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  #46  
Old 15th June 2019, 12:14 AM
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Boy do I have mixed feelings on this. First off, I don't post on the RWP as often as I once did, so I'm going to give a quick summary of my thoughts of "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" as well as my thoughts on Banjo & Kazooie appearing in it. I think "Ultimate" is a lazy, gimped port of "Wii U". I could go on and on about it, but I just don't feel like it right now.

Anyways, Banjo & Kazooie are in "Smash"! That's awesome, but them being DLC? That's not awesome. I don't think a game like "Ultimate" needs DLC in the first place because it's just a port of the 3DS/Wii U games with a bloated roster. They decided to remove or gimp every Single Player mode, bring back useless characters, joke characters, and added clone characters to warrant that $60 price tag. It really shouldn't be called "Ultimate" if removes/gimps content AND has DLC. I'm not buying "Ultimate" and I'm not forking over extra money for characters that should have been in the game for, like, 15 years now.

The Banjo-Kazooie content looks horrible. I already hate the lighting on the characters ever since it was announced at E3 and I hate that they skimped out on Donkey Kong's fur. Banjo and Kazooie look...off. Banjo's upper torso is huge, his head reminds me of mouse's head (maybe it's the ears, I don't know). Banjo's fur was removed just like Donkey Kong's. Kazooie is pink instead of red, which I presume is from new lighting engine. I also hate that the Wonder Wing move has a meter of some sort. Why does every character need a gimmick? Some extra rule to memorize or keep track of while playing? I hate Little Mac's Power Meter, Robin's limited tome and sword, Shulks Menardo Arts, Cloud Strife's Limit Meter, Inkling's limited ink, King K. Rool's belly armor breaking, and a SUB-MENU for Dragon Quest's hero! Who on earth is going to squint their eyes to look at a tiny menu near their Damage Percentage in a game like "Super Smash Bros."? It's madness I tell you!

Spiral Mountain looks terrible.

It looks like just slapped a Skyward Sword watercolor filter over a fan-made HD texture mod.

I can't find a picture of it, but Bottles looks like uncanny-valley levels of creepiness, with his arms waving around like an amusement park animatronic.

The stage itself looks tiny. In the trailer, you can see the camera swivel around the mountain (which I assume is the gimmick - it looks like all DLC Stages will have some unique gimmick to them).

I don't get why they didn't just port the Nuts & Bolts model. The landscape looks better and the mountain itself is bigger, giving the characters more footing to move around on.

I hate to be that guy, but yeah...I have legendarily high standards for video games. Probably because I grew up with "Banjo-Tooie" (which in my mind is perfection). To me video games need a lot of Single Player content for me to sink my teeth into (something "Smash" hasn't had since "Brawl"). I don't support DLC, Updates, Digital Games, or any other form of 'temporary content', because why would I spend money on something that isn't permanent? I only buy completed physical games: "ARMS" and "Mario Tennis Aces" are not finished in my mind, but "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" and "Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition" are.

I'm okay with temporary digital content as long as it eventually makes it's way onto a physical piece of media. If they made a "Breath of the Wild" or "Smash Bros. Ultimate" Game-of-the-Year Edition, then I'll pick them up. I get the appeal of going digital-only, but I seem to have hardware and software problems all the time. I think a digital-only future sounds terrible as you won't be able to buy something and actually OWN it. I especially hate all of these cloud-based and subscription-based services everyone is doing now-a-days. I'm not too keen about Online shopping either, because you won't know what you'll get until it arrives.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I like to buy something and actually hold it in my hands.

Last edited by TRBB; 15th June 2019 at 12:32 AM.
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  #47  
Old 15th June 2019, 02:59 PM
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I'm usually not too crazy about DLC either, not going as far as refraining from buying games that you would deem incomplete but just generally opposed the idea. It takes a lot for me to buy DLC, I would need to really REALLY love the game involved*, but when the DLC is Banjo-Kazooie coming back to a Nintendo console that's a whole other ball game.

That is worth paying for. That is a big deal especially in our community.

*I really REALLY loved Smash before BK was announced.
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  #48  
Old 15th June 2019, 05:48 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Alakazam View Post
luckily, people are inventing new ways to play super smash bros. melee each day, and you could play it for the rest of your life without having to purchase another new nintendo game
Of course, that goes without saying. I guess you could say that about any video game.

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however, i'd argue that ultimate is a much-improved version of 4 with better mechanics and more enjoyable characters, and that its DLC model is much more ethical than almost any other fighting game today. i can understand disliking certain elements of it, because i do too, but it's better to make peace with change
I guess I should have clarified: "Super Smash Bros." no longer has the passion it once did. "Brawl" had a story mode with cutscenes and co-op, boss battles with co-op, homerun contest with co-op, event mode with co-op, target smash with co-op, a list of video game release dates, masterpiece demos, and more. They poured their blood, sweat, and tears into that game.

"Wii U" was gimped due to the 3DS version, the menus are a nightmare to navigate, story mode wasn't added because Masahiro Sakurai didn't want people uploading cutscenes onto YouTube (and launched the game globally anyways), Target Test is an an "Angry Birds" rip-off, Palutena was revealed at E3 while gaming-icon PAC-MAN was revealed via a Twitter tweet, Stage Builder is gimped, Smash Tour had no thought put into it, purposley holding Mewtwo 'ransom' via Nintendo Account DLC exclusive...you get the idea. However, despite it flaws, it did try to improve upon a few things too: most Smash battles support up to 8 Players, home-run contest supports up 4 Players, and Event Mode has branching paths depending on difficulty.

"Ultimate" does almost everything bad: instead of trying to improve upon existing features or add new ones, they strip-down or remove them outright.

The Menus haven’t been fixed and they are worse now than they ever were before.
Way too many characters and clones – the over bloated roster may scare away newcomers.
Only 4 new stages – not to mention they choose PAC-LAND over PAC-MAZE. (WHY?)
Added Battlefield forms with Omega forms – this is a huge waste of development resources.
Assist Trophies are useless and Final Smashes are really lame. (Most are Omni Slash clones.)
600+ Trophies are removed for a bunch of 2D pieces of artwork they found with Google images.
Story Mode replaced with Event mode (with an unnecessary hub-world that’s slog to explore).
Spirits mode is too grindy and requires no thinking due to the "recommend" button.
Home Run Contest, Target Smash, Smash Tour, Smash Run, etc. were removed nor improved.
Stage builder should have been in the game from Day 1.
Graphical downgrade: Bowser is brown; Donkey Kong’s fur is gone, washed-out colors, etc.
The characters/stages are no longer sorted by series on the Character/Stage Select screen.
Characters can no longer run past each other, making fast characters pretty much useless.
There are even more gimmicky characters (King K. Rool’s belly armor, Inkling’s limited ink, etc.)
The camera zooms in and time slows down when connecting hard hitting moves = annoying.
Player has TOO MUCH control over the pause screen camera: can see out-of-bounds dev tools. (Made worse with VR.)
Certain characters now take damage while in water (Charizard, Incineroar, Inkling, and Sonic).
Flat Zone 1 & 2 = Flat Zone X (3DS/Wii U), but Pokémon Stadium 1 & 2 weren’t combined.
There are still only TWO Final Fantasy songs…are you ****ing kidding me?
There are no new Solid Snake [David Hayter] lines – Codecs still refer to this game as “Brawl”.
Voices: Fox, Falco, Wolf = fixed – Pokémon Trainer (Male), Ike, Wii Fit Trainer (Both) = worse.
The getting dizzy and taunt animations are sped up for no reason and they look awful.
Taunts and victory animation voice clips no longer match up (due to new taunts/victory screen).
Offline Tournaments return, but Online Tournaments are gone (Wii U had opposite problem).
DLC means this isn’t the “Ultimate” Super Smash Bros. game…it is still ‘incomplete’.

Not to mention "Brawl" was delayed 3 times while "Wii U" and "Ultimate" weren't even delayed once, despite clearly needing more work. I could go on, but you get the point.

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Originally Posted by @ View Post
I was hanging on every word until you said Tooie was a perfect game
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alakazam View Post
banjo-tooie is great because it's not perfect
its imperfections make it the wonderful work of art it is

i will die on that hill
No, there's no such thing as a perfect game, but man...you cannot ignore how technologically advance it was for it's time. "Banjo-Tooie" feels organic, something many video games lost over time. While I understand Nintendo's whole 'Japanese Box Garden' view-the-map-from-any-corner approach in game design - the end result is just a tiny level floating in mid-air. I don't think we've had a video as technologically advanced as "Banjo-Tooie" since "Breath of the Wild" (running on Wii U hardware no less!).

Compare Nintendo's mountain level.
With Rare's mountain level.

In Rare's mountain level, you could explore the inside, not just the outside. As amazing as the "Mario" platforming franchise is, it could benefit so much more if they just added walls and ceilings. (That's what the rotating camera and first person view are for!)


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Originally Posted by Derek View Post
I'm usually not too crazy about DLC either, not going as far as refraining from buying games that you would deem incomplete but just generally opposed the idea. It takes a lot for me to buy DLC, I would need to really REALLY love the game involved*, but when the DLC is Banjo-Kazooie coming back to a Nintendo console that's a whole other ball game.

That is worth paying for. That is a big deal especially in our community.

*I really REALLY loved Smash before BK was announced.
Don't get me wrong: I think every "Super Smash Bros." game improves upon the next: "Wii U" is better than "Brawl" and "Ultimate" is better than "Wii U"...gameplay wise. Mode wise, I think it's pretty lacking. Roster-wise, despite being bloated, is the best in the series. Characters like Ridley and King K. Rool (that should've been in the series 15 years ago) finally made it in. Other characters fans wanted in the Fighter Ballot were finally added. Banjo & Kazooie made it in, that's awesome. Yet I can't help but have this feeling that they held Banjo 'ransom' the same way they did Cloud Strife for Wii U (Mewtwo eventually added for free), so Players could pay up. They already know which characters fans want and which ones they don't (Piranha Plant).

I don't hate the concept of DLC either. The ability to add more content to a game months, even years, after it was released is incredible! If you told me that I was going to wake up and see that Nintendo was adding a new dungeon to "Ocarina of Time" in my latest issue of Nintendo Power, I would've flipped out. My problem with DLC is that it's a limited-time digital-only offer...unless the developers themselves choose to be generous to us and give us the full package.

I love the Nintendo Switch. I think it's the best thing to happen to the gaming industry: a portable system that can play console-level games that can also hook up to your TV. It made consoles irrelevant and I feel it's the only true competitor, or maybe I should say companion, to the PC. I don't like the direction Nintendo is headed in. They think they can sell us an unfinished product for $60 and then update it later to make it validate that price. DLC isn't bad, but I do wish video game companies would approach it differently. If video game companies started releasing their games for half the price ($30) digital-only, and then added updates and DLC, and then released a $60 finished version physically and digitally - then I would have no problem.

EDIT: I need a Username badly. Once I do, I should probably make a blog to archive my thoughts. Most of what I've said in my posts are stuff I typed in Word Documents years ago. I try to archive all of my thoughts.

Last edited by TRBB; 15th June 2019 at 05:54 PM.
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  #49  
Old 15th June 2019, 06:33 PM
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I will at least confess that I too have some gripes about the way B and K look in Smash during gameplay. But I didn't want to say anything, so as not to be a party pooper. Kazooie's hair looks weird. Their proportions don't feel right, at all. But that may just be because I'm accustomed to 3D models that were made back in 1998, for God's sake.
They overall seem to have a very Japanese spin to their designs, and that just doesn't work with them. They look odd, somehow, next to all the other characters. Spiral Mountain looks...wrong, but I'm not knocking it.

...However, if 'Kazooie's hair looks weird' is the best grouse I can stir up, then that my friends is what we call NITPICKING and we don't DO that when our beloved avian and ursine buddies have FINALLY made it into Smash Bros. like goddamn, I'm as happy as a clam. My excitement far outweighs anything else. They obviously put a lot of love and care into putting these guys in, which is all I ever asked for, and more.

Besides, in certain lights they actually do look gorgeous. LOOK AT THIS RENDER! LOOK AT IT!!!!!



It's amazing!
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  #50  
Old 15th June 2019, 11:06 PM
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Banjo mf'ing Kazooie is in Smash. I don't think anything else needs to be analyzed or said. $5.99 ain't no thang but a breegull wang.
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  #51  
Old 16th June 2019, 12:10 AM
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Holy heck... TRBB, this is the first Banjo in a video game that we've had in over 10 years, not counting re-releases. I can understand being critical of the style it is done in (such as the NaB style), but everything they did in the trailer was paying homage to how Banjo used to be.

Banjo being in Smash is great news, even if you don't like Smash. It means that Banjo is in something, which is great.
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  #52  
Old 16th June 2019, 04:52 AM
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Unfortunately that render will need typical ugly plastic support on the amiibo.
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  #53  
Old 16th June 2019, 01:11 PM
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im happy
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  #54  
Old 16th June 2019, 06:32 PM
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Everyone else: Man, they referenced the snake from Mayahem Temple with Ivysaur?! That was so cool!!!!
Me, an intellectual:

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  #55  
Old 16th June 2019, 07:08 PM
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It can only mean that Ssslumber is going to be the fourth DLC character.
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  #56  
Old 17th June 2019, 03:08 AM
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Everyone else: Man, they referenced the snake from Mayahem Temple with Ivysaur?! That was so cool!!!!
Me, an intellectual:

Okay... But what about

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  #57  
Old 17th June 2019, 10:41 AM
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Smash Banjo and Kazooie models are a lot better than those...err...figures from shit called Nuts & Bolts.
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  #58  
Old 17th June 2019, 12:09 PM
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The NAB blocky models fit the game because that is the whole game's art style. Granted, I don't like them either, and stand alone the blocky Banjo looks weird, but in the context of NAB it is.... good enough.
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  #59  
Old 17th June 2019, 06:42 PM
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To address exactly one point of your essay: I'm certain that making the Battlefield forms of stages didn't take many resources at all. It's just adding 3 platforms to every stage, in the exact same position every time. They probably got an intern to do it.
Well, maybe you're right. They sure did make a big deal about it though.
I guess by doing so, it made it sound like it was a much bigger task than it actually was?

Quote:
Originally Posted by qwertyo76 View Post
They overall seem to have a very Japanese spin to their designs, and that just doesn't work with them. They look odd, somehow, next to all the other characters. Spiral Mountain looks...wrong, but I'm not knocking it.
Yeah, I've noticed that too. It was a little jarring seeing Banjo doing a victory/peace sign with his hand. Mario did that in "Super Mario 64" and, in an interview, Miyamoto said that he wanted Mario to quit doing that because he didn't want Mario 'to be known for doing the victory/peace sign with his hands' - it does feel like a very Japanese-like thing to do.


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Originally Posted by Alakazam View Post
that's why i don't think it's worth it to get mad at ultimate, a party/tournament game, for having little single player content. there are more singleplayer games out there than you'll ever play, and ultimate was made with the competitive player in mind. (for once!)
I'm less mad and more disappointed we couldn't have a good balance of both like we did in "Brawl." I mean, this game was developed for the Nintendo Switch so I expected more Co-op modes to return (Smash Run, Homerun Contest, Events, etc.) to make use of the two Joycons bundled in - not just have the modes out-right removed.

That's just something that will always bother me: the one thing I hate seeing more than bad games are decent or good games that had much greater potential of being an even better game.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Whyme123 View Post
Holy heck... TRBB, this is the first Banjo in a video game that we've had in over 10 years, not counting re-releases. I can understand being critical of the style it is done in (such as the NaB style), but everything they did in the trailer was paying homage to how Banjo used to be. Banjo being in Smash is great news, even if you don't like Smash. It means that Banjo is in something, which is great.
I agree, I love seeing Banjo & Kazooie back for the first time in 10 years. I'm even happier that Nintendo found a way to properly animate Banjo & Kazooie's character model. I knew they were going to use the classic design from the beginning, but part of me was thinking they'd just use the Nuts & Bolts design because Kazooie's neck is longer and it would've avoided her head clipping into things. Spiral Mountain looks fine, but I wished it looked a little bit better than what they showed. Hopefully they'll improve those ugly textures by the time autumn comes around. Anyways, I hope this is a sign of more Banjo games to come.
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  #60  
Old 18th June 2019, 08:36 AM
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Yeah I can gel with that fo' sho'. Many a fun hour had with that mode with the friends!
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