Saturday, June 13, 2015

Saturday screed

- I know there's no fanbase that doesn't suck, but Smash's really shone today. With Ryu and Roy all but confirmed as DLC, many entitled douchenozzles have taken to complaining about the latter. Not because it's another Marth clone the world never asked for (especially since Lucina is conceptually far better than Roy could ever hope to be), which I could've accepted, but because of the franchise he comes from. Yes, it's kinda weird to have as many characters come from Fire Emblem as Zelda (only Mario and Pokémon have more), but Fire Emblem is really, REALLY hot stuff in Japan. And Western gamers don't take kindly to characters more prominent in Japan make appearances in Japanese game, because Western gamers are either dumb or totally oblivious to that stuff (see also: Tingle in Hyrule Warriors). Doesn't help that Sakurai is listed in the credits as "special thanks" in FE6, the game Roy is from - but only that one game, oddly enough. So those who despise Sakurai despite worshipping his greatest creation (how does that even work? I don't speak slow-in-the-mind) are having a field day. We also have to deal with those people who think they're taking the spot of someone else, like Dixie, K. Rool and what have you.

On the other side of the fence, we have those idiots who think it's only fair to have those characters "that were unfairly taken from us" back. And you know what? I can live with Mewtwo, I can even live with Lucas. And I could live with Wolf if he returned. But hasn't it ever occurred to them that maybe some of those characters were ditched for a reason? Next thing you know they're going to want Pichu back. After all, they got Dr. Mario, Falcondorf never left, Young Link was just retooled, and now they're getting Roy. The only positive I can see in all this is that it's Roy's second chance to, you know, not be Marth's bitch. An extensive analysis concluded that the only thing Roy was better at than Marth in Melee was that he was harder to KO vertically. Every single other criteria went in Marth's favor, which was straight-up embarrassing.

- As for my progress in Hyrule Warriors, I'm now halfway done with the TP map, having done the green, yellow and purple areas. And to my surprise, I completed all of them 100%. Even the MM map got really hard faster than this. Of course my levels are a bit higher, and I have a lot more characters with good weapons, but I don't think that's enough to compensate for the difficulty spike I expected. One interesting take I've read is that individual monsters are more dangerous in the TP map, while the battles as a whole are tougher in the MM one. And I can buy that - officers tended to be incredibly aggressive in the latter, never missing out an opportunity to get a cheap hit in - and also making a beeline straight for you, ganging up on you in the process. You could fight as many as six or seven officers at once at times, and damage was sure to stack up quickly. Not so in the TP map - they tend to behave a lot more like in the first two, which makes them a lot more manageable.

...at least for now.

- Clicking games are stupid. Like, really, really stupid. Steam's got that thing going on as part of its summer sale, and... people really play this shit? For real? They PAY MONEY to play this kind of game? Remember when people dismissed games like Diablo because it was just "clicking on monsters"? That was dumbing things down greatly, but this... ugh. This is LITERALLY just clicking to watch numbers go up. Fucking Hong Kong 97 doesn't have that much less depth than it does. 3.5 billion years of evolution, and this is the big payoff.

- I don't usually highlight my own stuff, but seriously, if you missed out on yesterday's post, do yourselves a favor and take a look at the links in it. It's worth it.

12 comments:

  1. It all stems from this mindset that the amount of characters that a franchise has in Sm4sh should reflect how popular that franchise is. Fire Emblem has an abundance of interesting characters that would work in Smash, so it only makes sense that we're getting a lot of them. Granted, I do think it's unfortunate that the other classes in FE aren't represented in the roster. Everyone hates on Miciah but I think she'd make for an interesting fighter.

    Funnily enough I'm also ~50% through the TP Map now and it's giving me hell. It finally pushed me to go get better weapons for characters like Volga and Ganondorf.

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    1. Are you doing the colors in order, or are you just going wherever? That might be a big difference maker.

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    2. I'm going wherever, I honestly never minded the different colors. Until now I've been able to bulldoze through everything so I forgot those made a difference... I'll have to go look up which areas are harder.

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    3. From easiest to hardest, it's green, yellow, purple, orange, blue and red. Here are some blank slates:

      http://imgur.com/a/xLGZe

      But yeah, in the first two maps it doesn't make a whole lot of difference, except maybe for the red ones, but in TP and MM... yeah, it just keeps getting harder, and you can tell. At least in MM it follows the same progression as in the original game, so it's easy to figure out.

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  2. Roy was at least strongly considered for Brawl (before Jigglypuff, possibly).
    I am convinced Lucas & Wolf (& Mewtwo, probably) didn't make it into the base game due to time/budget constraints. Go with Ness for senority/broad establishment, go with Falco because he would be relatively easier to implement. Other characters likely had priority and we know that Sakurai doesnt like cutting characters if he can help it. I'm still convicned we'll see Wolf as DLC because of that and also, you know. Star Fox U.

    I doubt Pichu will ever come back, at least. Allowing for Toon Link just being retooled Young Link, Pichu was the [i]only[/i] Melee fighter not considered at all for Brawl so far as we can tell.

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    1. Apparently Bowser Jr. was going to be axed because of time constraints, but they managed to get him in at the last minute.

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  3. Replies
    1. I've seen some people claim that Sakurai used to be a big Street Fighter 2 fan and Ryu getting in is another result of his bias. But ya know, the internet and their claims and stuff.

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  4. Get a load of this Slow; there are people who want Princess Daisy in Smash. I thought people hated her or something?

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    1. And isn't Daisy already an alt for Peach anyway?...

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  5. I believe Sakurai is given special thanks in FE6 (*spits*) because Melee actually came out before it. Including Roy worked as a brilliant promotional method for the game, leading it to be the highest selling Fire Emblem of all, until the recent FE13 surpassed it.

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  6. Roy actually feels a lot more different than Marth now. The animations for his basic and tilt attacks are all different. And he borrowed Ike's D-Air. His special attack are pretty much the same with different properties though, except his neutral special which seems to be the same as in Melee. He really feels like the proper middle-weight between Marth and Ike he should be. Shame it makes Lucina look even more insignificant than she already was.

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