Lurker > transience

it could happen. you still take zion #1 every time because he's a generational talent and you only get 3 or 4 of those guys every decade.

you would need to trade a guaranteed superstar to get a team to give up wemby

I imagine he sat out because Miami already stole one. same as why Embiid will sit tomorrow

man Miami rope a doped the whole NBA. even without Jimmy they almost win, and they certainly execute better than the Knicks (though everyone executes better than them on offense)

yeah the Curry hagiography is really cracking me up. like, yeah he inspired Klay and Wiggins and Poole to play like trash. the Kings just fell absolutely apart in the second half and Curry ascended due to his own greatness, not some amazing leadership quality.

Curry is unbelievable. super disappointed but hard to be mad losing to greatness

I don't think Phoenix can win in Denver without a great shooting performance. by the time the 4th comes around, they're absolutely gassed without any depth

Warriors will be up for a game 7 and that building will be crazy. they really expected to just walk over the Kings after that game 5 win though, as if they'd just give up. really bad look for a champion, basically treating it like a regular season game.

here's who's leading every series

1 - Denver
2 - Boston
3 - Philadelphia
4 - Phoenix
5 - New York
6 - Golden State
7 - LA Lakers
8 - Miami

imagine if we reseeded every round, this would be nuts

wild NBA night tonight. god kings were so close and just couldn't hit a shot again. Warriors the better team

I guess the argument would be that Game Pass gets more powerful by putting Activision games on their service, but even Sony has built up a decent GP competitor in the last year. I just don't get the angle.

but, I also don't mind regulators stopping giants from merging on principle so this doesn't really bother me either way. it just seems disingenuous.

cloud gaming is the funniest reason and makes me wonder if they have an agenda. it's not like Activision is a major provider of cloud services.

what a ridiculous ending. good stuff trae

ScareChan posted...

Warriors fans are being so laughable. Their media is trying to claim that Shams is trying to create a heroic narative for Fox when he plays in game 5 anyways

this is where you need to unplug. if you hang out on twitter or reddit or whatever you're going to see some real wild takes, especially this series.

that said, arghhhhhhhhh we had a moment of silence in my house for Fox today

yeah this series is all about holding serve. Kings did their part and then GS did theirs, and now it's our turn again

eh everyone was raving about time lord in game 1. you're playing the hawks, it's okay to chill

plus, with embiid and giannis at least somewhat limited right now, boston's path is wide open

I thought the degree of violence was quite a bit different between Embiid and Draymond. F1 is right in my eyes.

that's because it's the Warriors on TNT

I'd say those 50%+ games aren't the norm that you make them out to be, but it's true that variance is a lot higher now with the advent of pace and space. I think the double digit wins are more a function of a higher score - a 12 point lead is what a 7 or 8 point lead used to be in the 2000s. it's just that a 20 point win is now a 30+ point one.

though nothing makes you look good like 60% 3 point shooting. Miami looked amazing in game 1 by doing the same.

I think that's true with most high-usage stars. Memphis has always been on par without Ja for the same reasons.

strange season. kinda felt like it moved in quicksand, and some of the pieces never really mattered, like that one girl who fried dr. pershing and... said a thing to moff gideon and that's it? I'll be curious to see where they go from here because I'm pretty sure mando is going to show up in other media, like Ahsoka.

I wish people would stop looking at it as a Warriors collapse or a Draymond suspension and start giving the Kings some credit as the higher seed and the better team. yeah they're champions but the Kings are pretty real. not championship level real, but the whole media narrative was how every team in the league wanted the Kings in the first round. now if the Warriors lose it'll be because Draymond got suspended and the can will get kicked further down the road.

yeah I don't understand the technical that got called on him either. but I'm a Kings fan so

they rolled over because they were on the road against a very good team! game 5 was the home game that everyone was suspended for if my memory is there

I've thought a lot about the Horry shove on Nash in the last 24 hours. that 07 title has an asterisk unfortunately.

yeah one thing I've learned during this series is that Boston fans reeeeallllly hate Draymond, more than I realized. he just literally curbstomped our all star and I'm still not at the level Celtics fans are

I hope he's suspended for game 3 after that nonsense

that Kings game was absolutely unbelievable

those archaic days when Link/Cloud was still a debate

happy Sacramento Kings playoffs day for those who celebrate, the first in 6,189 days, the first since the George W. Bush administration and the first since the original New Super Mario Bros. was released. Solid Snake was not yet announced for Brawl and the Nintendo Wii/Twilight Princess was not yet out.

MVP

https://streamable.com/ms80ea

as board 8's longest tenured Kings superfan: here we go

s3e2 spoilers

Mando losing to that creature and Bo Katan beating the creature means that Bo is probably the proper wielder of the Darksaber now, right? kind of a weird way for it to happen but that's interesting

where do you get all these things?!

I'll take songbringer. apparently it's been on my wishlist since 2017

I don't think that's Shulk. that's just the create a character that ends up being your playable character

hated it. okay, I actually liked it because I love Metroid and I'll play anything that has that style to it. but the choices they made are just bad, it ran poorly on the DS, and the ending is one of the most tone deaf things I've ever seen. my feelings on Samus Returns made Dread all the more impressive.

yeah I've played Link Between Worlds. if this list expanded to 150 I'd probably consider it, but to be honest, I beat it in 2011 and never really thought about going back. like it's good and all, but I could just play LTTP and if I was going to get another Zelda game on the list it'd probably be Majora. I might get Ocarina in above it too, but Zelda games are kinda fleeting to me with the exception of the original, LTTP and BOTW.

I actually find Portrait to be a good distance above Dawn, if only because Dawn has the DS gimmicks and it's a lot easier to stay on task in Portrait because of the individual levels. the map isn't as sprawling and it's easier to go from point A to point B. Dawn is good though. if you're talking about just playing a single screen or area then I would agree, they're pretty interchangeable, but when you take the larger picture into view then I find them to diverge a bit more. the same is true of Ori, I guess, since the level designs are obviously different but if you were just look at moving from screen to screen it's a pretty close approximation.

#2. Celeste

Happy 5th birthday to Celeste, the best designed video game of all time. I just adore how well this thing plays. The high level content in this game pushes you to the absolute brink and gives me the most rewarding feeling I've had in video games when I finally clear it. Celeste expects a lot of you but man does it make you feel good when you nail it. Oh, and the story is awesome and the music is top tier too.

#1. Xenogears

I just love this stupid game, way more than I should. Last year I made a top 100 cutscenes list for Xenogears and cut up video clips for youtube just because I wanted to re-experience the game a new way. Xenogears's story and cutscene direction and sound design and characters and whatever else are just way way beyond how I feel about any other game. There's other RPGs, and then there's Xenogears, a game that I hope never gets remade because they will screw it up and I will revolt.

#4. Slay the Spire

I apparently have 1164:30:05 clocked on the mobile version of this game, and I own it on two other platforms as well. I am just always playing this game. STS has amazing balance and I'm always learning new things about it despite my huge clock time. I'm really looking forward to the board game which is out at the end of this year!

#3. N++

One thing that amazes me is how I can pick up N++ after being away for several months and not miss a single beat. There's no learning curve to picking up its very nuanced control after a long break. You're just back in it. N++ has what feels like infinite levels due to the sheer amount of content packed into this one screen platformer. It ends up giving you that feeling of endless replay value that a roguelite would give you, only every screen is hand crafted. What a damn game.

#6. Super Metroid

The best designed Metroid game - just a ton of great level design and interesting traps set for the player. The music and atmosphere are kind of untouchable. The controls of Super Metroid are an acquired taste, and when you compare it to something like Zero Mission, it falls just barely short.

#5. Metroid: Zero Mission

The best controlling game out there. Samus is a dream to control. Zero Mission doesn't touch the sky like Super Metroid does, but just moving around with all of Samus's powerups feels so damn good. I've beaten this game an uncountable number of times and know every room inside and out, and it's still a joy to move through this game world.

#8. Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Contrasting this with Metroid Dread is fun. Dread is an aggressive, hostile game while Ori is the most serene thing on the planet. Instead of focusing on combat, Ori wants you to fly. Its traversal is so good that you get into this flow state where you just don't touch the ground for minutes at a time. The platforming takes some execution to get right but it's not overly hard to get from point a to point b, and it feels so good in the process.

This game introduces direct combat and autosaves and all the things the original was missing, plus several more movement tech powerups that has you chaining abilities to just soar. The music? God damn. What a game.

#7. Spelunky

I just love tiptoeing down Spelunky's depths, trying to survive whatever each run is going to throw at me. There's always something that kills me and my success rate is like .1% or something stupid. I'm good enough to get to the end consistently but I always screw something small up, and the smallest of errors can be game ending with the right combination of factors. Spelunky is fun to just scurry around and try to survive the endless amount of BS that the game wants to kill you with.

#10. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

This is my go-to for aimless 3d adventure game. I love just wandering in this world. I'm really worried that the new Zelda is going to be mechanics heavy or more traditional in its structure, or worse yet, that it'll be a mechanical improvement on Zelda but loses the magic of this beautiful game. I love the music and how fleeting it is, or how I can just happen upon the most enjoyable things.

I'm really looking forward to the next iteration but it's going to be kinda hard to meet my expectations, because my only hope is that it's still delightful to come around the corner and find something special. That's a really hard ask, to be surprised again.

#9. Banished

An absolutely lovely little village builder with survival elements. This game is all about trying to make it through the winter with limited resources. There's something organic and warm about this game that just resonates. It's such a happy experience for me, until my people die and I feel heartbroken about it.

I like this game's limited scope -- you're not just building endlessly -- and for when those limitations get a little boring, the community has built tons of mods to play it all sorts of ways. Banished is a palette through which you can do a ton.

get on it!

#12. Xenosaga 3

I think most, if not all of my top games are absolute masterpieces in design, storytelling or what have you. Xenosaga 3? Man, that's just technobabble and power space anime. I just love it though. It's nonsense but it sets a damn tone and Xenosaga's tone is incredibly up my alley. I also weirdly love the combat system in this game - it's my favourite of all the Xeno games. It's simple but super effective.

#11. Metroid Dread

It'll probably take me years to get a solid read on how I feel about this game. The exploration is weirdly limited for such an open environment, locking you into areas until you find the way out. It's shockingly linear in its design choices, a weird illusion of choice that isn't actually there if you peek behind the hood and realize that you're locked in a space. Item hunting isn't all that great either since the rewards aren't that interesting - you don't really need more weaponry. The metroidvania parts of Dread aren't its strongest elements, let's say. The long load times between zones is the best indicator of that. I mean, all of that stuff is good! But it's not on par with other Metroids.

But man, the movement and the speed and the aggressive design of this game. It's intense. It's got a great compliment of boss fights too. It almost blinds you into loving it by just throwing interesting combat design at you over and over. On the right day, this is the greatest Metroid game ever made and at other times, I just get butchered by the EMMI and want to curl up into a ball. I love this game because Metroid is the GOAT series, but I never love it unconditionally. It's still a top 10ish kinda game despite those reservations.

yeah! Ancient Cave. Ancient Cave turns FF5 into a roguelike, where you go into a 100 floor dungeon and find all items in the game, including jobs, in treasure chests. you start out as freelancers and maybe on floor 3 you'll find Ninja, and then you can class change into them. enemies get progressively harder and each run is its own unique thing. lots of fun.

#15. Final Fantasy V

I love this game for all of the gameplay complications that it presents and all the fun ways that you can break the game in half. It's basically all the reasons that I like the original Final Fantasy, but with more options. I play this game at least once a year to go through the four job fiesta, though that is getting a little old after having done it like 30 times or whatever. One day I'll find some new challenge way to play this that's actually fun and it'll shoot back to the top of my list.

#14. AM2R

This incredibly impressive fan game is honestly on the same level as Zero Mission from a movement and control perspective, which is the highest possibly praise you can put on a fan game that's standalone and not emulated. Zero Mission is the pinnacle of 2d movement.

The only thing keeping this below the other top tier Metroid games are the constraints of it being a remake of Metroid 2 -- that game was never designed to be an open ended exploration game since it was on the game boy. AM2R makes some attempts to align it with other games in the series, but there's only so far you can go without making a net new game. (I wish this had been a new Metroid game rather than a remake of Metroid 2, but oh well.)

#13. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

I've put an absolute ton of time into this SRPG gem recently -- not just the recent remake (which is excellent), but also the One Vision mod for the PSP version that makes a ton of really smart changes. Tactics Ogre has been treated a lot better than FFT and the remakes have pushed it a little above FFT for me. I've always gone back and forth on these two, but they're mom and dad of the SRPG genre for me - nothing else is really all that close, though Triangle Strategy is very good. Hopefully the rumored FFT remake can make up the ground and bring it back up to Tactics Ogre's level.

not really. I'm really pure in my tetris and tetris effect just felt kinda artsy and pointless. I'd rather just play the real thing than some trippy spinoff of it.

#18. Dicey Dungeons

I've probably played this game more than any other in the last 12 months thanks to its mobile release. Dicey Dungeons is basically Slay the Spire for babies - a nice, simple, charming game that doesn't require a ton of complexity but there's enough variety there to keep it interesting. I play this game on hard mode and do a couple of runs per day for some unknown reason, and still enjoy it.

#17. Ace Attorney 3

This game concludes the original trilogy in the best possible way. I love the huge dramatic conclusions that Ace Attorney offers and AA3 sticks the landing as well as any other game franchise.

#16. Tetris

Yep, it's Tetris. I still pick up Tetris 99 every few months to get bodied by all the lunatics that are still playing it years later. I've been battling online in Tetris for many years and this game kinda never gets old for me. It's one of the only games (maybe the only game period) that I still play competitively.

I had Chained Echoes on my Steam wishlist like a year prior to its release but I had no idea it was going to be more than a cool throwback. if anything, it's raised my expectations for Sea of Stars.

get the demo for Triangle Strategy. it's the first 3 chapters I think and progress transfers. it's actually a bad first impression because the game does a lot of table setting up front, which means a ton of dialogue and cutscenes. once you get into a flow, it's a lot more balanced. people who complain about the dialogue played the demo and decided against playing more.