Thigolf

oh no

It really is the fucking Wii U again, good job Microsoft smh

Personally, while yes, I agree with the sentiment that “Microsoft needs games”, I feel like, at least for me, the issue was primarily it’s weak first party lineup. Microsoft just buying exclusives and companies here and there in order to give their platforms value kinda side steps that imo and ultimately isn’t the direction I was hoping they’d go in response to the criticism about their lack of worthwhile franchises 

Microsoft is becoming a developing powerhouse right now, and it's already been one since they bought Rare. It would be even MORE ironic if Microsoft actually had the sheer goal to buy Disney.

What we see today is just the latest step in the terrible practice that is the 3rd party exclusive.

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What we see today is just the latest step in the terrible practice that is the 3rd party exclusive.

Does it still count as a 3rd party exclusive if the company now owns it?

Like, I assume that this purchase would now make Bethesda a first party studio to Microsoft. 

The issue is the means to acquiring said 1st party developers. Simply throwing money at 3rd parties that have established franchises to make your system/services more worthwhile, is a ugly practice. Especially when you do little with them of note (hello Rare) Making accessible and appealing hardware that studios want to develop for to me is the much better approach that drives healthy competition 

I don't know for sure, but I like to think Microsoft is doing this to get people to have more of a reason to get Game Pass and their new console. "Why get another console when you can get all of Bethesda's games and upcoming releases when you can pay a monthly fee and have them all on launch day for no additional cost?" seems to be what they are aiming for. I still think Elder Scrolls/Fallout/DOOM will hit other consoles, much like Minecraft does, because they'll be missing out on such a huge amount of money. Skyrim is one of the best selling video games of all-time, and I know it's been re-released a million times, but the next Elders Scrolls being exclusive to a Microsoft platform automatically dictates it won't see anywhere near the same profit as Skyrim. It'd be a stupid thing to do, especially considering Microsoft doesn't seem to have an issue letting games they've published or previously published head to another platform, regardless of it's them publishing it or the company that develops the game itself. 

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but I like to think Microsoft is doing this to get people to have more of a reason to get Game Pass and their new console

I mean, yeah lol. That much is obvious. I just think it’s a problematic way of contriving a sense of value to just buy it 

Ah, okay. I thought you meant it'd be an Xbox exclusive console game out of a series that's already on multiple consoles. I guess I misread it. 

I dislike studio acquisitions from first parties and this is no exception. I only ever play Bethesda games on PC so it won't affect me too badly (aside from them no longer coming to GOG), but that future games may or may not come to other consoles is some bullshit for non-Xbox/PC owners. That and Arkane is one of the best studios in the industry and fewer people getting to play their stuff sucks.

Having been trapped in the Xbox ecosystem since investing so much in 360, it's been a glacial hell this generation after MS botched the launch of the One so thoroughly that to this day, countless devs don't bother to port to Xbox. There've been so many games this generation that I just do not have access to and it's been miserable. MS just outright buying third party studios doesn't even come as a cold comfort to me. It's the most cynical and passionless solution to their pathetic catalog.

easy mode is the ideal, the flight should be a smidge nerfed from adventure, like in project hero.

"easy mode" is one thing but SA tails basically didn't even need to interact with the level, it was almost always better to land for just a moment and immediately fly again. it's only fun for a couple of minutes before you realize you aren't doing any of the things that actually made the game fun to play.

that doesn't mean he shouldn't ever be playable, but it does mean they need to actually address the problem and find a reasonable balance and not just assume the one attempt from 20 years ago is the only way it can ever be.

You know those complaints people had with 3D fan games like Sonic GT and having so much momentum you soar over the levels in such large chunks that you don't even feel like you're playing them?

Tails in Adventure is like that, but even easier because you only have to press a single button to even do it.

I don't particularly like nor do I agree with this way of looking at the issue. Tails in SA1 is broken. You barely have to play the game. There's a difference between "easy mode" (S3K Tails) and what is basically S2's debug mode (SA1 Tails). 

Arguments about him being overpowered are similarly flawed. If you design the levels to cater to his abilities and likewise design his abilities so that he doesn't have free reign to do basically anything, you'll end up with something worth playing. 1:1 translation of his abilities in S3K to 3D, which is pretty much what SA1 did, isn't particularly conducive to good game design. That lack of foresight is what made Tails feel like such an afterthought in SA1.

When I look at Tails in Sonic 3&K and Mania, especally in Sonic + Tails mode, he's designed as a way so players can try and bypass sections of the level they feel are too difficult or take too long for them by letting him carry Sonic over it. The stages weren't made so that you could just fly over the entire act (paticularlly those taking place in interiors), since flying comes with it's own risks where you could bump into a different obstacle in trying to skip another. But the levels do occasionally reward Tails players with new different routes for exploring beyond what Sonic could possibly explore himself, even if it would take more time from the developers to make them. The more wide-open 3D space offers much less potential punishment for abusing the flight, so flying over the entire stage becomes much more plausible. Tails exclusive routes become a much greater necessity to cut down on completly breaking a stages, which almost doubles the amount of time it would take to make each stage.

Besides, what difference would it make when Sonic games have been getting piss easy as is

Honestly find the brokeness to be fun. Like how in Generations mods the boost meter can be used for flight on top of boosting. Had a lot of fun making my own paths with it. Just don't make him something you have to play as and I see no issue.

Give him a speed cap in the air. Done.

The big issue with making him broke is that in Sonic Adventure, all his stages were either floating tracks in an infinite sky box or fully enclosed.

Unless it's a game like Lost World where everything is floating in the sky again, a "just let him be broken" Tails is going to just be annoying for how he does (or doesn't) interact with the scenery.

Imagine him in Rooftop Run - you either confine him with the same invisible walls/ceilings that Sonic has to keep him in-bounds, pretty much making him just a mode where you float over all the obstacles and don't play anything... or you let the player go wherever they like and enjoy how every single building that Sonic usually only sees one side of doesn't have a roof or walls on the other side (after Tails has just flown straight through it because it doesn't have clipping this far up either), revealing how the stage is put together as much as the sequence-breaks in your average Unleashed speedrun does.  Etc etc.

As someone who did get lucky enough to get one of the initial PS5 pre-orders, good on Sony for apologising. I got lucky that pre-orders opened here late at night where we had a few hours to get pre-orders in. Everywhere else, and here in the morning was a total shitshow.

Years of corporate apology really has made me feel disenfranchised to this. Like cool they acknowledged the mess, but meh...I don’t really feel any different 

He should should put Rayman in Smash and then take all the franchise rights away from Ubisoft for his final act so it can die in peace

Rayman made a deal with Mega Man that he'll take his spot in the hole of the damned "___ Man" videogame franchises should Capcom ever make a new Mega Man game

Before the image had loaded, I expected this to be a shitpost with the S3D beta render or the S3D. European boxart. I wasn't too far off the mark.

I don't particularly love the model that this person has created and it's not entirely accurate to the design of the old 90s renders, but credit where it's due they've done a very good job at recreating it from scratch. And they're new to using Blender too. It's very good work.

The US Prices are bad enough, but jesus fucking christ

>"Did you like this?"

So they have the guts to let people know CL still exists to them.

Modern Disney summed up in one tweet

Zelda. Anime.

Smash bros cinematic universe let's go!

Fire Emblem anime pls

Sky sanctuary is looking more like gray hill zone now.

I imagine it’s just the lighting hasn’t been properly applied. Forces doesn’t tend have issues where the lighting looks too or less bright, so it’s probably just Hedgehog Engine 1 had a different lighting engine, and whatever changes HE2 has aren’t being applied properly.

Do we know that Forces is that compatible with stuff from Generations? They are on different engines, and Forces isn't a bad looking game regardless of all of its other failings.

Forces doesn't look bad, but the lighting always bothered me in quite a few levels. Green Hill or Metropolitan Highway are SUPER bright, for example, though those two might be on purpose unpleasantly bright.

But then there's stuff like Egg Gate or Mortar Canyon

Mortar Canyon in particular is a stage under a sky filled with dark clouds, some lights beaming upwards... and yet Sonic and the rest of the stage just glow like it's a bright blue sky in the middle of summer.  Those are the parts I'm referring to.

Other stages look fantastic, I'm not objecting to that, but there's a few locations, particular in scenes that should be darker, that just...shine to an absurd degree. Nighttime stages, like the forest ones, don't seem to be affected, though.

This is why I asked if this is a problem of the Forces lighting engine, because even in that game, some levels (again, not all of them) seem to have a problem with overcasting.

I'm not sure if fans importing levels from other games without developer tools is fully indicative of what HE2 is capable.

The reason why running inside looks bad is because Forces' lighting engine is only a basic form of global illumination, one that doesn't make shadows deeper depending on how much lighting it's exposed to or how enclosed it is. That's not to say Forces lacks that completely, since they did bake some lighting effects into, say, GHZ's checkerboard walls, or switched lighting values for indoor/outdoor with the Death Egg, but for the most part you can't just drag and drop geometry in like this and expect the lighting to be perfect with this engine. It's also why Forces' bright stages mostly tended to be outside, while the indoor stages tended to be during dimmer weather. 

The other reason why it looks grey is because the yellow effects weren't a part of the textures, either; they were baked into the lighting maps to effect whichever part of the level was exposed to the sun. Another reason why you'd need either better lighting tools or artistic intention to make the stage look good one way or the other.

Behold, the inverse

(Okay, this doesn't really count since this I think they recreate most of it from from scratch using the Generations GH assets)

Can't recognize the animal between Phoenix and Leon.

Man…I just wish this was a real game. I could use any good Vs. Capcom game after the dumpster fire known as MvC:I.

ikr? The 20th Anniversary one was functional but bland, and the 25th one wasn't impressive either. But this one is clever and very aesthetically pleasing. 

The last time that happened we got PS3'd

Pretty much anything this account says pisses people off for whatever reason. Anxiety is one hell of a drug. 

So that explains why Knux keeps letting the M.E. get captured

how do you think I feel

Tails hasn't been treated like number 2 in a long ass time.

He had that thunder stolen 

Sure, but now, the Babylon Rogues have gotten costumes before him!

BABYLON ROGUES

whu happun

Chaotix have at least two that were scrapped, so Tails might too - timing's a bitch sometimes. In fact, there hasn't been a costume Special since the Reaper Metal last Halloween if you don't count Excalibur, and I'm still eagerly waiting for Agent Rouge.

@LukA8 I know one of the scrapped costumes was Charmy but was there another one?

Allegedly a Chinese Dragon-inspired costume! Vector's icon is even on one of the Lunar New Year banners but never showed up.

...is there an image for that cause I can't find any 😶

Sadly not, the model didn't leak (but a former Community Manager teased it assuming it would launch with Lunar Blaze and Lantern Silver). Hopefully we'll get the concept art some day.

Another on my checklist of being pretty sure someone on creative doesn't like him