…Nintendo has removed online support for pretty much every other platform other than the switch. I get that this comes sooner for China than expected, but it was an inevitable outcome either way.

I think they’ll get away with it because they’re deliberately marketing it the way so many similar movies are managed: formulaically for kids, but with some actors and writing meant to give ‘the adults’ something to watch too. Unfortunately, ‘the adults’ are almost always assumed to have only a passing familiarity with the subject material, and I have a feeling they’re going to write the ‘for the adults in the room’ jokes with that assumption in mind.

It feels like it’s being written on an outdated manual, ignoring the fact that there’s a very sizable core audience of 20 and 30-somethings they could tap into. My guess is that everything they tried only tested well with children in focus groups, since apparently they were dead-set on a live-action format from the very beginning. I hate to be so cynical, but it’s possible they decided to go all-in on kids because they can hit the appeal without worrying as much on the production standards.

I got it working on my Linux desktop with minimal issues (was crashing when I loaded into a map, was an easy system configuration fix after troubleshooting… I also use a more DIY distro so there are occasional quirks). I’m sure it will run fine on steam deck, I highly doubt Valve would have put the game out for beta before testing it on their own hardware

I mean, bosses input reading my heavy attack to suddenly turn their three move combo into a four move combo 50% of the time feels a bit lame. For instance the dancing lion suddenly going into the spray carousel after it would have exhausted its combo and rested otherwise. My main issue is on the inconsistency.

Don’t get me wrong, that fight was really fun and I overcame it, but there are many such cases where it feels overtly like the game just threw in the extra attack as a “fuck you” while trying to learn the mechanics. There might be a subtle cue to the boss’s body language I didn’t see but there’s also the issue of the camera in encounters with large enemies.

On the whole though, as frustrating as it may be at times, often there’s still an underlying pattern. The only fights I think are explicitly unfair are the ones with adds or multiple enemies that add a lot of uncertainty especially if some are off camera. The twin gargoyle fight comes to mind, as does the Godskin duo where you explicitly have to kill both around the same time or the other respawns.

MBA-ism strikes again

As someone who tried getting into Overwatch 2 before Blizzard revealed it was all a sham 6 months before the “sequel” even dropped, this looks pretty interesting! I’ll probably give it a shot.