Luigi's Mansion 3 and Halloween 2019

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The best candy from the best source of entertainment.

After ignoring fellow Nintendo Switch titles Astral Chain and DAEMON X MACHINA, perhaps I should at least give Luigi's Mansion 3 a release day article. Not that I care about it—and I don't understand why anyone who wasn't a Day 1 GameCube owner would—but Luigi is a very relevant topic for KoopaTV, so here we are. Luigi's Mansion 3 features Luigi, his ghost-dog Polterpup, Mario, Princess Peach, and some dumb escort Toads going to a haunted hotel. Mario and Peach (and the Toads but no one cares about them) disappear and Luigi has to rescue them and not get pwned by King Boo.

There must be a lot of Day 1 Luigi's Mansion fans from 2001 on GameFAQs, because Luigi's Mansion 3 is the most-anticipated game of October 2019 over here:

Luigi's Mansion 3 with 36.36% of the vote.
Personally, I voted for Ring Fit Adventure, though that got the least number of votes.
Clearly, that's not reflected in Ring Fit Adventure being out-of-stock from many retailers. (I'd know. I tried and failed to get it.)

To my surprise (but still not to my interest), Luigi's Mansion 3 is getting a lot of well-rated reviews from most outlets, with the exception of the FAKE NEWS Washington Post. This time, they're fake news because the top of their review page portrays Luigi's Mansion 3 as looking like this:

PlayStation Vueless

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Pronounced view.

Yesterday, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced that they will be shutting down their PlayStation Vue service on January 30, 2020.

Since I've never actually written about what PlayStation Vue is, here's an explanation in Sony's own words, complete with trademark symbols:

“PlayStation™Vue streams live TV, movies, news and sports across the USA without a cable or satellite subscription. PlayStation™Vue is available across a variety of PS Vue live streaming devices, including Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV®, Roku® Players and TVs, Android TV, web browsers, mobile devices, PlayStation®4 consoles, and PlayStation®3 consoles.” 

The key bit there is that it's one of those services that appeal to cord-cutters, and it also works for people who don't have a PlayStation. ...Unfortunately, no one really figured that out based on the name, and so Sony decided to focus on their “core gaming business.”

As someone who is currently a cable subscriber but grew up without cable (so I don't understand the whole generation's fascination with SpongeBob SquarePants), I pretty much just watch Fox News Channel and Fox Business with the cable subscription. That's not really a good use of money, so I've looked into the whole chord-cutting movement. There's articles out there about watching Fox News without cable and they suggest these services. One of them is PlayStation Vue. But there are just so many options, and between picking one that is with the PlayStation brand name and one that is without the PlayStation brand name, I'd rather go without it as someone who wants nothing to do with the PlayStation.

Plus, the price kept increasing.

After this announcement was made, one can no longer sign up for a new subscription or free trial with PlayStation Vue.

My problem with these is that $50 a month is stupid for a couple of channels I really want. That's literally the same problem that people have with subscribing to cable to begin with. In the case of PlayStation Vue, Sony never appeared to articulate what makes it stand out from the many competitors out there. ...Doesn't seem to be a big loss to the world. I don't really know why Sony was in this business to begin with, and it seems like they didn't either.


With the recent disclosure that the PlayStation 4 has joined the elusive >100 million unit gaming console club, Sony has better things to focus on. So does KoopaTV, but oh well. If you can explain to Ludwig why these cord-cutting services are better than keeping the cord to begin with, do try to.


Full disclosure: Ludwig just wanted a quick companion piece to when Sony shut down PlayStation Home some years ago.
Compare and contrast this to the Nintendo TVii.

Call of Duty and Hillary Clinton: Russophobia Abounds?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I think it's a cause→effect relationship here. And it's intellectually lazy and boring.

I always thought Call of Duty games released on Tuesdays in November, but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (not to be confused with 2007's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered from 2016) released last Friday. It is a new game with, according to developer Infinity Ward's hype, an ambitious story.

You may remember that in 2013 for Call of Duty Ghosts and in 2014 for Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, KoopaTV had gimmick articles reacting to all of the cutscenes in those games. They didn't make for an engaging or memorable story, though that 2014 article did result in the “Hold X to Pay Respects” meme becoming popular throughout the Internet among console gamers. ...It's just PC gamers held F and outnumbered everyone.

But, yeah, a meme was all anyone got out of Call of Duty story before. How'd Infinity Ward do this time?

Well... they pissed off a lot of Russian bots.
But, hey, at least it's the #1 most discussed PS4 Game of 2019!

 
A swarm of Russians (be they real or robotic), many of whom are like this fellow and have never reviewed anything else on Metacritic in their history, have gone to 0-bomb Call of Duty: Modern Warfare for alleged Russophobia.

A bit of background is in order.

Koopa Kingdom Celebrates Game Over of ISIS Founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Death to the enemies of Koopa Kingdom!

Amazing and material news for Koopa Kingdom came out of Planet Earth over the weekend: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader and arguably founder of the Islamic State of Iraq & Syria (ISIS—sometimes known as Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant for ISIL; Daesh; or just Islamic State [IS—not to be confused with Nintendo developer Intelligent Systems]) was KILLED. He's dead! No more! GAME OVER.

President Donald John Trump of the United States of America confirmed this via news conference. He talks for about 9 minutes and the rest is question & answer with the press:

Obliterating ISIS has been a major Koopa Kingdom priority for years, and especially for KoopaTV. That's because ISIS, under the leadership of al-Baghdadi, was an expert via social media in manipulating people outside of the Middle East to come join their jihad and fight for their caliphate of world domination under an extremely oppressive Islamic ideology. That's not just a theory for us at KoopaTV. It happened to our very own Noxial, who quit KoopaTV as our social media person after mere weeks on the job to go join ISIS. She took one of our then-mascots, Devin the TV Troopa, with her, and Devin died in an ISIS-forced suicidal Blue Shell.

So, yes. ISIS members are very bad people and Koopa killers, and given the opportunity, they'd kill more Koopas. Less importantly, under al-Baghdadi's leadership, they killed many thousands of Middle Eastern people, beheaded many Westerners and Japanese, displaced many hundreds of thousands of people, and conquered a lot of territory.

The leader is dead, but these are radical Islamic terrorists. They won't be gone after this.

Mario Kart Tour and Koopalings as Gacha Incentive

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - I hate this BECAUSE I love myself.

I would like to open this article with a snarky paragraph about how Mario Kart Tour is a desperate failure, but that wouldn't be accurate with KoopaTV's Truth mantra. In fact, Mario Kart Tour is Nintendo's most successful mobile game launch—by far. There's over 90 million downloads of it. Probably over 100 million by now.

I wish Mario Kart Tour was treated like Fallout 76 by the general population, but I guess not.

To capitalise on this success, Nintendo is doing some kind of Halloween-themed thing that finally brings Luigi (who apparently lost his keys... just like I did) and Waluigi (and Baby Luigi, and King Boo, and King Boo Luigi's Mansion-style, and Rosalina in a Halloween outfit) to Mario Kart Tour.

Meh, who cares.

Well, remember in my one-and-only Mario Kart Tour article a month ago I wrote this bit to describe myself and my as-of-then non-appearance?

“Neither am I [in the game], though I was in the game's beta version. Guess I'll be a future release to try to keep people playing.

Personally, I don't want to be used as a gacha incentive.”  

Well, I'm going to be in as a gacha incentive. I get several seconds to myself in this new trailer:

Next Up: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open November 2019!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - YOU can register! ...In October! (Or up until the tournament starts.)

Today, Nintendo and Battlefy announced the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open November 2019, the next in their Online Open series—this will be the seventh. You may remember the previous one being for September 2019—they took a break for October 2019.  But you can sign up for the November tournament right now. It's free. If you're one of four winners, you get a ticket to the Genesis 7 tournament in January. More on that in the article.

Depending on where you are in North America, the tournament is either on Saturday, November 9 (starting 10 AM Pacific); or Sunday, November 10 (starting 11 AM Eastern). That's already a big change from how they've been running these tournaments lately, which have been all on the same day across the continent. I believe this is because they're expecting much more participation than last time, and they want to spread their dispute resolution staff less thin.

This article is going to go over the changes from before, because they're largely favourable for the player experience and deserve to be recognised. I'm also going to discuss potential implications for... Super Smash Bros. Ultimate downloadable content!

But first, here's the new logo, which is now tinted blue instead of red: 

I like this more.

Who is the First Sucker for Fallout 1st?

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Explain to me why you're not a moron if it's you.

Upon the disastrous release of Fallout 76, KoopaTV was charitable to Bethesda and didn't write a scathing article. The game was bug-filled, absent of many features, and filled with highly questionable game design decisions. But Bethesda wanted to commit to the games-as-a-service model and has released many patches and updates for Fallout 76 that have repaired some of those glitches. Bethesda even released a battle royale mode and promised human NPCs and full dialogue trees back in their horrific E3 2019 conference (those won't be around until 2020, however, as The Wastelanders update... which as far as we know, is free).

The game has been released for almost a year now, and got a permanent price cut within weeks of release. I'll take the word of Bethesda's die-hard fans that Fallout 76 is worth playing now. Maybe even enjoyable. You can get it for $20 (a time-limited 50% off from $40—initially was $60) at retailers. 

I don't want to argue about it with this guy. He seems terrifying, dangerous, and representative of a typical Bethesda fan.

I'll argue with Bethesda themselves. You see, they need to make up for their immediate permanent price cuts and salvage Fallout 76. Why do they need to? ...They're unwilling to cut their losses and damaged reputation. So here is Bethesda introducing Fallout 1st, available now, which is a $13-a-month auto-renew-by-default subscription (or $100 for a year) to Fallout 76 benefits! (Note, you still need to buy the game separately, and an online subscription on your console if playing on PlayStation or Xbox.)

Fallout 1st features Private Worlds for you and up to seven friends—you can play without randoms (something other games tend to offer for free at launch); unlimited item storage, whatever a survival tent is, $16.50 worth of micro-transaction money (with discounts on micro-transactions—but note they're still there), an in-game outfit, and unique icons and emotes. You don't need the subscription to play the game.

I will argue that everyone can and should not only ignore this subscription, but Fallout 76 entirely. Let's remind ourselves what Bethesda's Pete Hines said a year ago about post-launch content pricing:

“All the content we ever put out for Fallout 76--all the DLC, all the post-launch stuff--is going to be free. That's important. And to say, the Atomic shop is cosmetic stuff. To make sure folks understand--look there's a line. There are people who have crossed it, but we're going to stay on the right side of it in terms of the things you can spend money on and how this stuff works and what you're getting for your $60, [t]hat you know, when they put out new content or features or whatever, I'm getting that stuff for free. That feels right.”

(The Atomic shop, which is the micro-transaction place, later offers more than just “cosmetic stuff.” To make sure folks understand, everything he said then is just untrue now.)


Right now KoopaTV is offering you the opportunity, between September 1 and October 31, to get a FREE subscription to Nintendo Switch Online by getting into KoopaTV's Family Group for one year. Just win the KoopaTV Loyalty Rewards Program! You won't be able to play Fallout 76 with that, though. And it won't auto-renew so you'll need to win again next year. But, hey, you gotta save money somehow.


On what is likely a smaller scale, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has a similar subscription service now.

Yes In My Backyard: Dilapidated Houses in the City Trial

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Regretting your policies around affordable housing, eh King Dedede?

Time to tackle an issue that's vexed me for over a decade now: On what basis are those crap-mounds in Kirby Air Ride's City Trial mode supposed to be houses? Yes, they're referred to as “dilapidated houses” (meaning the houses have all fallen into disrepair), but how were these supposed to be houses to begin with?

Kirby observing these crappy houses (and standing on one) about two Kirby in height.
There's no doors, though apparently the circles are windows.
One wonders how these were so haphazardly constructed, with all of the different materials seemingly stitched together.
What are these made of and how would anyone live in them?

These houses were constructed, a few dozen of them, right outside of the main part of the City. The common objection existing residents have to building low-income/affordable housing units is that, while the folks in the municipality mean well, they just don't want them in their backyard (“not in my backyard”, or NIMBY). The people already living in the city or owning property there are commonly worried that development of these buildings will lower the value of the existing property, and real-estate is a large part of people's wealth. (Hence why a wealth tax to be paid on a cash basis is stupid.) They're also concerned that affordable housing will bring in a lot of riff-raff into the area. Crime and stuff. Sort of the same reason that building gambling establishments like casinos and horse-tracks in municipalities get objected to. 

Governments put together all kinds of rules and regulations to mess up the housing market and create an artificial scarcity in housing, thus increasing the value of the existing homes and contributing to a supply-demand in-balance. That results in either homelessness or poor people trying to live elsewhere that's more accommodating to building houses. Regulations may include superfluous environmental impact studies, zoning laws, impossible building codes (grandfathering in existing places), arbitrary permitting processes, and more. This obviously raises the cost of development far past the actual construction, so it doesn't get built.

As for the City, King Dedede apparently waived the concerns of the two paragraphs above and ignored the NIMBY people. ...But I guess the houses are so awful and then not maintained that no one is living in them. Then they're just a blight on the City, as the NIMBY-ers said would happen. Thus, they've tasked Kirby with their destruction.

I'm Extremely Impressed With The Dragon Quest XI S Demo

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Free, high-quality entertainment lasting as long as many whole games.

I admit, with all of the fantastic gaming experiences on the Nintendo Switch lately—with more to come—I can't and don't play everything I write about. That includes some of the not-so fantastic experiences.

That means when I come across something amazing—even belatedly so—I should write about that. Of course, the game I have in mind isn't a secret—and not just because you're fully capable of reading the article title, but also because it's fairly-well publicised.

During October, I played the 10–11 hour Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition demo, which is a ridiculously long title. We've had very advance notice of Dragon Quest XI coming to the Switch, all the way back in 2015 when it was called the Nintendo NX. And in August 2019, Square Enix released an eShop demo, which transfers your save file to the full version, released September 2019.

One of the biggest features the game has to offer is the ability to play the game in 3D, HD graphics... or 2D, 16-bit style. Unfortunately, the demo forces you to play it in 3D, despite trolling you with the 2D option: 

Start Your Marathon: Ring Fit Adventure Released!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - There's just something so ensnaring about this ring...

I still dispute the characterisation that this is a 180-degree turnaround, but back in the beginning of September last month when Nintendo had that really weird teaser trailer, I had no idea that I'd devote so much coverage to whatever it turned out to be, especially in such a short period of time. But when Nintendo properly revealed the game as Ring Fit Adventure, I instantly became stoked about the concept. Gimmicky exercise controller + proper RPG experience? This is a game that can be both intrinsically fun and extrinsically beneficial! It just needed to get that intrinsic part down, which, based on Ring Fit Adventure's presence of traditional Japanese roleplaying game tropes like towns and skills and a story, looks like they're getting right. Plus, a villain in Dragaux we can all support.

Now, unlike some other very-recently released games on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo isn't ignoring the game on arrival. Here's the launch trailer.
 

That second half of the trailer is awesome. I'm just loving the personality and cool music that Dragaux exudes, and I'm pleased that I made a great choice in dedicating a whole article to the bodybuilding dragon NAMED DRAGAUX. Just look at this: