commentary on the tropes of gameplay. As I mentioned earlier, the first weapon you find in the game is your trusty hammer. And, like any action-rpg player, the first thing I did on discovering a weapon was run around in circles, mashing the attack button, until I'd pretty much smashed up every piece of scenery on the screen. “Kid just raged for a while,” said Ruck, darkly.

It is possible, of course, to overstate the value of this device. It is assuredly one of the most successful marriages of gameplay and story I've ever encountered, but not every game can be narrated by a whiskey-voiced cowboy. It's something that works beautifully in Bastion – and makes the game truly something remarkable – but it's not, y'know, the great gameplay/story revolution or whatever.

The other thing that took me by surprise was the decision that hit me at the end of the game. Actually, there were two but the first was a relatively simple one. The second, however, was so vast and morally complex that I actually had to put the gamepad down, walk away and think about it for a bit. That probably sounds either mad or pretentious, or mad and pretentious, but firstly I wasn't prepared to have to make a decision in a “simple” action-RPG and secondly the decision was literally world-changing. And I realised suddenly how much I had come to care for the four companions I'd met in this broken world. They are not voiced, they don't join your party, there are no complicated dialogue trees, or lengthy textual descriptions but somehow they'd become my friends. I was, when I finally made it, happy with my final decision. I don't think, on consideration, I would have done otherwise given the choice again (although, of course, I could always play the game again to see). But it has nevertheless haunted me for days.

I'm going to talk about this decision, and some of the game's stylistic choices, after a massive honking spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler warning. But if this is as far as you're going to read: I will simply urge you to the play the game. It's delightful. I would probably also recommend you play on Xbox, or with a gamepad, if you have the option since the diagonals are a killer.

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yeah...

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The Calamity comes about because the Caelondians (your people) basically try to genocide the Ura (some other people). Essentially the Caelondians come up with a device that will seal the Ura forever underground, except an Ura sabotages it and this causes the Calamity.

On a very basic level, the Caelondians live in the sky, the Ura live underground but there seem to be massively complex ideological differences underpinning all this as well. The Caelondians seem all into tech, and the Ura are more naturalistic, the Caelondians comercialise their religion, the Ura are offended by graven images (at one point you pick up an adorable Pyth plushie – Pyth being the bull-God of order and commotion, and Zulf, one of your companions, disdains it), and so on and so forth. The thing is, I think the Caelondins are very broadly meant to be associated with the the west and the Ura with the east. They way the Ura dress (long robes) and look (pale and dark haired) suggests this to me, as well as the slightly higher-pitched sound effects and the weaponry they use (like the naginata and the repeating crossbow). I don't mean to get my minority warrior freak on, but I think when you stylistically set up an east-west dichotomy like that you're opening a can of worms that you might not entirely want to be opened. Or rather that you might not be able to deal with appropriately within the limitations of a computer game.

The thing is, there's plenty of evidence that the Caelondians were not so great actually. As a Caelondian, Rucks' narration generally communicates nostalgia and affection, and a yearning to go back to the way things were, but there's plenty of darkness in there too. There's a general suggestion of moral and social decay, and the lives of the Kid, Zia and Zulf have been far from happy in the city. But both as a westerner, and as the gamer behind the Kid from Caelondia, the Ura are portrayed as being, in many ways, profoundly other. Of course, you transcend this perception of otherness through your friendship with Zia and Zulf but there comes a point when you go up against hordes of interchangeable Ura, waving naginata at you, and I genuinely felt like I'd been sent forth to kill the nasty foreigners. I don't know if it was meant to be making me deliberately uncomfortable but I would have been more at ease with the moral message if there'd been less of a real world race correspondence. As a game about racial division it's interesting and at least reasonable subtle (since the cultural hostility is deep and endemic and nobody at any point says how much they hate those white-faced Ura), but as a game about how we should be nicer to Japanese people it's a bit embarrassing. I just think it's inherently problematic to use stylistic markers associated with the Western perception of the East to denote “the exotic other.”

The Ura, incidentally, are trying to stop you from restoring The Bastion and, once Zulf discovers the truth about the Calamity, he betrays you to rejoin his people. It's hard to really blame Ura for being a bit pissed off about the proposed genocide, but, again, I felt the moral pendulum started swinging a bit awkwardly at the point at which, once their plan fails and you overcome them, they turn on Zulf and attack him too. Those foreigners, eh? No loyalty or honour. Again, I understand that the situation is meant to be morally ambiguous, with good and bad on both sides, and the tragedy being ultimately a very human tragedy of individuals making mistakes rather than a specific villain ruining the world – but, once again, that ambiguity would be more meaningful if hadn't ended on a gigantic cop-out. Having Zulf's own people turn on him when things go wrong essentially undermines his motivation for trying to save them in the first place. Also, this leads to the noble-hearted Caelondian saving the Ura from his own treacherous people.

The reason Rucks is so eager to restore The Bastion is because it contains a fail-safe device that essentially re-sets time, putting everything back to how it was before the calamity. But, you also discover, The Bastion has one other function: it can jettison the city core, transforming it into a sort of fully functional floating city that could take you anywhere. The choice you face, therefore, is putting the world back to the way it was, saving thousands upon thousands of morally degenerate genocidal racists (or “lives” if you prefer) or live in the world as is, with your new found friends in your floating city. Okay, I've been slightly harsh on the morally degenerate genocidal racist score: there is no real evil in Bastion, just mistakes, humanity and bad choices. The point is, it's a city full of people, and there's no evidence the Calamity is an inevitable consequence of, well, anything . Also, on the eve of the calamity, Zulf had just proposed to the woman he loved (a Caelondian) so going back to the past would not be a future without hope or happiness for some, perhaps for many.

I have to admit, race concerns aside, I found this decision genuinely fascinating. It came slightly out of left field because the fluid, emergent form of the game in general hadn't led me to expect a sudden either/or, but it was embedded so well in the context of everything preceding it, that I was stymied. I've been reading around in the Internet since I made my decision and one popular (but stupid) opinion seems to be that it's about personal selflessness, putting the needs of others above your own, saving thousands of lives at the cost of maybe three. How Peter Molyneux. Thankfully, I believe the decision is much more interesting than that and, in the end, I jettisoned the core. I will not lie: love did play a part in my decision. I wanted the Kid to be with Zia, and Ruck and Zulf. But one of the major themes of the game seemed to me to be the importance of memory: Ruck's narration, the act of constructing memorials for the lost, the literal collecting of memory shards to upgrade your character, and, of course, the constantly shifting, reforming and re-shaping of the world itself. From the old ruins, come new paths. This is how the past shapes the future. And if we do not remember the mistakes we have made, then we are doomed to repeat them.

Of course that's just my take. It's deliciously arguable either way. And it's possible that I'm just over-compensating for the unbearable guilt of having sacrificed thousands of imaginary people to fly around a world with my friends: the cowboy, the singer and the survivor.

Either way, it was deeply refreshing to play an RPG in which I neither defeated a villain nor saved the world.Themes:

Computer Games

,

CRPGs

,

Minority Warrior

~

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valse de la lune

at 06:39 on 2011-09-07I'll post more thought on this later; like you I found the ending quite moving and I have Many Thoughts about Bastion. But--what did you think of Zia getting a voice (literally!) to speak with only at the very end, when hitherto you only heard her in the song and the narrative is entirely shaped by Ruck?

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Wardog

at 09:11 on 2011-09-07I, too, found the ending very moving - and I've been thinking about the game a lot since I've finished it, which is comparatively rare for me.

I wasn't actually mad keen on Zia getting a voice, it was a bit sudden and incongruous and I felt it impacted too much on the final decision. I mean it seemed to setting it up to be Rucks versus Zia, and whether you want to save lives or shack up with a girl you fancy. I mean I think there are many interesting philosophical reasons to jettison the core; because it Zia's life was sad before is not necessarily one of them.

Looking forward to your thoughts :)

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valse de la lune

at 14:01 on 2011-09-07It's kind of irritating that she finally gets to say something for herself and it's mostly to confirm her role as a kinda-sorta designated romantic interest.

Anyway, about the Ura, I'm... very touchy about fantasy analogues for racial minorities, for obvious reasons--and doubly so when the analogue in question is so fucking pasty I thought they were vampires. It's intellectually dishonest and doesn't read to me as anything like a serious attempt to tackle the issue of colonialism. The final bits where they show up to do their noble savages thing made me

really angry

(what the hell is this even supposed to be? A mix of Roma and what, Zulu warriors? They didn't read as Chinese to me; the style of dress is way off; see Zia's head scarf. If, however, they were meant to be an East Asian analogue, well, I'm going to mail Supergiant rotten fish). It's out of place for such a cute game and I wish the author(s) hadn't taken this angle at all. Please writers, unless you have the intelligence and perspective and insight of say Octavia Butler, stop it right the hell now with the race thing.

Stop it forever.

Fucking Minority Warriors.

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Wardog

at 15:41 on 2011-09-07For what it's worth, I don't think they were specifically trying to write an East versus West thang. I mean, it's clearly just a fantasy story with a racial division theme, not somebody trying to be insightful about the west being a bunch of big meanies.

I did, however, read the style of the Ura as being faintly Japanese but that could just mean the racist here is me - the way they dress suggested kimono, they seem to fight with nagainatas, and everything you learn about their culture suggests that it's quite Mysterious TM and Ritualistic.

I mean, for God's sake Kyra, it's just a game, and it's cuuuute, so I could have totally over-reacted but I just worry that every time a text wants to mark exoticism or difference they, consciously or otherwise, reflect perceptions of real world difference.

I mean they could have made the Caelondians bears and the Ura moles, y'know. Or whatever. I just sort of felt they were heading towards Cowboys Versus the Japanese without really being aware of it.

Loved the game though, loved it.

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valse de la lune

at 16:22 on 2011-09-07No, I'm not exactly commenting on the Ura bouncing off what you've said--my remarks are based on my own reactions (i.e. I don't think you're overthinking this etc), and the combination of "marginalized people" and "noble savages" hugely puts me off. Without that I could have liked the game without reservations. :/

I must say that the PC port was pretty well done, with higher-res art assets for PC resolutions and everything.

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Wardog

at 16:50 on 2011-09-07Like I say, it's really not my place to point at depictions of other races and made loud minority warrior comments; I just felt a bit uncomfortable and, as you've pointed out, the whole noble savage thing on its own is the ick.

I played on Xbox from the comfort of sofa - the graphics were lovely enough it probably didn't do it justice, admiring them from the other side of the room.

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valse de la lune

at 17:09 on 2011-09-10One more thing: I can't be the only one who's put the ending theme on repeat and listened to it like a gazillion times, right?

:'(

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Wardog

at 22:51 on 2011-09-10Guilty.

I was listening to it while writing the review.

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Bryn

at 17:18 on 2013-03-19

Look, new thing!

Female protagonist is a nice change, especially in light of some

points

raised about Bastion's use of gender. I hope they do as good a job writing for this character as they did for the guys in Bastion.

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Wardog

at 14:39 on 2013-03-23I am super excited for this. I loved Bastion.

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http://lalunatique.livejournal.com/

at 02:04 on 2013-10-22Confession time: I found out about Bastion through this article and played it just so I could get past the spoiler alerts. (Of course the game itself sounded appealing, otherwise I wouldn't have minded being spoiled.) The story is short and sweet, and gameplay was hugely enjoyable. The final choice left me boggled and thoughtful, too.

I also chose to dump the core, for several reasons. Like you said, without memory people will just make the same mistakes. Rucks himself admitted there was no guarantee the Calamity wouldn't happen all over again. And if it wasn't the same chain of events it would be something else, given the hatred that existed. The way I saw it, the least-worst choice in this utterly crapsack situation was to preserve the memories and mistakes of the four fatally flawed failures on board the Bastion so they can travel around telling people to avoid the pratfalls they and their civilizations made.

In the end I just didn't buy Rucks' idea for the eternal reset button, and I hated how it served as justification for the Kid's slaughtering countless creatures and people. With this ending they're all going to have to live with what they did--Rucks for being complicit in the Calamity in the first place and for cheerleading the Kid through the killing fields, Zulf for seeking mindless revenge in the shattered remains of his world, Zia for her selfishness in not giving a shit about the countless people who died, and the Kid for the destruction he caused to no account. I hope it hurts them all. I hope it hurts good, because pain is the only natural and moral reaction to all they've seen and done.

Perhaps paradoxically, I also wish all of them good lives, lots of adventure, companionship, and love. I hope their mistakes have made them wiser, and I hope they'll spread that wisdom to others so not only they but the world can grow and learn.

As an Asian woman I give my Official Minority Stamp of Approval to the awful handling of race and gender in Bastion, wonderful as the game and story are. The Ura did in fact strike me as Asian-influenced--their culture seemed interesting and I would have liked to learn more, but this external view didn't do much other than exoticize them in the tired old tropes. Also I really could have done without having to mow through hordes and hordes of them. At the end of all that, rescuing Zulf for me was more about tiredness than anything else; I wanted my Kid to be tired of all the death and destruction when there had been too much of both already, and no longer caring if he died without the almighty Ram (not the first Ura invention in the game to be appropriated by Caelondians.).

Also, Zia. Ugh, Zia. The character, together with Zulf, managed to combine Racefail and Genderfail into a giant ball of suck. Because obviously the males of the Other Culture (plus females who are not really characters but interchangeable, disposable sprites) are threats to fight against, but the females are harmless and docile love interests. OBVIOUSLY. At the very least she wasn't kidnapped, but it also seems (though it was vague) that she managed to get herself locked up anyway, because everyone knows Those People will turn on their own at the drop of a hat. I felt like throwing my keyboard across the room from the offensiveness of it all, all the more because the overall story is compelling and engaging--my frustration was all the greater because I'd gotten hooked, whereas if the story had alienated or bored me I would just have rolled my eyes.

So thanks for introducing me to this great, thought-provoking game. I might have spent too many hours of my life fiddling with the keyboard and mouse controls and given myself repetitive stress injury, but with the increased blood pressure from some aspects of the story, my body was probably tricked into thinking it was getting a much-overdue workout.

#Ferretbrain #Video games #Minority Warrior #Wardog #Bastion

[aion-rsa]

Super Mario 3D World Never Promised a Revolution, But Still Stands Apart 8 Years Later

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Getting a new Mario game, even one ported from a previous generation, always feels like opening a present on Christmas morning. Nintendo obviously knows this, having gone so far as to include the never-before-seen Bowser’s Fury expansion as a bonus for players already familiar with the wonders of Super Mario 3D World. And while this new side experiment may not quite be enough to encourage returning players to undertake a second playthrough, newcomers finally have the chance to play one of the most underappreciated Super Mario gems on Nintendo Switch. It’s an apt way to cap off the plumber’s 35th birthday celebrations.

Originally released on the Wii U in 2013, Super Mario 3D World hasn’t lost any of its charm in the eight years since. This may sound surprising considering that all Nintendo fans seemed hungry for back then was the next proper evolution of 3D Mario platforming. We of course eventually got this with Super Mario Odyssey, but the truth is that Super Mario 3D World never promised to be that kind of leap forward. Instead, the game served as a natural next step of the ideas first laid down in the daintier Super Mario 3D Land for the Nintendo 3DS, blending the concept of a 2D and 3D Mario game together and giving this creative core a HD lick of paint.

Yet, this unique melding of perspectives allows Super Mario 3D World to continue to stand apart from its peers in 2021. At first it all feels too familiar: You once again play as Mario, this time joined by Toad, Luigi, and Peach (and later Rosalina) in madcap four-player co-op adventures, progressing through a string of colorful overworlds and their inventive sub-levels in order to thwart the menacing Bowser. This time you’re doing so in the hopes of rescuing the Sprixie Kingdom’s seven fairies, utilizing new abilities like the Double Cherry and cat-transforming Super Bell to complete various platforming challenges.

The added dimension provides the balanced challenge Mario is known for, with just one poorly timed jump or oddly placed enemy being enough to send you back to a stage’s beginning. You forgive this, though, seeing as most of 3D World’s bite-sized stages play like a Greatest Hits album of platforming brilliance. One minute you and friends might be boosting alongside a road in a homage to the Mario Kart spin-off franchise, the next you’re plunging down a cascade of waterfalls on the back of a cutesy sea monster. Such sheer unpredictability is enough to make younger players croon and adults feel like a kid again, hence why it’s a shame that the base game doesn’t offer up much new content for Wii U alumni.

Competition might not be something most fans are used to in a Mario game but in 3D World it’s placed firmly at the forefront. While this isometric adventure is perfectly enjoyable when played solo, the levels themselves really come to life when there are four of you simultaneously bandying about on screen while trying to hunt down every green star and hidden character stamp. Most of the stages have been designed to easily accommodate such high degrees of multiplayer mayhem, though there will definitely be times you find yourself betraying friendships anyway, purposely blocking pathways and throwing your cohorts off platforms in the effort to reach the final frame’s flagpole first.

If there’s anything holding Super Mario 3D World from becoming an all-time classic, it’s the game’s limited replayability once every hidden collectable has been uncovered, and the monotony of the boss battles, which all follow the same “hit three times to defeat” formula. Nintendo’s insistence to not shake the latter up too much is understandable given bosses have to be approachable to players of all ages, but by the time you’ve entered the last overworld and are still seeing the same boss template pop up with only minor tweaks, it really hammers home what Nintendo could have done to modernize this game a little more for the re-release. Trying to keep up with Bowser’s car while dodging his attacks is a magnificent spectacle the first time around, less so during the fourth attempt.

Release Date: Feb. 12, 2021 Platform: Switch Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo Genre: Platformer

Bowser’s Fury on the other hand, being the one entirely new element of this two-pronged package, rarely rests on its laurels. The ultimate way you do battle with the titular beastie might still descend into a repetitive bash of hits and slams, yet the lead up to these Kaiju-level fights is a refreshing change of pace. And though I was initially worried that it would feel more like a piece of Super Mario Odyssey DLC rather than an extension of the vocabulary established in 3D World, the overabundance of cat-themed iconography solves that issue.

Overall, this is a smaller-scale experience that’s more in line with other full 3D Mario adventures. This time, however, the mustachioed plumber must visit a series of islets, completing courses and solving increasingly challenging platforming puzzles to collect the cat shines needed to keep the Godzilla-sized Bowser at bay. Eventually, though, the skies darken, and the big guy appears, transforming what would normally be a straightforward platforming level into a rain-fueled nightmare, with extra obstacles to overcome as Bowser hurls all manner of fire projectiles at you.

First-party Nintendo games have experimented with idyllic locations descending into madness before (mostly in the Zelda series), but having Bowser’s actions be specifically timed so as to directly inform the flow of gameplay brings a sense of urgency rarely seen in Mario. Do you uncover as many of the easy cat shines as possible early on while Bowser is still manageable, leaving the hardest until last and deal with the consequences later? The more cat shines you collect, the more aggressive and difficult to deal with Bowser becomes, giving Bowser’s Fury a welcome sense of risk/reward.

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

Much like in the main game Mario isn’t alone and is in fact joined by Bowser Jr., resulting in a mini Super Mario Sunshine reunion. His inclusion is cleverly tied into the story, yet is more so an excuse to bring in co-op to the experience. Unfortunately, there’s only so much Player Two can assist from the comfort of a floating clown car. Even when playing solo, though, he’ll accompany Mario to help take on certain enemies and provide handy power-ups.

For all its dark-tinged ingenuity and unconventional design, I’d be hard-pressed to recommend anyone pick up this package purely for Bowser’s Fury alone. What’s here is undoubtedly unique and a definite glimpse as to where the 3D Mario formula might be headed in the future, but it’s over far too quickly and doesn’t differentiate itself enough from other mainline Mario games (outside of Bowser’s time-mechanic) to justify the price. There’s a reason this concept wasn’t used as the basis for a full game, but as a companion piece it’s a fun, intense romp.

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is a no-brainer purchase for anyone who has yet to experience one of Mario’s most imaginative adventures. The Nintendo Switch version might not introduce a lot that wasn’t already here before, but both the base game and Bowser’s Fury are primed to delight players of all ages seeking two distinct flavors of pawsome platformer. The decision may not be so clear for returning players curious about the re-release’s one experimental side dish, but when taken together the collection still represents the peak of Nintendo’s charm and invention.

The post Super Mario 3D World Never Promised a Revolution, But Still Stands Apart 8 Years Later appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[dsrajawat]

It’s been like forever that we have seen a groundbreaking revamp in Laptops. But, with the growing workflow in the fast-paced mobile life, a larger expanse of the screen seems to be on call. While folding phones had the initial rage, the trend seems to switch sides to laptops. As such, the upshot appears to be Dual Display Laptops!

To be fair, there have been some experiments, which were few and far between. While the decade-old Asus Taichi and Acer Iconia 6120 were far ahead the times, the Asus Zenbook Duo and HP Omen X 2S of yesteryear felt like mere stepping stones. But, with the recently concluded CES 2020, the center stage was dedicated to Dual Display Laptops. Several brands showcased their multi-display lappies. Granted they were mostly fresh out of labs and the actual time to market might be afar.

So, the question looms whether you should be excited about the purposed shift in laptop design. Like any other technological transition, the inception stage will attract early adopters. But, before biting the bullet, you must be wary of a few things.

Challenges with Dual Display Laptops

Here are a few points to take note before betting your money on the neoteric technology –

Multi-display devices must have evenly responsive touchscreens without performance hiccups.

Two or more displays will slurp more juice and hence brands need to come up with better power optimization.

More displays mean more addition to laptop heft. Since a laptop is an ‘on-the-go’ gadget, it should be as light and handy as possible. Moreover, a display-centric device will involve hand movements and as such, ergonomics takes precedence.

The hinge mechanism must be flexible yet sturdy.

Using a virtual keyboard or modular one might demand a learning curve. So, typing and functioning the new input means will require some getting used to.

Further, the panels must be better resistant to scratches, glossiness, etc.

The software *cough* Windows 10X *cough* must tailor the UI according to the new format. Further, app development must pace to utilize the larger canvas and use scenarios.

You may have to spare more to own one, at least in the early years before the tech matures.

But, all these are more like suggestions to bake a better computing experience. After all, innovation propels progress and its only a matter of time that all the issues get fixed. On that optimistic note, here are the possibilities that the Dual Display tech could bring about.

Possibilities with Dual Display Laptops

A selling point for Dual display laptop is the maximum productivity it warrants on a large yet portable expanse. This ensures avenues for better multitasking, seamless sharing of data between apps and above all a creative use of the space. One could use the peripheral display for reference, comparison, instruction, etcetera. Creative Folks out there, take note!

This also proposes increased collaboration and communication

If one doubts their relevance in the presence of dual desktop monitors, the answer is – lesser space consumption.

The touch screen employs swipes and gestures which ensues innate and natural modes of navigation. It’s a playground for those who love fiddling with a stylus.

The tech is cutting-edge, which comes with a fancy and premium appeal.

Best Dual Display Laptops Announced Thus Far

Asus Zenbook Pro Duo 

The Zenbook Pro Duo has a 15.6-inch 4K resolution OLED panel as the main display. This is a Pantone Validated screen with 100 percent DCI-P3 color gamut coverage. The secondary screen christened the ScreenPad Plus stretches a 14-inch touchscreen with 4K resolution and 32:9 aspect ratio. It has a matte finish.

You can drag content from one screen to another. Asus’ own ScreenXpert control lets you run some tailor-made apps on this small screen. There is an App Switcher key to swap screens without a slouch. The built-in ViewMax feature makes things even more interesting by allowing a single app across both screens.

HP Omen X 2S

Hp Omen X 2S flaunts a primary 15.6-inch LCD panel (144Hz refresh, full HD resolution and NVIDIA’s G-Sync compatible), followed by a secondary, 5.98-inch 1080p multitouch screen right above the RGB lit keyboard. The use cases are somewhat similar to the Asus laptop given above.

Lenovo Think book Plus

Now, this one has a different approach to the whole dual-display concept. The primary display is a 13.3-inch, 1920 x 1080, an anti-glare screen with 300 nits of luminosity. Lenovo has placed the second display on the bonnet. But, this is just an e-ink panel capable of presenting black and white color only. So, the use case is limited to jotting something, reading docs or glancing the reminders and task notifications.

Dell Duet

This one has a resemblance to the Microsoft Duo. The obvious difference is in the larger footprint and a modular keyboard. The hinge can rotate 360 degrees opening up different form factors. Dell offers a few gestures to navigate the UI. On the periphery, there are two USB-C ports.

Intel Honeycomb Glacier

Source: ExtremeTech

As the name suggests, the laptop has a 2D honeycomb structure accommodating a native companion display. The main display is a 15.6-inch FHD panel and right beneath it, there’s the secondary 12.3-inch screen. When unfolded fully, the two displays are backed by a two-hinge system along with a keyboard at the base.

Under the hood, there is an Intel Core i9 processor coupled with Nvidia GTX 1070. The heat dissipation is handled by the proprietary star-field cooling system. Other things included in the mix are the Tobii eye-tracking feature.

Intel Twin River 

Source: Geek.com

This Intel prototype combines two 12.3-inch panels, which, with a 1080p resolution and an aspect ratio of 3:2. Under the hood, it ran on an Intel Whiskey Lake U-series quad-core processor. Intel had structured the motherboard into two compartments. Whilst the CPU, storage and memory were nesting on the top, the bottom portion held networking, connectivity, and I/O modules. Another unique aspect was the use of fabric coating on the periphery.

Razer Project Valerie  

Touted as the world’s first automated triple display laptop, it’s surely one spectacular piece of machinery. Three 17-inch screens with the two peripheral screen that can be slid open from the side of the main screen. All three sports 4K IGZO displays powered by Nvidia’s G-Sync technology.

It’s an obvious target for hardcore gaming. As such, the feature set also boasts Nvidia 180-degree Surround FoV, full Adobe RGB color spectrum, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 graphics with 8 gigs of video RAM, a cool 32GB of system RAM, and vapor-chamber heat dissipation mechanism.

Acer Iconia 6120

This one’s a throwback from the past. The Acer Iconia 6120 ushered in a dual display model back in 2011. However, due to technological disabilities, the tablet couldn’t set a trend. Yes, it was marketed as a tablet back then. But, it had a larger surface area than a tablet. The Toshiba Libretto would better fall into the category of a tablet.

Both the displays were of 14-inches with 1366 x 768 pixels resolution. The glossy panels were conjoined by a 180-degree tiltable hinge. Iconia was propelled by a Core i5 processor.

Asus Taichi 21

This is yet another retrograde in the evolution timeline of laptop design. Taichi’s second display happened to be on the lid. You could use the laptop as a tablet while closed. And in the opened state, you could either mirror screens or show different content on the surface screen, so that anybody sitting across you can see and interact with it. There was even a Screen Share in-house app that presents a small preview window of the back screen contents on the inner screen. Both screens measured 11.6-inch with 1080p resolution.

Other things included an Intel Core i5 CPU clocked at 1.7GHz, housed with 4GB of RAM, 128GB of solid-state storage, and two USB 3.0 ports.

Best foldable Laptops announced so far

The following might not cut for a dual or multi-display format, per se. But, their use case somewhat falls under the same gamut.

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Fold

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Fold was unveiled at CES 2020. It folds inward on itself. The torque hinge juts out a little. The screen accepts pen-input and multi-touch. Yeah, you get a pen bundled with it. As for the display itself, it spans a 4:3 aspect ratio.

Inside, it harbors an unnamed Intel processor. The rest of the details are still under wraps.

 Dell Concept Ori 

The Dell Concept Ori also saw the daylight at CES 2020. Its fold mechanism is quite similar to the above one. As such, it can be used as a book, tablet, and table-top format. Dell hasn’t revealed any specs for the time being. But, the screen reportedly measures 13-inches give or take with QHD+ resolution.

Intel Horseshoe Bend

Source: Techspot

Also debuted at the CES 2020, the Intel’s take on the foldable laptop has a weird code name ie., Horseshoe bend. This one sports a 17.3-inch OLED panel which when bent a little transforms into a 12.5-inch laptop. When folded inward, there’s a small wedge-shaped space between the two panels. Intel has stowed in a keyboard in that gap, which is a clever use of that vacancy.

Windows 10X: The Software for Dual Display and Foldables

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Via: The Verge

Via: The Verge

Via: The Verge

Via: The Verge

The software must also be ready to accommodate the hardware imperatives. Realizing the same, Microsoft announced a custom iteration of Windows 10 in October 2019. The company hasn’t worked from the ground up. Rather, they have tweaked and optimized the core Windows technologies in areas like power-saving, app and service compatibility. It will even run Win32 applications in a container. You can expect the OS to feature swipe gestures for sailing through the UI and UX.

Windows 10X will be available for dual-screen and foldable devices starting by Holidays 2020. Look out for devices from major players like ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. Needless to say, both Surface Duo and Surface Neo from Microsoft will be on the cards for the new OS.

Holly Molly! this might very well be the decade when we witness the Dual Display and Foldable tech ripe. So, we leave you with a simple question – how excited are you?

Best Dual Display and Foldable Laptops Announced So Far It's been like forever that we have seen a groundbreaking revamp in Laptops. But, with the growing workflow in the fast-paced mobile life, a larger expanse of the screen seems to be on call.