The Lazyest of Banes

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Oni is a game that often ends up as a small cliff note in the greater narrative of Bungie’s history, which is a shame since it’s actually a really good 3D action game that predates the standardisation that Devil May Cry established.

    It’s pretty rough around the edges, and hearing about the development hell for this game I can understand why, but if you do end up playing the game you’ll find an incredibly engaging combat system that will keep you locked in well after the game ends.

    Better yet, you can use cheats to play as any npc and some of them have fully functioning movesets.

    The greatest tragedy is the lack of a multiplayer component. It was planned, and advertised, but Bungie West couldn’t get the networking down before Take Two’s deadline. If there was multiplayer you could be there would be people still playing it today.

    However, there is a active modding scene for the game, and with the Anaversery Edition you can easily play Oni on any PC or Linux machine (use wine 2.0, later versions have compatability issues).

    It might permanently be over shadowed by Halo CE, but if you like 3D action frames or are a fan if Bungie you owe it a playthough.



  • Wikia/fandom swallowed up the market but are also just bad at running a wiki network.

    Along with all the problems that come with fan wikis. There’s like two F-Zero wikia right now because the first one was just overrun by fannon and at one point some random person’s OCs and fan theory. And then there’s the Xenoblade wikia repeatedly making edits and then locking pages because the owners have something against the newer games being connected to the older ones, even denying thing’s like weapons that are called Monados, work like Monados and even use the same arts as Shulk’s Monado being “real” monados.


  • F-Zero 99.

    I know a lot of people are writing it off because it’s not a GX remaster, a full new game, or they’ve just lost interest in 99 games and think they’re all generic, but Nintendo’s been clear that they aren’t interested in giving the franchise another shot after GP Legend, the anime and Climax tanked. I’ll gladly take a small budget F-Zero, and F-Zero 99 is just great.

    F-Zero 99 takes every question you’d have about translating F-Zero to multiplayer and just makes it work, with 99 players as well. Rivals and other stat tracking like rank in your machine all gives newer players more achievable goals to work towards instead of just having to flat out lose every round until they “git gud”.

    Switching to the boost = health mechanic of the later games was also a great choose, since it’s a more forgiving version of boost, while also adding some risk-reward. You could burn though all your boost and refill when you get the chance, but that puts you at risk of dying. Expanding the boost meter with KO’s is also great, since it encourages the player to actually partake in a death race for the most optimal performance, especially in Grand Prix where the meter gain persists over tracks.

    The Sky Rail, while an obvious concession for 99 players, still works great as a rubber banding mechanic since it gives players who are behind the chance to jump the pack and have another shot at climbing the ranks. Meanwhile the bumpers/turbo snails that only spawn towards the from of the rankings ensure that if you do jump you actually have to demonstrate skill to keep that lead and that truly better players aren’t just robbed. Not being able to use your regular boost and keep the sky rail meter is great as well, since it just adds more of the risk-reward in deciding to use it now to get access to your boost again, vs saving it for it’s most optimal spot.

    It’s just a fantastically designed game. It really captures everything great about F-Zero, and as a big fan I’m thrilled to have it. I just hope it doesn’t get Mario 35’d, and that Nintendo pays attention to it’s reception and rethinks their stance on F-Zero.



  • TF2 has recently released an update that allows server owners to have up to 100 players connected at once. Not officially supported, but up to 64 players seems to be stable enough (even more so if you run a server plugin to remove player cosmetics). So that’s been taking my attention recently. 64 player SZF was gloriously chaotic.

    I’ve been getting into the Green Lantern superhero, so I bought the 3DS and X360 games. 360 game is still on it’s way, but personally I can confirm that the 3DS game is typical of what you’d expect from a licensed game. Really low frame rate (10s to 20s) the second anything is on screen alongside Green Lantern, which makes me wonder how the DS version of the game ran if at all. It does have some neat things going for it, the combat it is alright despite the low fps, but really It’s just a time waster for by breaks at work. I also impulse bought the Heroclix Sinestro Corps War Sinario Pack, and maybe I’ll get a friend to indulge me with a game or two.


  • When I was young my brother wanted to trade in our crystal xbox for money towards an Elite 360.

    I made a stink about it because I didn’t want to upgrade at the time, and I even ended up setting it up in the attic to try and avoid having it sold.

    In the end Dad did end up trading it in… for 20p (good riddance to physical game shops).

    Ended up getting my own crystal xbox as an adult, and I did end up playing Halo 3 ODST’s multilayer disc religiously. Still, for 20p Dad?!