A Gaming Thread For 2017

Shovel Knight is pretty amazing, huh?

Never played it, but that Nick bellend who used to be on Rev3 raves about it. Sell it to me.

Yuh huh, legit one of the best platform games ever. I would totally be willing to listen to an argument FOR it being THE best in fact

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It is absolutely perfect on the Switch.
If the console can just be a first party beast with decent indie support, I will be a very happy man.

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Well it looks like a classic NES game. Which put me off for ages as I’m not always a big fan of retro indie titles, but it’s so lovingly done here it’s hard not to be thoroughly charmed. And the music is amazing. Properly gets stuck in your head.

The platforming is super tight. Not insanely hard so far, like Super Meat Boy, but a great difficulty curve that insists you get better quickly. Lots of fun secrets too that mean levels would be replayable after you earn new abilities a la Metroid.

And then it has a lovely sense of humour. Weird characters, intriguing storyline through brief cut scenes… and the hero has a SHOVEL.

Then there’s the RPG-lite bits thrown in I wasn’t expecting. Magic, second move sets, potions to help get past tricky elements, an ingenious checkpoint system that lets you smash the marker for treasure if you feel like you can beat the next section but will send you back to the previous checkpoint if you fail.

So many great little ideas. And Shovel Knight is one of 3 full games here, with one more chapter and a multiplayer mode to come. I’m halfway through apparently (an achievement told me) and I’ve put about 4 hours in I’d say. So I suspect you get 30-40 hours of varying platforming action for £20.

Certainly thinking it’ll be up there from what I have played so far.

Best I’ve ever played, in no real order:

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, Rayman Legends, Super Guacamelee. I enjoyed New Super Mario Bros U at times too, but it felt dated after those others.

[Basically: the Wii U has the best platform games ever on it, if you also factor in Virtual Console and backwards compatibility with Wii.]

From my youth: Sonic 1 & 2, The Lucky Dime Caper, Castle of Illusion and Psycho Fox were all ace (Master System versions).

To my shame, I’ve never properly played Super Mario Bros 3 or World, any of the N64 Donkey Kongs or many of the classic Mega Drive platformers. Never owned a Nintendo machine properly until the Wii, bar a brief flirt with a second hand N64 to cane Mario 64 and Goldeneye.

In terms of 3D ones, it’s basically:

Mario 64, Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 and Ape Escape. Super Mario 3D World was decent, but no Galaxy.

Hold the fucking phone - there are now reports that it’s innovated on the same tired formula by including THREE LANES that you can play your creatures to!

That’s just made The Elder Scrolls: Legends and its two lane system look absolutely archaic.

Can’t wait to see where the genre goes from here.

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It’s like a Gillette v Wilkinson Razor War for the digital age.

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Reckon it’ll cap out at five lanes (the Darkest Dungeon card game?) before the next massive Innovation arrives: one lane. Back to the genre roots. A classic reboot.

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That seems to be the way of things. I’m a bit disappointed we don’t live in the universe where Gillette released a 15 razor monstrosity though, and I’ll be sad when no one says, “fuck it, we’re going 21 lanes. 500 card decks, and each card has 16 different simultaneous effects. 8 player games. Every game lasts 90 minutes and no one has a damn clue if they’re winning or not until it’s over.”

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21 card lanes could be the key. What’s the next lot going to do, 22 lanes? They’d look like idiots.

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Can this be real? It looks absolutely terrifying.

I think it’s a photoshop. These are even more horrifying (as is the fact they’ll probably be real by 2030).

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I suppose a shaver the size of your face is kind of efficient when you think about it.

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Let’s face it - this DOTA card game nonsense is just Valve’s way of getting back at Blizzard for ripping off TF2.
That and they hate us all.

Wow. Valve totally misread their audience, if the die hard Dota fans audibly sign when they announce a dota card game it’s off to a catastrophic start.

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Fuck Dota and fuck card games that aren’t Gwent. Make HL3 already you pieces of human garbage

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You’re saying that to someone with 250 hours clocked on XCom 2.

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And that clip’s from TI17, so not even DOTA fans give a shit.
That or they were hoping for some actual footage of the game or something.