Random Video Game Crap

I know some people like Jay have an unspeakable hatred for Amiibos due to the great Amiibo/Canadian War, but for a figure I only bought because I love Mega Man, I've actually gotten a lot of use out of his Amiibo.

- The only Smash fighter I've trained
- Got a racing outfit for Mario Kart 8, the one I use most now
- Unlocked Rock instantly for Mario Maker

And when Mega Man Legacy Collection for 3DS comes out next year, I'll have access to special challenge missions only accessible through the Amiibo. I've paid more for DLC that gave me a lot less, plus I got a cute little Mega Man in my house, and he just keeps on giving.
 
I know some people like Jay have an unspeakable hatred for Amiibos due to the great Amiibo/Canadian War, but for a figure I only bought because I love Mega Man, I've actually gotten a lot of use out of his Amiibo.

- The only Smash fighter I've trained
- Got a racing outfit for Mario Kart 8, the one I use most now
- Unlocked Rock instantly for Mario Maker

And when Mega Man Legacy Collection for 3DS comes out next year, I'll have access to special challenge missions only accessible through the Amiibo. I've paid more for DLC that gave me a lot less, plus I got a cute little Mega Man in my house, and he just keeps on giving.
I explicitly pre-ordered Mega Man because I knew it was the only way I'd ever get it. I really just keep it as a statue though... I might pick up Shovel Knight for the same reason when he comes out.
 
I explicitly pre-ordered Mega Man because I knew it was the only way I'd ever get it. I really just keep it as a statue though... I might pick up Shovel Knight for the same reason when he comes out.
Might also get Shovel Knight, now that you mention it. Depends on availability. Really looking forward to seeing if he gets into Smash.

And yeah, I got Rock for the statue, but it's cool to get little bonuses and such too.
 
Might also get Shovel Knight, now that you mention it. Depends on availability. Really looking forward to seeing if he gets into Smash.

Fan made, but I almost bought it when I saw it. But it could happen... his move set translates well (using the Relics as his B attacks), though he'll need a Final Smash. Maybe he drinks from his Grail and suddenly he gets a few seconds of invulnerability, speed, and instant smashes? Or maybe he Strikes The Earth and it smashes anyone not currently in the air?
 
I have a problem with content being locked away behind hard to find tchotchkes, no matter how insignificant or bonus'y it is.
I do see this as an issue... it really should be "You want these neat little extras? Alright, it's 2-3 bucks... unless you have the Amiibo, in which case it's free." The tying of the content SOLELY to the Amiibo causes issues when the availability of said toys is unpredictable at best. There was literally a point where no one in England could get the Splatoon toys because the truck taking them from the docks to the distributor got hijacked en-route. That's not even getting into the supply problems they've had due to the dock workers strike on the West Coast and just plain not manufacturing enough. They are making more of the limited, exclusive ones (Little Mac, Lucario, Meta Knight, etc) at least, so it'll be easier to get them from here on out, assuming Nintendo gets a clue. They are already doing the Animal Crossing ones as RFID playing cards instead of statues explicitly because of this.

Ultimately though, I see it as buying a fun toy that just happens to give dlc. I didn't buy Mega Man because I wanted the content, I bought it because I wanted a Mega Man toy. If I get Shovel Knight, it's because I want a Shovel Knight toy, not because it's going to unlock content in the 3DS and Wii U versions of Shovel Knight. I'm buying these because I want the toy.
 
The problem is that unlike traditional DLC, it can be resold, thus scalpers come into play.

None of the stuff are things I'd have bought the Amiibos for; I wanted the statues. My wife, on the other hand, bought the Splatoon Amiibos for their content. I don't feel it was $45 worth of content.
 
Not sure where to put this because I can think of four threads it would make sense for (Wii U, Kickstarter, News, and here) but since we were talking Amiibos here:

Nintendo web site has a page showing Amiibos that are compatible with Super Smash Bros, even ones not officially of that Amiibo line. For example, the Skylanders Bowser and Donkey Kong will still function as normal Bowser/DK Amiibos for Smash, and the Yarn Yoshis will still work as Yoshi.

At the bottom of this Smash Bros compatibility page is Shovel Knight.

So either someone at Nintendo goofed and put him there by mistake or someone goofed and put him there early.
 
Goddamn Evolve.

I sold it back in March for more than half its cost to help pay for Bloodborne. This past week I had the chance to grab it again for a few bucks and thought, what the hell, it'll be worth that little to have some more fun with it.

Well, I didn't keep up with current events for this game and forgot the malleable nature of online games. Apparently August brought a patch with major changes to the main game mode, Hunt, focused on skill-based matchmaking and it's pretty well done fucked the game. Used to be you could just jump in and get a match going; now you sit for longer than a match's length while the game figures out placements and shit, and then even if it gets a group together, it can just dumb you all at random without getting the match started. Essentially there's now an entire extra step to setting up and it doesn't even fucking work. Sure, everybody being thrown together might not be the most ideal, but it's better than just NOT PLAYING.

Which is what I've been doing. For over 20 minutes, the game has been trying to figure shit out. I went out and back in a couple times, but it has no clue what to do. Stupid fucking patch ...
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Goddamn Evolve.

I sold it back in March for more than half its cost to help pay for Bloodborne. This past week I had the chance to grab it again for a few bucks and thought, what the hell, it'll be worth that little to have some more fun with it.

Well, I didn't keep up with current events for this game and forgot the malleable nature of online games. Apparently August brought a patch with major changes to the main game mode, Hunt, focused on skill-based matchmaking and it's pretty well done fucked the game. Used to be you could just jump in and get a match going; now you sit for longer than a match's length while the game figures out placements and shit, and then even if it gets a group together, it can just dumb you all at random without getting the match started. Essentially there's now an entire extra step to setting up and it doesn't even fucking work. Sure, everybody being thrown together might not be the most ideal, but it's better than just NOT PLAYING.

Which is what I've been doing. For over 20 minutes, the game has been trying to figure shit out. I went out and back in a couple times, but it has no clue what to do. Stupid fucking patch ...
Evolve and Vermintide have been proof to me that you absolutely cannot judge a game by its dev house any more. The team behind L4D made Evolve, and it devolved (heh) into shitfuckery. Meanwhile, Fatshark, a devhouse with only failure and medocrity to its name previously, finally rolled a natural 20 and made an amazing game in Vermintide. All bets are off on everything going forward, imo.
 
Evolve and Vermintide have been proof to me that you absolutely cannot judge a game by its dev house any more. The team behind L4D made Evolve, and it devolved (heh) into shitfuckery. Meanwhile, Fatshark, a devhouse with only failure and medocrity to its name previously, finally rolled a natural 20 and made an amazing game in Vermintide. All bets are off on everything going forward, imo.
Surely that didn't start with Evolve and Vermintide though. There was once a time when Bioware could do no wrong. There there was a time when Bioware could do no right. Now, as far as I'm aware, we're somewhere in the middle.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Surely that didn't start with Evolve and Vermintide though. There was once a time when Bioware could do no wrong. There there was a time when Bioware could do no right. Now, as far as I'm aware, we're somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, but that was just Bioware. You could usually depend on Bethesda games to be a certain quality (amazing stories, buggy games), you knew pretty accurately what you were getting into when you bought a game by iD or Volition or Bullfrog or Treyarch or Infinity Ward or 3DRealms or Naughty Dog or Rockstar or DICE or 2k. Sure, there were slight deviations, but none so dramatic, and in the same exact genre of game, as the flip flops of Turtle Rock and Fatshark. A golden child lays a stinky turd, and a hack shovelware pusher raises up a glimmering jewel. It was like the fates giving official notice that nothing was a given any more.
 
Thing is about Evolve, even though people want to ignore it because of the DLC crap, the game itself was decent. But now you can't even really play it. The game has become the extra setup screen that you sit on for ... I think it was 30 minutes yesterday. I only finally got a game going when I switched to monster, so it didn't have to coordinate four different fucking people's skill levels.

Left 4 Dead doesn't have skill-based anything as far as I know. If you pug, sometimes it's with shitty people. That's just the way it is. Segregating good and bad players isn't going to make those bad players any better.

But you're right. Nothing is given with this shit. It's why I'm trying to mainly rent games now. I don't feel like Nintendo dealing me another Code Name Steam or Atlus with another Devil Survivor 2. I've wasted too much money on shitty games in the past 12 months.
 
I'm pretty sure she is how most people learn that kids aren't killable in the base game.
For me it was Nelkir.

"Another wanderer here to lick my father's boots." Kid, I don't care if you're father's sitting right there, with his scary Dunmer housecarl and scary Nord bodyguard and scary guards and not-so-scary steward, I'm shanking you right here and right now.
 
For me it was Nelkir.

"Another wanderer here to lick my father's boots." Kid, I don't care if you're father's sitting right there, with his scary Dunmer housecarl and scary Nord bodyguard and scary guards and not-so-scary steward, I'm shanking you right here and right now.
Wasn't that nord bodyguard his brother?
 
More on Evolve:

- Apparently if you select the monster, at least on PS4, you'll find a match much more quickly.

WHY THIS IS STUPID: Before, the game would throw five people together. Sometimes you had to be the monster when you didn't want to, but then later you wouldn't be. They broke the game to make pissbabies happy. Here are the steps to starting a match:

--- Select Hunt on the multiplayer screen
---Go to a screen to choose your side, monster or hunter
---Wait on the matchmaking screen to pull the right people together as far as the system can figure out (this can take an eternity +1)
---Wait on the between menu loading screen
---Get to the character select screen
--------HOWEVER: if anyone drops after five people are put together, you will sit between the matchmaking and character screens doing nothing, because the system is waiting for all players to load and doesn't understand that they've left the match
---Load the map itself
---Finally start the fucking match

It can take longer than a match to get a match started.

- Even if it goes faster, there's STILL an extra step to getting into a match. Before, the character select screen was where you'd go when you selected Hunt. Now you go to the matchmaking screen, let that load people together a bit, then it loads the between screen stuff, THEN it gets to the character select screen. And you have to do this between EVERY FUCKING MATCH, unlike before where the game would just throw the same people together and they could come or go if they pleased.

- Turtle Rock is aware of this stupid shit and isn't going to do anything about it. How do I know? Because the other night, on a screen to select a side, there was a flashy blue note next to the hunters side that said there might be shorter queue times for hunters at the moment.

Hey Turtle Rock, you know what was nice? When we had NO FUCKING QUEUE because we all got thrown into a match of whatever and it was okay. Now players are segregated by whose side you want to play and what your skill level is. It's so fucking stupid. Evolve is not a game I'm going to want to play for an hour and only get two matches in. That's pointless. Because in the time I'm waiting between matches, I could be doing something else. Playing something else. And I know the game can do better because it was doing better earlier this year, before the August patch screwed it all up. This is not a game worth waiting 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 35 minutes to play a 15-minute maximum match.

I wonder how much Gamestop will pay for this, because my alternative is to just break the fucking disc in half.

I sent a nicer version of this to Turtle Rock themselves. I doubt anyone's going to give a shit, but it's worth trying.
 
Before selling Until Dawn, I decided to do a stream of a full playthrough because that seems to be a thing people are doing. Now I know why--it's my second most viewed video in less than a day. If anyone here wants to waste five hours seeing how the game really isn't any different per playthrough than Heavy Rain despite what the fans say, you can watch it here:

 
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