Granny's Weekly Video Game Blog

So the world is ending, and both to give myself some more structure while I do nothing at home, and to practice my writing and thought structure (since my guilty pleasure/goal in the future is to make a Youtube Channel/website that no one will care about where I just make thoughts/discussions/reviews/analyses/etc.) I'm gonna make a weekly post (hopefully regularly) of varying length and quality where I post about my journey of the week regarding mostly video games, but anything entertainment-related in what I did. It'll inevitably contain mentions of my wife and kid, especially since they're both getting more into video games and as newcomers will be interesting. And whatever old man rants I want to rant about like an old man ranting.

Wish me luck people who won't see this and probably wouldn't care anyway.

This sounds sickass

As my wife and kid are pretty new to video games, I think it's pretty interesting the skill/ability to be able to imagine more detail from lack of resolution. My wife watched me play Majora's Mask on the N64 for a few hours a while back, and could barely recognize anything; she mainly saw blotches of colors and triangles that tried to resemble objects and people. The only games she really played that were lower resolution was Super Mario 64 DS as a kid. As an adult with me she's only played HD games where there's not as much filling in the blanks. I recently tried Majora's Mask HD, a fan HD re-texturing project, and she literally told me she can see the game now. It was akin to wearing glasses for the first time (coincidentally she wears glasses lol). I didn't realize this was really a skill that most of us probably developed as kids and didn't realize was a thing.

My kid seems to have picked up on that skill very quickly, obviously from being a kid and all. He's quickly learning the entire cast of SSBU, which is impressive since there's like 70+ characters. Since then he's randomly seen the 8-bit and 16-bit character art for various characters and still recognizes, which shows off both how well kids learn and recognize patterns from learning to not die at every moment, and how powerful and purposeful character designs are, especially from that era when you had like 30 pixels to work with.

On my own note, finally, I can rant about gyroscope and Splatoon. Why the shit has gyroscope not been accepted more outside of Nintendo (and some PC) is beyond me. Sony's had gyroscope since the PS3 and they haven't done anything useful with it, same with the damned touchpad. As much as Sony and MS (and their fans) like to brag about how more powerful consoles can bring new possibilities for gameplay, they haven't done shit for control schemes since the PS1, which was just a souped up SNES controller. Gyroscope, and Splatoon, have brought so much innovation ro aiming and shooters that it's a huge shame it's not taken more seriously. I could honestly make a several page long rant on this alone, but the fact that Splatoon has no aim assist at all, necessitating gyroscope or you get completely shit on by anyone halfway competent, demonstrates that. Finally getting to play Splatoon 2 again with the demo, I remember just how intuitive the aiming is, and after a couple hours with it, my muscle memory does too. It feels like driving, where I couldn't consciously tell you how I have to move the steering wheel half a degree as I drive to stay in a straight line, or how when driving down a circular path out of a parking structure (think the Tokyo Drift scene, which is actually filmed down the street from me so I've driving down the exact part lol) I know exactly how to speed up and slow down and ease up and turn sharper without any conscious thought. After several hours with Splatoon I don't even feel myself moving my wrist to aim anymore, it just became an extension of my brain trying to aim. There's been a few times where I've given up on certain aspects in games that I think are important, the last one was when Naughty Dog bragged about how important 60 fps was in TLOU:R and how they couldn't go back to 30 fps...until they did in Uncharted 4, so I lost hope that the industry would return to 60 fps standard. Now with the Xbox Series S/X not having a gyroscope in their controller still, and Switch ports including gyroscope and not PS ports, I've given up that the gaming industry wants to actually improve on how we play games, and only care about how well the game plays for us with better technology.

Struggled to find somethin to rant about this week just because I didn't play much video games this week I guess. But I'm currently in a bidding war to try to get a Steam code for Wondreful 101, aka one of my top games of last gen and possibly the decade.

Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2 came out back to back years on the Wii U, and only one was really cared about (though both sold like shite). Bayonetta 2 was acclaimed, got tons of 10s and 9s, and caused much vitriol that it was an exclusive that no one else wanted. Yet, I would rather go back and play Wonderful 101 if I had to choose. Bayonetta 2 is probably the "better" game, in that it's cleaner, more consistently good, has a higher budget, and is just more straightforward and easy to get into in general. Part of that is because it's a sequel, so it had an established track to follow, and some of that is just by design. If I had to give a recommendation between the two, it'd definitely be Bayonetta 2.

So why do I prefer Wonderful 101? It's an age old preference between originality and quality. Super Mario Galaxy 1/2 gets this argument a lot, but I think this is a better representation of this argument. Wonderful 101 is a much wackier premise, Super Sentai/Power Rangers fighting aliens destroying the Earth while being very self aware and reveling in its ridiculous. That's before you even get into the weird, divisive controls. But this is the game that made me fall in love with the over the top action genre (and basically Platinum games in general), and I remember the exact moment during the first boss fight when Tables Turned started. The game is pretty wonky, goes in directions I wouldn't expect, has a surprisingly cool story, doesn't run that great (which the remaster should fix), and will most definitely never get a sequel or a game like it. I'm not even consistent with my originality vs quality argument, I usually like sequels more than the original, but damn is this a game I won't ever forget. A lot of bayonetta 1/2 blur together for me, and while I remember a lot of it obviously, there's so many moments from W101 that I was awestruck by, and its soundtrack is to die for, along with one of the best video game tracks with vocals around.

I've sung this game to the heavens for years, and got mocked a lot for saying it was my GOTY 2013 while The Last of Us was getting blown by everyone (which I admittedly haven't played and only want to out of curiosity), and I hope more people can play and enjoy it as much as I have with this remaster.

Do one on Rockband for the good old days.

Lel I dont see you post for ages and this is what you respond to. My failed weekly topic because I got busy/depressed.

lmao yeah patt been gone for ages then shows up like nothing lmao tf