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JB0

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Everything posted by JB0

  1. JB0
    You mean you had the option to upgrade it into STEALTH AIRWOLF? Honestly, I assume they just added Airwolf parts to a pre-existing regular helicopter model to get the licensed product money easily.
  2. JB0
    That's the regular progress-gating thing. There's also the "too hot without Varia" rooms, which are full of red stuff. And the ones I saw before I quit were just placed randomly.
  3. JB0
    I had heard it didn't actually do very well. But I must've been wrong, since Nintendo let Mercury Steam do another one. Taking it as a standalone game, I think the map design is absolutely terrible, with each area being a sprawling mess with no rhyme or reason to why things are where they are, aside from things that are clearly there to ensure you have to come back later when you collect a new powerup on the other side of the planet. There shouldn't be two rooms of lava in the middle of a sandstone temple, it makes no friggin' SENSE. The melee counter mechanic wound up making getting around a chore since they made everything hyper-aggressive to create chances to counterattack, so you just wind up waiting for the inevitable attack so you can counter, since just running past isn't an option. I'm also still mad about the random firebug trap costing me a half-hour of gameplay to a unique mechanic that is absolutely not obvious. I have heard that Mercury Steam toned down the melee counter stuff significantly. I hope they have more thoughtful map design now, too. I've seen things I genuinely like about Dread. And as it isn't a remake of a game I hold dear, I'm less likely to get mad over story and presentation decisions. Not really a problem with the game as a game, but It was EXTREMELY obvious that they didn't want to include the spider ball by the way they immediately started slathering slime all over the walls to make sure you stayed on the right path. I wasn't actually SURPRISED by that, but I WAS disappointed that they kept it in while removing the singular thing that made it fun. As a Metroid II remake, well... Wall of text as I nerd out here. Top-level summary, it is less a remake of Metroid II and more a caricature of Metroid II. As I see it, there's three main story arcs going through the game, and Samus Returns misses all three of them. (In fairness, AM2R fumbled some as well. It was not the Metroid 2 Remake I wanted to see completed, though I respect DoctorM64 for seeing it through when everyone else gave up or just moved on, particularly as he actually had to learn how to program to make his game.) 1: There's a repeated theme in the text associated with all the games in the series that just a few metroids could wipe out all life on a planet. Metroid II is the only game to SHOW this, with non-metroid life becoming rarer and more durable the deeper into the game you get, and the final two areas featuring ONLY metroid life. Samus Returns drops all the enemies all over everything. Every non-metroid enemy in the game is scattered over every area OF the game. Thanks you YouTube, I know that even the hatching grounds around the queen's lair are teeming with life. (Incidentally, AM2R fumbles this subplot in a different and more subtle way, by including numerous non-metroid bosses that are actually far deadlier than the metroids themselves.) 2: The first metroid you encounter is just lounging around wherever. I mean, why wouldn't it? The 1200-pound grizzly bear sleeps wherever it wants, because nothing will mess with it. Through the course of the game, the metroids start nesting in more secluded and harder to access places. Little twisty tunnels in far corners, off behind hazardous terrain, and late-game in caves hundreds of feet up sheer cliff faces. To be blunt, they start nesting like prey. One of the two omegas is unique in that he spawns pressed against the far wall of his room and facing away from Samus, implying he was running away and fights because he was cornered. Samus' genocidal rampage has taught the metroids fear. It is a Terminator game where you play the killer robot. There's none of that in Samus Returns, just mazey pipes everywhere because Metroid is a game of mazey pipes. 3. SPEAKING ABOUT GENOCIDE... the manual makes no bones about the fact that Samus has taken on the task of rendering extinct a species that ain't doin' nothin' to no one, and couldn't leave the planet even if they wanted, to because someone else might decide to try and use them as weapons. The game is, to my eye, structured to make you uncomfortable with this. "Pipe enemies" don't spawn infinitely, as Samus burns out their nests(except for the one nest that the Gamma burns out before you get to it). Metroids hide from Samus, one even fleeing in terror. The keening wail of the queen metroid after you kill the last of the larvae. Hell, even the title screen soundtrack is destroyed by missile explosions and low health buzzers. Maybe the metroids DO need to die, but it is a somber undertaking, not a task one should find joy in. And in the end, Samus refuses to finish the job. She shows mercy on the last metroid. There's a redemption arc for our killer-for-hire. While Samus Returns attempts to sell that show of mercy, it is not thematically appropriate for the game Mercury Steam created. Their game is, in its entirety, a celebration of violence rather than a condemnation thereof. The little mini-cutscenes when you melee a metroid make me uncomfortable, but it is with the thought that someone could start off with Return of Samus and end up with "cutscenes of Samus pinning a metroid to the ground and cramming her gun into its mouth would be cool, and by cool I mean totally sweet".
  4. JB0
    Don't need a 3DS emulator to play Return of Samus, just Samus Returns. And Return of Samus is better anyways. AM2R is also better than Samus Returns. (I actually think Samus Returns is bad on its own merits, ignoring pedigree. That it is a terrible Metroid II remake that misses every possible point hurts more, though.) I've actually been messing with Metroid, FDS version lately(partially just out of curiosity). There's a neat touch I like. The save screen has a coarse game timer on it that displays hours of play, but the column is actually labelled "DAYS". Apparently even Samus Aran can't drop into an enemy fortress with no intel or reinforcements and wreck everything in sight in ninety minutes. Meanwhile, other historical excavation reveals there's a translation of the "choose your own adventure book" version of the original Metroid. Twinetroid (metroid-database.com) Aside from having familiar plot points from games that didn't yet exist, a remake of the escape pod scene in Alien, and Samus dueling a (human) pirate captain to the death in a swordfight... this entry of the franchise also answers the longest-standing question in franchise history: How in the HELL did that archeology team on SR-388 live long enough to get back to their ship, much less study the ruins, draw preliminary conclusions, and return with a sample metroid? Answer: The metroids were found in stasis. It was a very unpleasant, albeit brief, surprise when beta radiation resuscitated one in the lab. And it took an entire division of the Federation Army to deal with one metroid.
  5. JB0
    The Predator would probably leave the planet in search of worthy prey.
  6. JB0
    A Microbus Transformer. Just what we always needed.
  7. JB0
    Nah, she's the kind of character that trips and falls in the mud right as the hunter pulls the trigger, then turns the tables while he's figuring out where she went.
  8. JB0
    Heck yeah! A little disappointed the humanoid form isn't as cute as the tank, but... still fantastic.
  9. JB0
    I mean, it is no sillier than punching someone with an aircraft carrier on a jury-rigged mount.
  10. JB0
    I get the impression they were fairly well-routed by the time of the original series. Throwing away functional ships after rigging them up as mines smacks of desperation. I could be wrong, of course. The other obvious interpretation is that the meltrandi fleet in DYRL was a "reskinned" Supervision Army fleet, and the narrative conceit that the movie is a fiction that exists within the setting provides a good excuse for that reskinning to happen.
  11. JB0
    I'm very much in the same boat. On the one hand, it does save me a lot of money. But on the other... I want more cool robot toys!
  12. JB0
    That's sexy as hell... and would've beel drawn on-model even less frequently.
  13. JB0
    We can blame slavish cartoon accuracy for that one. It is the way Sunbow drew the toy(I hesitate to say "consistently" given the show in question). With the market trending towards "exactly like the cartoon or no sale", spending more to do him right will likely only be punished with reduced sales, as disappointing as it is.
  14. JB0
    That's it, we've hit the peak. No Macross story can ever top this one.
  15. JB0
    AND it involves saving a dog! Automatic +50!
  16. JB0
    I do love how it makes it look kinda like he's driving himself around. Even makes a good case for why all the windows are transparent, which is usually a bad idea when there's robot crammed into the car cabin. I'd be lying if I said there was much more to love about this, but let's see if we can't find something! The translucent panels on the legs are always a plus for me... I kinda like how the chainspears look attached to the car... ummm... yeah, I'm out. It's a pretty rough toy of a Bayformer design, and I never liked the aesthetic to start with.
  17. JB0
    I hope it gets delayed a year, so it comes out on the thirtieth anniversary of the original movied
  18. JB0
    Hey, the REAL problem is the shot is sideways! We can only see one dude's face! These are important dudes! Seriously, though, it baffles me that they'd go to so much effort to set a 1:1 remake shot up, and then completely flub camera placement. Not angry about this, just confused.
  19. JB0
    So you're saying The Matrix is actually just a Megazone prequel? I'm fine with that.
  20. JB0
    For what it is worth, my Fangry wasn't loose. Bad sign that your's was, though. And he shoulda come with a dang gun. I can't complain about the transformation being lazy, really. The original was every bit as lazy. I really did pay eighty bucks just for a Fangry toy, though. And not even a great Fangry. *sigh* Having already picked up this mold as Cliffhjumper, I didn't really care about Bumblejumper or Hubcap or whatever name this particular variant carries these days. I didn't want Blackarachnia at all, and still don't care about this mold. (Odd, really. I usually like "sexy ladybot" designs.) And... I passed on Monkey Prime when it was the cartoon design and this package actually makes me think that was a mistake. Nemesis Monkey is a pretty cool mold, though the chest plate is kinda slapdash and looks incomplete no matter what you do. I actually spent a while trying to find the step I missed there, but there was no step. ... So in the end I paid eighty bucks for Fangry... and Optimus Primal after a bad day on the paintball range. I GUESS that's better?
  21. JB0
    Meanwhile, the TF:Animated fans are still wondering when they get THEIR ship that DOES transform. ... It actually wouldn't surprise me if this toy was proposed as Animated Omega Supreme, and then reworked into the Ark.
  22. JB0
    It was 80 when I looked earlier. Guess The Algorithm™ decided it was too popular.
  23. JB0
    Seems to be authored by James Kirk himself. I trust our favorite captain to dramatize things suitably for maximum impressiveness.
  24. JB0
    While it is not my one true film, Super Mario Brothers is probably in my top five if I had a small stack to watch for life...
  25. JB0
    Oh dear. Good luck.
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