Just saw over at IGN that there will be a downloadable Planet Puzzle League for the DSi, only there’s no online or local wireless play. Only Nintendo would take one of the greatest multiplayer games of all time and remove the multiplayer.
Hey Nintendo: fuck you!
So the DSi is officially out today, and I’ve been playing around with one for a few days now. It’s surprisingly awesome. I say “surprisingly” because I wasn’t the last bit interested in it until the other day when I saw it. Some thoughts:
1. It looks sharp.
2. The matte finish is awesome but scuffs a lot. You can rub your finger on the scuffs to get rid of them, though.
3. The cameras are shitty, but the pictures look decent on the DSi’s low-res screens.
4. The screens are noticeably brighter and bigger.
5. The firmware is pretty nice (and upgradeable!). You can quit out to the main menu from games and hot swap carts without having to turn off the system.
6. The web browser is decent, though it lacks Flash support (which isn’t surprising). So far it hasn’t had any problems rendering any pages I’ve thrown at it.
7. It’s noticeably longer and thinner than the DS Lite.
8. The camera app is surprisingly fun to play with. My son loves it.
9. It’s comfortable to hold, and the buttons are nice.
Also, Warioware fucking sucks. I can’t even get it to work properly. It might be that I’m not in a well-lit room (even though the lighting at work is both bright and even) or something, but if that’s the case then it’s still bullshit. Having to have the exact right lighting to play a camera-based game is horrible and cripples the usefulness of the cameras in a game context. Besides, having to be mindful of the fucking lighting in order to play a handheld game is some shit that I had to do with the GBA, and that’s going on eight years ago. This is progress?
Aquia, however, is pretty fun. I like that game a lot, but I’m also a sucker for block-based puzzle games. I think the DSi Shop has a lot of potential, providing people can release good games for it (not like WiiWare, which has by and large been turned into the same dumping ground for shovelware that the Wii’s retail lineup has). I’d like to see Nintendo release some out-of-print DS games (Planet Puzzle League, I’m looking at you) on the system to give them a second shot at life, though that seems unlikely because Nintendo are idiots.
While I’m thinking about it, I was unable to get Metroid Prime Hunters to work on the DSi yesterday. I don’t know if Nintendo just shut off the matchmaking servers or if the game’s use of wifi doesn’t jive with the system’s use of wifi, but it’s a bummer either way.
I think that’s it for now; more impressions as I spend a bit more time with it. For those on the fence who use their DS a lot (and aren’t thieves who are concerned about the system breaking R4 compatibility), I can say that it’s sort of the way the DS should have always been.
So I’m on Gootecks’ mailing list, and this morning he sent out a blast with a link to the trailer of a documentary called I Got Next that a guy named Ian Cofino is doing about the Street Fighter IV tournament scene. I’m obviously interested in it (doubly so since Bang the Machine completely dropped off the face of the earth before I ever got to see it), and the trailer doesn’t disappoint. On a related note, it’s funny to see what amounts to a bunch of nerds turned bros (which is a completely unfair generalization on my part) get so fucking amped about a video game. Getting up and yelling at your opponent is so far outside my realm of experience that I can’t even fathom doing it. Anyways, check it out:
Please, please, please port Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King to the DS. You can even sell it as a DSiWare game. It’s the perfect platform for the game, and I really want to play it again without repurchasing a Wii (for which it is hands down the best game on the platform). If you were to port it to the DS, I would be happy to pay $50 for it.
Sincerely,
Ryan
I tried to play multiplayer tonight and couldn’t connect to anyone. My wife is doing stuff online, so I felt uncomfortable hosting.
Anyways, this fucking game just came out last week. What the fuck?
After hitting 2k BP a couple of days ago, I hit a major fucking rut. Last night I played like complete shit and lost a bunch of matches. I started getting frustrated because I was whiffing all of my charge and EX moves, and that made me play worse which made me lose, which made me get more frustrated which made me start doing stupid shit. It was a terrible feedback loop, and for some reason I couldn’t just walk away. So I dropped about 600 BP and then made 300 of it back, which is awful. Tonight continued the trend, where I dropped another 400 BP before finishing slightly up from where I started. I lost four in a row to people I knew I was better than, but I just kept fucking up and let myself get taken out of the game. Not fun.
So yeah, I’ve hit a wall. It’s a terrible feeling and I know I should walk away from the game for a few days (I intended to tonight, but I ended up playing for a couple of hours) to clear my head. At least I finished up tonight, even if it was only by 30 points or so; that means I ultimately won more than I lost.
Along the way I played a guy who had a fierce Abel. I had to fucking bust my ass, but I ended up (barely) prevailing. I sent him a message complimenting him, and he sent me a game invite. Only I was already in a game, so I missed it. I replied and apologized, but he was in a game so when I sent me another invite, I missed it again because I was in another game. Then I started a server and invited him, and we played eight really fucking intense matches before my wife started uploading her podcast to libsyn, hosing our connection in the process.
But yeah, he was fucking relentless. Easily the most aggressive player I’ve ever faced, and doubly scary for me because my normal shenanigans would get me killed since getting in and staying too close to Abel is a bad idea. I ended up playing a really aggressive defense and we each drew four matches out of the eight we got in; each of them ending pretty fucking close. I hope he feels the same, but I had a blast. Easily some of the most fun matches I’ve had since the game came out.
I actually learned a lot about applying and dealing with pressure, so hopefully I’ll be able to use that elsewhere in my game. All I know is that something has got to give, and I really need to start leveling up if I want to continue to progress. I spent some time in training mode last night working on some basic combos, and I was going to tonight as well until I got sucked in to Ranked. I managed to land a few of the things I was working on last night, but the c.lp xx c.lp ~ c.lk xx hp.headbutt only came out a couple of times as an actual combo. The timing on the link is still giving me trouble. I also hit j.hp xx c.mp xx hp.headbutt once or twice, but to be honest I’m not used to jumping in on people so I didn’t go for it very often.
Anyways, shit to work on:
1. PATIENCE. This applies to getting frustrated as well. Fucking up and losing due to poor execution sucks, but I can’t let it get to me.
2. EXECUTION. Man, it’s been pretty shoddy lately.
3. M.Bison. I have a really hard time against him.
4. Blanka. Ditto, though I beat two in a row tonight.
5. Combos.
That’s it for now. Man, I’m tired. Time for bed.
fig. 1
I actually don’t remember much about this match, except being pissed because I was within a single win of hitting 2000 BP (hey, I never said I was good) for the first time. I did hit 2k (exactly) on the next match, when I beat a decent Sagat.
Anyways, fuck this guy. So I sent him a message calling him a wimp and like last time, my insult went ignored.
fig. 1
Your typical Ken. Knock him down, walk up, block the inevitable fierce shoryuken on wake up, throw when he lands. Lather, rinse, repeat. Do they ever learn? No, no they don’t.
fig. 2
This fucking asshole changed the time to thirty seconds right before the match started and I didn’t catch it until I won by timeout in the first round. He won by timeout in the second round and in the third round when time was running short and there was no way for him to win, he dropped. You can even see me going in for the kill. I sent him a message that just said “wimp,” and he didn’t even bother to defend himself.
RELATED: God, I fucking hate cheaters. These motherfuckers robbed me of a hundred-ish BP that would have been nice to have when I lost against good players who don’t drop.
I hopped into a game last night and man, was it laggy. I had it set to “Worldwide,” so maybe I was playing with people outside the US or something. There was probably an entire second that would elapse between when I hit a button and when something would happen on screen.
So On Live was announced this week at GDC and has, as far as announcements go, stolen the show.
On paper it’s awesome, and something similar is probably an inevitability in the long run.
The flipside is that I can’t imagine it working as advertised, because nothing works as advertised. Bragging that you’ve tested it on hundreds of connections isn’t even a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of connections that Xbox Live and PSN deal with on a daily basis. And there’s no way that you could truly play multiplayer games competitively on their service, which puts a dent in their early adopter market. For Halo and CoD players, there will just be an unacceptable amount of lag. That doesn’t even factor in the fact that the Big Three will double down and lobby hard against it. Between the three of them, they have a seemingly infinite supply of money and they’ll do everything in their power to bury the service if they feel threatened by it.
So I’m thinking that right now it will be a bust. It’s a great idea, but I don’t think our network infrastructure is ready for it. It’s just too far ahead of its time.