Phoenix654

I'm rearranging my front room and have moved my old 40" Toshiba LED TV out of there. It's old enough that it maxes out at 1080p, but then I don't currently own anything that could put out higher resolutions anyway so I've missed a few upgrade cycles. I plan on picking up an Xbox Series X and PS5 eventually, so I'm aiming to get something that will be a bit future proofed, probably at least 4K. Are the LG OLEDs the guys used to discuss on the podcast still the high end of gaming TVs, or are they just the affordable ones? Do any of y'all have a good source to go to to get info on TV models and such?

I loved Wii Sports. For as basic and simple as that game was, it sure was an enjoyable time that everyone could pick up and play. Seeing Nintendo Switch Sports pop up in the latest Nintendo Direct really got me hyped for a new one, but damn if the test they've been doing this weekend didn't douse all my interest in it. First off, the test is very Nintendo. The test seems to be three sports, Chambara, Tennis, and Bowling. You cannot choose which sport you want to test, it's just a random hopper to try with other people for the 45 minute windows they have the test available. I get they need to try out how things work online, and you will be able to choose which sport in the final game, but it's still a weird choice.

All that aside, all three sports seem janky to greater and lesser degrees. The Chambara sword fighting game seems to work best, which is a bummer since it's probably the one of those three I want to play the least. Combat sports in video games are rarely fun since pretty much any fighting game offers more depth and challenge than any motion based one. That being said, it mostly works, but it's hard to tell which direction you're getting hit from and, therefore, which direction to block in. it seems real flaily in the end. Bowling seems... fine. The way they have the test running makes it hard to tell, honestly. You're playing in a game with 15 other bowlers and each round of three frames, if you're in the bottom half of the score board, you get eliminated. So, if you're not great at it or are in a lobby with people who can hit three strikes on command, you'll get to play three frames of a bowling game before you're eliminated and have to go back to the random game hopper to try again. The hooks seemed to go in random directions, I couldn't get it to become reliable in the few games I could get into, and I was always out during the first elimination round for missing spares that I'd be able to get easily in past entries of the Wii Sports series.

The truly heartbreaking one is Tennis. It doesn't work for me. At all. I can't serve the ball (there's a countdown if you don't serve that just does it automatically) and I can't return the ball. The best I did was to play against someone who could actually make the racket swing, but they hit it out of bounds twice, so I got two points. Every other tennis match I've been in, I've lost 0-7, because apparently it's first to 7 in tennis. Maybe it's my Joy-Con that doesn't work, I'm not spending 80 bucks to find out. It seems unlikely though because it works for all other parts of the game and Ring Fit, which I use a few times a week still. Just bummed as shit by this, anyone else having similar issues or is it just me?

DG 2 is a game I put a TON of time into on both PS4 and Xbone, love it to death and am still bummed the company went out of business before making a third one. It hit the thing I seem to search for in TD games really well, namely putting up machine gun towers and watching it chew through enemy hordes. Something about it itches a specific part of my brain that I really dig.

Pixel Junk Monsters is one of those games that I play a couple of levels of every time I turn on my old PS3. The art style and enemy types are just perfect and it strikes the right balance between player activity and simply watching the damage rack up. It feels less strategic and more like a puzzle game sometimes, but still a classic.

I have been using iTunes for far too long as a podcatcher and I have at last reached my breaking point with it; I cannot subscribe to the Giant Bombcast. For some reason, clicking subscribe on any place where it says "subscribe" in the iTunes ecosystem does not allow me to subscribe to a podcast I have listened to for literally a decade now. I know it's a flaming trash pile of a piece of software, but it's always been good enough up until this and I'm just done.

So what do you all use to collect 'casts? I use Apple devices to listen to stuff (music, audiobooks, and podcasts podcasts podcasts) while I work. What are your favorites in that regard?

Super Mario RPG has one of my personal faves. The unique sprite work they out into a few minutes of parade at the end really makes me smile.

A buddy of mine had a Dreamcast demo disk with the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 demo on it that we played to death. It had the Skatestreet Ventura level on it, I think we did hundreds of two minute runs each on it. By the time he got the actual game, we blew through the competition on that level easily, and eventually beat the game with every skater. So much fun, and the Dreamcast version was amazingly smooth.

I guess Rorie did a stream including this a while ago, must have missed it, but I just discovered Townscaper recently. I can honestly say it's one of the most joyous, uplifting things I've 'played' in a while. I say 'played' because it isn't exactly a game, it's just a model town builder. There is no gameplay. you have no monetary constraints, no townspeople to appease, no goal to reach. All that said, it's delightful and charming as hell. In my first couple hours with the game, I made myself a couple of backgrounds (Shared below) to use for my desktop and it only spurred more ideas from there.

If you haven't tried it, it's pretty cheap on Steam (six bucks, currently 10% off) and is coming to Switch sometime this summer. If you make something cool, share a pic or two of it here, I'd love to see what people come up with with the toolset.

Feels appropriate to share the following two things.

RIP to a man who brought joy to our lives. May he pop out of pipes saying "WHAT WHAT" in the after world.

Coming from someone who does know about the lore, this also looks like dumb fun. The games have gotten so good at telling their story, I don't really expect a movie to keep up with it, which is a weird, weird thing to say, but it looks like the kind of fun the original movie had. All that's really different is that they have a budget and are going for an R rating. More power to them, I'll watch it.

This video from CGP Grey seems relevant to the discussion. Being locked out of your account for no discernible reason and getting no resolution for three weeks does seem shitty, but I also get the feeling that it's just the straw the broke the camel's back... I wonder what's going on with Stadia developer relations behind the scenes.

When this service was announced, I was optimistic about it. By and large from what I've heard, the tech works, though most people follow that statement up with the word "fine," ie, It's not mind blowing, it works fine. Literally everything else surrounding Stadia has seemed like a poorly planned garbage fire though. The pricing, the way you have to buy games, the lack of unique game experiences, the fact that there are still Chromecasts that DO NOT RUN STADIA... STILL. And yeah, Terraria wasn't going to be the game that brought in users (like me, for instance, who doesn't have Stadia, but can play Terraria on Steam already), but it's still a blow to the mind share of the service in general.