Umm, Just Random Things I Guess

 

          Hello. I haven’t really had the urge to write anything lately. I don’t even know where to start or what my point is today, so let’s just ramble.

            Mario seems to be in a little trouble lately, first Sonic Racing CrossWorlds and now Lego Party. The problem with being the king and not having any competition is that you get complacent and put out subpar products and leave the door open for someone else to steal the crown. I’ve seen on… BlueSky, Twitter, one of those, someone say that Shadow Generations is better than Bowser’s Fury, that is quite the claim and one I don’t agree with personally. I am a little down about Mario Kart World, there are things they put back in that I like; when Lakitu picks you up from falling off the track you can get a small boost if you time it right and you can out run blue turtle shells with a turbo mushroom. Everything else though, it’s kind of boring. Driving from track to track is boring for me. I like Knockout Tour but I’m a little confused as to why they took away the keep away battle mode Shine Thief, I thought that was a big hit in 8 deluxe. As for CrossWorlds, I do like it; it’s different, drifting takes some getting used to, it’s like you’re glued to the road. I still suck at the boat and air sections. Getting hit by items is kind of meh also. You can kind of just be going about your business then all of a sudden you’re slower and you take a look at your character and you’re flashing red. Oh, apparently I’ve been hit. It lacks that impact you get from Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing. Lego Party is also pretty good. Some of the minigames are absolute trash though. The controls for some of them are SO touchy, after a while I just give up but going around the board, adding on to the boards, using the items is all pretty fun. It even has announcers that are kind of funny (for a couple games), they sometimes shit on a player which has us yell at them which again, is fun. After four or five games I’d probably look into muting them. They give out a lot more gold bricks then Mario Party stars which also adds to the fun. Makes stealing bricks from other people a little better, more options.

            Monster Hunter Wilds is another one that’s been in hot water lately, from what I hear. I haven’t played since the Lagiacrus update, there’s been a Final Fantasy crossover with some robot that a lot of people hate and there’s supposed to be an update in December with an elder dragon from 4U that people are excited about. Wilds just kind of bores me for some reason, I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before but for me once I fight a monster and win then I move on. The other games, the “portable” games at least have quest to check off. With the new updates they’d put in a monster and have them tempered to 8 or 9 or whatever and people online will say how much harder the fights are and that they like it a lot and we’d do it with minimal issue I just think “am I missing something?” That’s why I really like when we get things like Dauntless and Wild Hearts, someone comes along and makes something similar but with their own twist. Maybe they do something better than the “king” and if they can’t overthrow the king at least maybe the king will implement the best parts of the competition.

            Microsoft is taking inspiration from Sony and remaking remakes. Halo CE is being remade as “Campaign Evolved.” As someone who was a relative fan of the original games I really couldn’t care less about this news. As far as I’m concerned all remakes should be made into a Lego game. Halo, Knights of the Old Republic, like, if you’re going to remake a game, a “modern” game, then it needs to me somewhat different. I don’t understand people who have bought The Last of Us multiple times and I understand they are making some changes to Halo with sprinting and whatnot but that’s not what I mean for changes. You can only do so much with remaking a FPS. Even Metroid Prime Remastered, sure it looks better but it still plays and functions like the original. If I still had my Wii and Metroid Prime Trilogy at the time I wouldn’t have bought it. Some how Aspyr Media fumbled the KotOR remake, I think they should hand that over to TT Games and Traveller’s Tales and just let them do it. The Skywalker Saga is a lot of fun and I think they would do well with KotOR. I was surprised there was no DLC in the Skywalker Saga for the Rebuild the Galaxy show, they had DLC for practically every other Star Wars show, I would really like to play as Darth Jar Jar. All that being said; I would buy a remake of the original God of War because it’s from a different time and I hate the way modern action games play.

            Speaking of, I tried playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows after not playing it for months and I just can’t get into it. The combat, too many points on the map, too many groups to go after! I thought I had all the circles I could possibly have and I’m doing something and oh nope, heeeere’s another circle! They really need some like, Helldivers 2 supply lines on that page. You have people that are hidden behind other organizations so when you look at your big, stupid group of circles you can’t tell straight away who is tied to what group. When I look at that page I get overwhelmed and then they don’t make the targets explicitly clear either. One guy I went up to was some merchant, we talked and he was like “You should be more discreet!” then went back to his spot and I was like “???” I didn’t get any new information about a target or anything, thought I was doing something wrong, decided to try and kill him to see what would happen and OH, there you go, he WAS the target. Stupid.

            I played/cheated the last mission or two of Legacy of the Void because I never did and man was that ending stupid! Most of the plot for all of StarCraft 2 was dumb but good god. “Uhhh, we’re reverting Kerrigan back into a human.” Okay, I guess I can kind of see that. “Oh she’s a Zerg again!” What? “OH, uhhhh, the Xel’naga are still kind of around and Kerrigan is now a god…” Like… I don’t even have the words. Just… so dumb. I think they should’ve just left shit alone, kinda like Warhammer 40k, every race hates all the other races and it’s just constant, never ending war. Maybe just should’ve skipped over Raynor, Kerrigan and Zeratul and got some new characters.

            The other thing I’m still absolutely furious about is the end of Halo 4 and the start of Halo 5. The end of Halo 4 Spartan Ops ends with Halsey swearing to get revenge on the UNSC by teaming up with a radical sect of the Covenant and her knowledge of the locations for Forerunner artifacts and technology. The first mission of Halo 5 has you kill the leader of this group of Covenant and take Halsey back because she had a change of heart. Halo 5 had so much potential. You could’ve had Master Chief go AWOL, looking for Halsey to fix Cortana, trying to dodge UNSC and Covenant forces, fighting through Forerunners. Locke could’ve still been hunting Chief through rumors and whispers. Maybe even each of them played differently, Master Chief could be the usual slow and methodical type (don’t remember if he could sprint in Halo 4) and Locke could have the new abilities of jumping ground pounds and bursting through walls. I would also be fine with Master Chief doing some of these things too, I wouldn’t mind if they took some queues from Doom. It would be interesting to see the usually calm and collected Master Chief become desperate and a little more ruthless. With how these companies have total disregard for their own lore and IPs, multiverses, I don’t think it’s asking too much to right some wrongs and re-imagine some story sequels. And hire some actual writers.

            What are your thoughts? Is Mario and Nintendo getting too comfortable? Playing Sonic CrossWorlds or Lego Party? What game would you like to see remade as a Lego game? Do you have an opinion of the direction of Halo? Let me know with a comment so we can converse! Be back some time, bye-bye.

            @AztecSauce