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Messages - Glowsquid

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1
Mario Chat / Re: Read Up some Sean Malstrom Topics...
« on: March 07, 2016, 08:24:06 AM »
He doesn't count Japan, as he sees it as a dying nation that is in serious decline.
 Only the west financially matters, it seems.

so Japanese money isn't money.

if anyone wants a chuckle, there's a great thread highlighthing the worst of Sean's double-think, failure to understand how game works, and general retardation.

2
Mario Chat / Re: Read Up some Sean Malstrom Topics...
« on: March 06, 2016, 07:46:18 PM »
One of my favourite Sean Malstrom moment, and a great example of his many failings as a game commentor, is this recent blog post where he argues that Splatoon cannot be considered a successful game because it "did not move hardware"

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The metric of success for FIRST PARTY TITLES is selling the hardware. That is the entire reason why Nintendo makes games. It is to sell the [darn] console.

Splatoon is not selling Wii Us.

Therefore…

Splatoon is a dud.

It is not that complicated.

Mario Kart 8 sold Wii Us. Smash Brothers is selling hardware (mostly 3DS it seems). But Splatoon is not moving the hardware.

Except his premise is wrong. The Wii U's japanese sales more than doubled for months after Splatoon was released. The man is coasting on one kinda good article he wrote a decade ago, and he's put out nothing but laughable tripe since then, lol.

3
Video Game Chat / Re: Let's review...
« on: July 07, 2015, 04:40:09 PM »
This is my video game review of Lethal Skies: Elite Pilot: Team SW (aka Sidewinder F). My review for this game is bittersweet, so don't hate me for trashing it through most of the review. Also, this review contains ***SPOILARS***. You, my friend, have been warned. Let's start. This

But first, a brief history lesson!

Lethal Skies is actually the fourth instalment in a series of low-budget Ace Combat alternatives developed by Bit Town and budgeted by film production outfit Asmik Ace Entertainement. The first game, Sidewinder (retitled Bogey Dead 6 in North America and Raging Skies in Europe) was released in 1996 for the Playstation. A straight clone of Namco's Air Combat, Sidewinder attempted to distinguish itself with superficial realistic stylings and support for the concurrently-released SCPH-1110 analog controller. It would be followed by Sidewinder 2: Let's Dance in the Sky, a fairly conservative sequel released in tandem with Namco's Ace Combat 2.

The series would skip the remainder of the fifth generation before returning in 2000 with a PS2 instalment titled Sidewinder MAX. MAX retained the real-word setting of the previous instalments, but shifted further toward realism, with the player now having to deal with limited weapon loadouts, blackouts and g-forces. It was followed one year later by Sidewinder F (renamed Lethal Skies Elite Pilot: Team SW in the west), which retained MAX's mechanics but shifted the setting to a futuristic post-global warming Earth. It was in turn followed by Sidewinder V (Lethal Skies 2 in the west) in 2003.

Bit Town would then produce another combat flight game for budget publisher D3 as part of its Simple 2000 series, named The Uchuu Daisensou (released in Europe as Space War Attack). Though done on the Lethal Skies engine, Space War Attack traded Lethal Skies mechanical adversaries for UFOs and giant bugs, similar to D3's own Earth Defense Force series.

After that, nothing. Bit Town quietly ceased all activities, presumably one of the many casualties of HD development.

Plot summary

Despite humanity's best efforts, the release of Siberia's methane reserves cause global warming to accelerate at an unimaginable rate, resulting in much of the world being flooded. Life on artificial "mega-floats" is now the norm, and the surviving nation have rallied the banner of the World Alliance and its military wing, the Frontier Nations.

Well, not all of them. The millitaristic Republic of Gurtestein, enraged by economic sanctions placed due to its arm-dealing ventures, has left the World Alliance and convinced various disfranchised states to band together as the World Order Reorganisation Front. As the leader of the Frontier Nations' newly-formed Team SW fighter team, only you stand in the way of the WORF and its mysterious "M-Plan".

Review

Lethal Skies may looks like one of many low-budget Ace Combat ripoff, but as with its predecessors, Lethal Skies pays surprising (for a console flight game) lip service to realism. The game's planes can carry up to 16 missiles – still considerably more than what the featured planes can carry in reality, but far less than the 50 missiles loaded on the starter planes in games such as Ace Combat. Fuel is similarly limited. G-forces have a tangible effect on the plane's maneuverability, and the game goes as far as restricting planes loadout selection by their country of origins (NATO planes can select the Sidewinder and Maverick as air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles respectively, while Russian ones use Archers and Keglers). The player can also enable blackouts and redouts in the game settings, although their effect is purely cosmetic.

Of course, there are concessions to the opposite end of the scale. Vulcan ammo is unlimited and a generous hitbox makes it reliable weapon even if your reserves aren't exhausted. Controls are kept reasonably simple (perhaps too simple in one respect – ejecting countermeasures is completely automated) and you don't have to worry about fiddling with instrumentation. Real missiles are mixed with fictional ordinances, the best one being air-to-air or air-to-ground missiles that split in smaller warheads when fired.

It would be very easy for this improbable mixture of simulation and arcade to go wrong, but it forms together in an interesting, and certainly unique, whole. While running out of ammunition is a very real danger, Lethal Skies's designers reasonably opted to make the missions short and clinical affairs, featuring one clear objective and little in the way of theatrics or scenarisation. Enemy encounters are similarly reserved, the mission favouring one-on-one dogfights against few but reasonably strong and intelligent enemies . Lethal Skies ends up being a consistently well-paced, white-knuckled affair apart from a few unfortunate boss encounters.

Furthermore, prior to starting a mission, you can fully customise not only your plane's loadout, but that of your entire squad, as well as their flight priorities. Though micro-managing your squadron is not mandatory to success, it is a boon when attempting to attain higher grades on missions (a process necessary to unlock a good chunk of the game's plane roster, featuring exotics like the SU-47). Beside the requisite campaign, Lethal Skies also feature a Free Flight mode and a customizable but somewhat limited dogfight simulator.

The campaign starts with the routine seek-and-destroy, escort missions and canyon runs (two of them, in fact) common to console flight games, but soon starts dipping into stranger – and more interesting- waters. The apocalypse obviously hasn't deterred the military industrial complex, as a quarter of the game's 20 missions will pit you against oversized mechanical monstrosities, such as a wheeled aircraft carrier, or an artillery-cannon equipped spider tank. This type of insanity would normally be the highlight of the game, but the game's realistic flight model doesn't always cooperate with these encounters. One mission requires you to destroy a giant VTOL craft, first by destroy gun batteries on its side and then its four rotors, a simple process made more tedious than challenging by the aircraft's awkwardly fast turning speed and the relative sluggishness of your jet. In another instance, you're required to dismantle the aforementioned spider tank weapon by weapon before striking its underside core, something that will likely require many momentum-killing passes if you only have your gun left.

Lethal Skies griping tale of military conflict between faceless alliances in a post global warming world likely won't inspire fanfiction writers, especially as the entire thing is delivered in laughably stilted prose read by the announcer of the Saturday Night Live Japan. but the game does manage to make effective use of its post-apocalyptic setting; missions may have you downing MIGs over a flooded New York or, a desertificated Paris or the arctic reaches of Texas.

Warts and all though, I really did enjoy Lethal Skies. It may not look like much, but it's an interesting little diversion for the flight combat enthusiast looking for something different.


I give this game a 3 out of 10.

4
General Chat / Re: The ANGST thread: Complain here!
« on: April 15, 2015, 07:54:15 PM »
Wasted 2 hours to send in a paper I know is garbage for a class I'm guaranteed to fail, for a program I spend two years in only to discover I have no talent for.

: )


5
Mario Chat / Re: The Silly Mario Fan Theories Thread
« on: March 23, 2015, 09:57:39 AM »
Club Mario is the very end of the timeline. Everyone is long dead and the degenerate successors of humanity are commenting on archival footage.

6
Mario Chat / Re: Have you been colouring Mario wrong?
« on: March 03, 2015, 08:41:33 PM »
(How sad is it that this thread is the first post in this section since January?)

One thing I noticed is how it says Wario is Mario's childhood friend, which was in one of those NP comics. Huh.

7
I heard that if a Sonic fan bites you, you become a Sonic fan.

8
Mario Chat / Re: Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition
« on: January 09, 2015, 11:31:03 AM »
I'm getting legit annoyed by third parties (and Nintendo's) apparent belief people will only buy third-party gaems if there's a Mario/Zelda/Animal Crossing skin on it.

9
Mario Chat / Re: New Mario Movie (Not Joke)
« on: December 19, 2014, 01:02:57 PM »
I remember reading a great article about how the author didn't want another He-Man movie because the property is too strange and stupid to allow for a faithful adaptation. That's kinda how I feel about Mario.

Of course what BP wrote above is very true. And very well said.

10
Mario Chat / Re: New Mario Movie (Not Joke)
« on: December 18, 2014, 06:15:52 AM »
Why the **** does Mario's jumping ability needs to be rationalized

Why is he unironically suggesting to make an "hardcore" Mario film

Why

11
Mario Chat / Re: New Mario Movie (Not Joke)
« on: December 12, 2014, 08:37:32 PM »
In a recent interview, the co-director of the movie said they envisioned the movie as the "real story" and the games were a bad adaption of the events. That was an idea alright.

----

Avid Arad sure gets around.

12
Mario Chat / Re: Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
« on: December 11, 2014, 03:24:48 PM »
Each compatible Amiibo unlocks a short story revealing information about the Captain Toad timeline

13
Mario Chat / Re: Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
« on: December 08, 2014, 04:03:29 PM »
Quote
For the same reason Mario says "Mex-i-co!" in Mario 64 a

Huh, that's a new one.

14
Site Discussion / Re: Sigh... where is everyone?
« on: December 06, 2014, 12:33:52 PM »
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He says Kyle Orland completely went off the deep end after the site was left in his hands. The poker thing is dead-ass serious.

 

The same Kyle Orland that's editor for Ars Technica? Huh.

15
Site Discussion / Re: Sigh... where is everyone?
« on: December 04, 2014, 07:26:00 AM »
Kids used to sign-up on forums en-masse because that was the only way they could talk about their favourite vidcons. Nodaway, the Tumblrs, Youtubes and Reddits fill that void and people go on wikis for information, which have left the straight informational fansites without a niche to define themselves, just as straight sites and forums did Usenet in eons ago.

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I think another big issue is the fact that people used to come to TMK for information, but now keep going to Mario Wiki instead (even though people with brains can tell Wikis are actually really stupid in practice!).

[There used to be something much more vulgar and mean-spirited here, but on further reflexion, taking it to PMs is a better idea.]

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