Saturday, September 5, 2015

A little bit of everything

- People are getting pissy over the Xenoblade Chronicles X localization because it's changing a lot of names from the Japanese version. You know, as if it wasn't completely normal. So, how bad does it get? Well, you want to know what BLADE stands for in the English translation? "Builders of the Legacy After the Destruction of Earth". Okay, so it sounds a bit... lame, I'll give you that much. Now, do you want to take a stab at what the Japanese name was? "Beyond the Logos Artificial Destiny Emancipator". I shit you not. And people think THAT was better? What's wrong with their heads? There are a lot of changes too, some character names changed, some features were renamed as well (Nav Ball to Follow Ball being the most notable one), but geez... fucking weeaboos, man. JAPANESU ES BETTERU.

- Still waiting for Smogon's stats... apparently whoever's in charge messed up the stats' generation process, which led to anomalies like Raichu being in the top 20 in NU, even though apparently it's terrible there. Man, I really want to see those Pikachu Cup stats, to see if it was the bribe that got us the Endeavor event. Right now we have the most basic stats available for OU, UU, RU, NU and PU, but nothing else, and no detailed stats at all.

- Quick poll: which is the harder Mario level, the Perfect Run from Galaxy 2 or Champion's Road from 3D World? I'm going with the former. Not being able to take any hits whatsoever is the biggest thing, and the difficulty is very unevenly spread. The question mark tile, cloud and Pull Star segments are all complete jokes, and the Yoshi part is actually a bit tricky, but since it's first it's not too bad. It's the flip-swap segment that gets me every single time, I've never gotten past it. And even if I did, the freaking Hammer Bros would slaughter me in short order anyway. In comparison, Champion's Road allows you to take a few hits, and you have Peach and the Tanooki Suit at your disposal as well. There's no really easy part, but there's also no point that's completely and utterly unfair - as long as you hold on to those Tanooki Suits for dear life. One thing I'd like to see next time they try this super-hard level thing is to let us choose which segments to do first. No checkpoints means you barely get any practice in on the later parts, and too much on the earlier ones (though the first star in Grandmaster Galaxy is kind of a fix for this particular aspect, since there are checkpoints there).

- All this hoopla for 50 minutes? So apparently the first (and presumably only) season of Gen Zed is made of eight episodes that last between five and seven minutes in length. Which basically means their combined length is that of two to two and a half episodes of a show with a more normal running time. But then again, why am I not surprised? Any longer, and they'd be forced to start developing their characters beyond "TRANS TRANS TRANS", "cis white strawman", "token black stereotype because diversity or something", and "Amy Wong expy because diversity or something". And we all know SJWs see the world with a very limited array of labels (of which "pedophile" apparently isn't part of if the alleged bearer is one of their own number).

- But if you're starving for bottom-tier fiction and can't wait for Hayden Black to just cave in and put that stuff up on YouTube because no network will ever pick his shit up, you're in luck, because the impossible just happened last night. SONICHU IS GETTING RELAUNCHED. I am not kidding, for the first time in over five years we got some new pages. First thing on the menu was the second half of the Christmas special (the new stuff starts on page 13). And I gotta say, all those pessimistic people who thought CWC circa 2015 couldn't produce hilarious content are eating their words HARD. Sure, there's some debate on whether or not he did these recently or he's been sitting on these pages for almost six years, but it's pretty clear given the (relative) quality of the art and the themes that were brought up (including, but not limited to, Simonla's revival) that this is all brand new. Still, racism, sexism and almost undecipherable autistic word salads? It's like he never left at all! So now we got Duke Nukem Forever, Sonichu 11 is officially underway, what next? Your move, Mr. Newell.

12 comments:

  1. I am mildly concerned about Xenoblade X's localization because apparently it's being done by the Treehouse as well as 8-4. 8-4 has been known to change minor things here and there for no real reason. Most recently they did Fire Emblem Awakening. I didn't particularly like the support conversations in that game, but I doubt they were any good in the Japanese version either. I'd be thrilled to just have whoever localized the first Xenoblade do this one.

    With power-ups, Champion's Road is easier. If you go into it as a normal character though, I'd say it compares to the Perfect Run.

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  2. Bit of a humblebrag here, I guess, but I've never really had that much trouble with the Perfect Run. Enemies attack pretty slowly in 3D Mario games, so I never really get hit. With that "obstacle" aside it's just a "all your powers combined" level. Since the mechanics are relatively straightforward, it's a piece of cake.

    Haven't even played 3D world, though, so I can't say the other option is harder. But if everyone is saying Perfect Run is super hard, I guess it can't be too bad.

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    1. The one part where enemies represent any kind of difficulty in the Perfect Run is only because of the sheer number of them, and the likelihood you'll get hit by a stray projectile. Otherwise, there's the flip-swap thing where you have to coordinate yourself with not only circular lasers, but fireballs getting flung at you. That's just too much.

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  3. Perfect run is pretty hard, I beat it once and that was really lucky because of the switch block area

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  4. A bit of a shocker that Sonichu #11 got made. Even then, Chris has been pretty quiet lately. We'll probably see an explosion in Chrischan insanity shortly, maybe around Christmas, with him trying to promote his own line of "amiibo".

    Secondly, yeah, those 50 minutes are sure worth getting excited about. They even had their own panel at some con. Not sure how many people attended though, I haven't seen any crowd shots, plus there are some rumors floating about that they hired people to fill their panel. Just a rumor though.

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    1. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when the new Sonic Boom finally hits store shelves. Rumor has it that he's following court-mandated therapy, so maybe...? Anyway, he became really hostile when he realized the Blake Amiibos weren't selling, and yet he still intends to make the entire main cast (either Bubbles or Punchy is next according to him). Some of them are going to require really rare Amiibos if he insists on changing the bases. Little Mac is going to be needed for Punchy, but he won't need Pikachu tails for him since he has no tail. Magi-Chan on the other hand... holy shit if he buys a bunch of Ness Amiibos for their base and the Magi-Chans don't sell, we might see the ragestorm of a lifetime.

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    2. Aren't some of those amiibo super hard to get? Like you need to import them from overseas rare? If he's going around helping out the scalpers, then there is truly no hope in this world.

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    3. Nah, aside from the obvious Sonic for all of the characters, he needs Pikachu for Sonichu, Blake and Magi-Chan, Bowser for Blake, ZSS for Rosechu, Pit for Angelica, DK for Wild, Peach for Bubbles, Little Mac for Punchy and Ness for Magi-Chan. Only the last two are really rare, and he can get them on eBay or Amazon for a bit of dough.

      Besides, I can't imagine too many people rushing to buy the non-Sonichu ones (as seen with Blake), and even for Sonichu himself the market is saturated (which is why he probably shifted gears and started doing other characters to start with).

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    4. Court-mandated therapy? I doubt it's working, given that he's still on about the Sonichu thing...

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    5. I think it's doing him at least a bit of good. Not gonna go into details as to why, because I'd be here all night, but he's behaving a lot more than in the months directly before and after the mace incident. Of course he's still autistic, of course he's still an idiot, that'll never go away, but he's never been as happy as he is now since he graduated from high school. He goes out and socializes, and he's living his lifelong dream of making money off his shitty recolors. So I could buy him seeing a shrink, because he just doesn't come off as the same person who maced someone over the color of Sonic's arms.

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  5. I had more trouble with The Perfect Run than with Champion Road, so I'd say the forner is harder. It really comes down to the 1 hit point and the cloud powerup you can't get rid of. Not only is the bullet hell-esque platforming brutal, but you simply aren't prepared to deal with the floatiness. Champion's Road is more consistently challenging, bur in the end it's far more forgiving if you bring along a couple of Tanooki leaves. The same goes for the last level of 3D Land.

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  6. The original BLADE name has JRPG stereotype written all over it. Part of me thinks it's cool but it's also such a stupidly convoluted name.

    The Flip Swap segment in the Perfect Run was a nightmare, but I managed to beat it after several months, haven't finished 3D World so Champion's Road is still left for me.

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