We live in the open world fad era where apparently every franchise is going to ask the question "can we make this open world?" The answer is almost always no, and this looks no different. Hey guys let's take a game about speed, tight platforming, and timed challenges.. but OPEN WORLD! Typically that's just going to mean more time wasted exploring empty areas which makes everything feel less slick. And then they feel compelled to actually put stuff to find in some of that open space, which results in bloat (useless upgrades, collectibles, minigames, whatever).

I'm just now wrapping up Bayonetta 3 and it suffers from the exact same problem. It's not even really open-world but sure seems like it wanted to be. The levels are unnecessarily sprawling and a mess in terms of collectibles. There is some good platforming, but it's so bogged down by slowly exploring bland maps and not even being able to tell whether a certain object (building, ridge, cliff) is actually explorable or if it's blocked by invisible barriers or death.

Anyway if this game will help them figure out what actually makes a modern Sonic game fun, then awesome. I'll put my money down when they get it right, if ever lol.

@Shiebs said in The New Nintendo Thread:

Is the new Bayonetta game any good?

I’m only a couple chapters in but it’s super fun so far. And has pretty much universal extremely positive reviews.

@Mr-Zoro said in General Video Game Discussion:

Yeah claiming she's the one true Bayonetta was a bit odd (but I can see it), but I still don't see how that suddenly discredits her from any sympathy in this situation.
Especially when it's one person vs. a giant company, saying "let's wait until we hear from the giant on the matter" is harsh if that's a prerequisite for you to believe them.

Nintendo/Platinum are unlikely to say anything about this, anyway. Whatever the case, I won't be buying the game in an official capacity, probably just buy it used somewhere off a local market (not Gamestop. Never Gamestop).

It's hard to feel sympathetic toward someone who is making selfish/arrogant claims, demanding boycotts at the last minute, and who doesn't necessarily sound genuine.

There's this article that came out recently which paints a very different picture:

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/a-tense-pay-dispute-overshadows-nintendo-s-upcoming-bayonetta-3-1.1834329

It's by Jason Schreier, whom I consider to be a general asshole and absolutely not the "true journalist" his inflated ego believes he is, but oh well.

Regardless of the claims' validity, games are about way more than the VAs, and there's no way I'm going to withhold my support for a unique product from an overall great company with lots of hard-working employees that I would like to encourage. There definitely IS a conversation to be had about voice work (and localization in general) being an underappreciated and underpaid industry, especially in the U.S., but I don't think this here is the right battle. Ironically the one place I don't think VA work is lacking in respect or pay is Japan, and this is a Japanese dev with a Japanese publisher lol.

All I’m saying is we’ve only heard one side and it doesn’t exactly add up. Even if she’s telling the truth, she lost all my sympathy when she started going on about how she is the only true Bayonetta and nobody can replace her.

I have a really hard time believing big-time voice actor Jennifer Hale would replace her for an “insulting” amount of money. Most likely we don’t know the whole story, and that callout tweet is super rude and unprofessional on multiple levels.

Finally got around to playing It Takes Two, and while I had already seen various bits of gameplay and was confident it'd be fun, I was pretty surprised by just how much content there actually was. Fairly long game, tons of set pieces and creativity, and some actual challenge too.

One thing I noticed as a huge nerd though: the chess minigame you can play is programmed wrong and allows you to castle out of check.

@Ivotas said in Welcome Back! (2022 Edition):

Question about this new forum. How would we actually bring thread title requests/suggestions before the mods? Before we could use the report button but that one seems to be gone. And I don't want to press a "flag" button without really knowing what it does.

Even on the old forum, flagging or reporting a post was reserved for actual problems requiring moderator attention. That is of course still true. Definitely flag it if the title is offensive or something like that, but otherwise it's not an appropriate use of that feature.

Generally speaking, thread titles should not be changing, unless there was a mistake when the thread was originally created or some other compelling reason to update it for clarity etc. In such a case the mods can be contacted directly if needed, and it can also be discussed within the thread if appropriate. I know that long ago it was relatively common to constantly update titles with jokes or whatnot but that practice is mostly gone for a few different reasons so please don't contact the staff for suggestions of that sort.

I’m mostly curious how the puzzles will be designed. Tales struck an overall good balance for modern times, but felt rather linear and relied too much on mazes at times. Meanwhile MI2 was an obtuse mess that honestly was not enjoyable much of the time, but it has some of the best gags and dialogue in the entire series.

@Nekketsu:

I plan to do my next PLA playthrough with certain rules: no purchasing any items that are craftable, no level grinding (natural progression), no alpha or legendary in my team, there can't be more than one of the same type or types, no using revives during battle…

I suppose Gen 9 will also have item crafting since it will be full open world, so I'll also start with that same setting.

Heh that’s almost exactly how I played the first time. I mean, I had one Alpha on my team for a while but it wasn’t even overleveled compared to my main team by that point. Hard to define grinding though. Just completing the dex will naturally make you pretty strong. I guess I did eventually have one overlapping type when I replaced Glaceon with a shiny Mamoswine (Ground overlap with Gliscor) but that was in post-game.

Yeah, almost all of our banned IPs are either known malicious ranges or were necessary to counteract massive bot onslaughts. I don’t know why you’re using a VPN to connect to AP but clearly the particular service you picked is using IPs that were abused at some point. We’d be able to at least look into the specifics if you could provide some of the IPs in question.