#blorg post

Oh god why do they look like that?

I think it was a bold decision to put Fox McCloud in the new Mario Galaxy movie, and also include the entire animated short giving the backstory of Fox McCloud and his crew from said movie at the start of the direct (thank you, Miyamoto, for doing that btw, hearing they had a 2D Star Fox animation was the only thing that interested me about the Galaxy movie and now that they showed that part in the direct I don't need to see the movie anymore), and then immedietly after show the new designs of the crew just to make the contrast between the two designs even more drastic and jarring.

DLSS5 off vs DLSS5 on.

They've clearly gone more "realistic" with the designs, and on first impression it's a little uncanny, especially with the human-like eyes. The most noticable things are their faces, but also their feet, both of which are more closer to the original animals they're based off of. For me, the legs are probably the part I find the most contentious. I would argue their fancy space boots were a pretty iconic part of their design (they even mention the boots specifically in the Mario Galaxy Movie!!), but now their animal feet no longer fit into regular human-like shoes. Even going by fantasy space furry designs, I feel like these are pretty unusual. I'm no furry, but I've seen many a furry drawing during my time on the internets and even I know that, normally, furries emphasize the size of the feet or elongate the legs for these kinds of characters, so Fox in particular feels pretty stumpy.

If you crop out everything below the belt he's actually pretty cool.

Falco now has actual bird feet, and he looks a little shrimpy in this particular shot.

Imagine the sounds as he clacks around the Great Fox on his freakish bird talons.

It's not even consistent either. Slippy, for some reason, still seems to have the normal shoes. Real frogs have pretty long legs, so Slippy is the only one so far that feels a bit stylized and cartoony compared to the others, which feels incongruent with the rest of the cast.

Slippy: "mom I frew up"

Dispite these issues I have, I think I have already grown to the new designs and I don't dislike them. My immediete reaction to the direct was one of mild disgust but after seeing some of the key art renders I think the designs aren't too bad, with the potential to show a lot of personality. I'll probably have to see them in motion a bit more before I can form a full opinion.

I guess it doesn't matter too much, though, as most of the time they'll be stuck in the cockpits anyway and you won't be looking at disgusting furry feet whilst actually playing the game. While playing Star Fox 64 it's not like I was sitting there thinking constantly "Gee I sure wish I could see their feet".

It's another remake!?!?

I also wasn't thinking "Gee I wish I could play Star Fox 64 but with more cutscenes" but that's apparently what Nintendo is cooking up with this release. It's the exact same games and levels, but with overhauled graphics and additional cutscenes between missions. I feel like if something like this was announced during, say, the GameCube days, when new graphics were actually impressive, when we were wowed with the Resident Evil 1 remake and were all aiming for games to be more cinematic, this would have held a bit more appeal to me, but I can't help but feel lukewarm about the announcement because it is the same game I've replayed a billion times. Star Fox 64 is an arcade style game, designed to be replayed multiple times to aim for high scores. Arcade style games normally avoid long cutscenes to avoid disrupting the flow of the game play, so for me, these cutscenes will probably be viewed once then skipped every single time henceforth.

And let's face it, if you're a Star Fox fan, you're likely a fan because of Star Fox 64. It's the one game everyone universally likes (along with the SNES Star Fox game maybe). If you're a super hardcore fan, you've probably bought the game again on Virtual Console, on the Switch online service. Maybe you even played the 3DS port, or even tried that decomp. By now, you know the game like the back of your hand, have perfected your runs and know the best routes and tricks to get the highest score, have all the medals, and are probably starving for a sequel with NEW levels to sink your teeth into, but if this is a true remake then you probably won't be getting that itch scratched any time soon as it'll be the same levels again. Say what you will about Star Fox Zero, a game universally slammed for it's motion controls and rehashed story, but at least that game had new levels and remixed concepts.

Perhaps I can understand the appeal of doing another remake, though. It is THE Star Fox game that people like. It's the one with the memes everyone remembers. Every other game since then has struggled to recapture the original appeal. I even remember back in the day, people would complain that we never got a proper sequel that was in the classic on-rails style of Star Fox 64, so going back to that probably makes some sense from a marketing perspective, at least in the view to bring in new fans of the series and roping in the new interest drummed up by the Mario Galaxy Movie. That said, I think most people would have preferred a game in the style of Star Fox 64 but with new levels, instead of literally the same game again.

To me, this feels like a lost opportunity to use aspects they could take from other games to enhance the experience. On top of adding new stages, they could implement the mechanics from Star Fox Zero, which I felt were a pretty good evolution of that from 64. Like 64, where using charge shots nets bonus points, Zero also let you earn bonus points from shooting downed enemies again. The charge shot also was more powerful if a shot was fired the moment a lock on activated, and hyper lazers allowed you to lock on to two enemies at once. These would probably fit nicely into any new Star Fox game, but as these are new mechanics that were not part of the original game, we'll likely see these mechanics tossed out, which is a bit of a shame.

Maybe this reboot will work this time?

Star Fox Zero was intended to be a reboot for the franchise. After Star Fox Command, a game with like a billion different story endings, it probably makes sense to go back to basics. The Zero reboot never went anywhere though, I wonder wh-

Oh...

These days I'm pretty jaded on remakes and re-releases, I'm old enough to have played most of em when they came out. I have no desire to play Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil 4 remake or MGS3 Delta, because I still own the originals of those games and can readily play them at any time I desire.

That being said, I do hope this new Star Fox sells well. If it does, we can hope to enjoy sequels that build upon the mechanics of the game with new levels, new story and new characters. If it bombs, well I guess we'll see another remake in ten years or so.

On another note, when all the twitch streamers start becoming Star Fox vtubers using the game chat feature, know that I was doing it first.

The PCI Capture Card saga

In the past, I used to have a PCI capture card that had S-video and composite input. This is how I used to capture footage from my consoles back in the day, and how I recorded some of my old Youtube videos - from capturing Monster Hunter 3 footage from my Wii, to recording my playthroughs of Shenmue 1 and 2 for my old Let's Play, that little thing certainly brought life to my YouTube "career". At some point, I did an overhaul of my setup and got a new motherboard, and unfortunately this board lacked the regular PCI slots needed for this device - it only had those smaller PCI-e slots. So I went and purchased a different capture card that was compatible. Bad news, though - it didn't have S-video input, and for some reason it only supported PAL50Hz input.

Why did I give all this background? Well in my testing of Linux Mint, I tested the capture card and to my pleasant surprise it seemed to work completely fine in OBS - no need to fiddle with drivers or propriety software, it worked right out of the box. Not only that, I noticed it was giving me the option to record in 60hz! Splendid! So I recorded some footage of the PS2 Transformers game for a bit as a test, recording in lovely 60hz, only for the capture card to, seemingly, stop working all together. What happened? Did I break it? Was it never intended to record in 60hz? Maybe there was a reason that, on Windows, I wasn't permitted to record in 60hz? Whatever the reason, I no longer have a capture card capable of recording analogue video. Oops!

I Just Wanted to Draw Anime Titties

As you may or may not know, I infrequently draw things digitally, and for the past few years I've been drawing using Clip Studio Paint. Unfortunately, CSP does not have native Linux support (I did find a guide to get it working using Wine but I have not tried yet). No worries, though - Krita is an open-source alternative to CSP that works perfectly on Linux and, from what I've tried, is a perfectly cromulent replacement. Yippie!

However, my weapon of choice to draw is an old display pen tablet - an Artisul D13. I purchased this because I was too cheap for a Wacom, and it has served me well. Unfortunately, this does not seem to have support on Linux, only Windows drivers are available. I've had a peruse on forums around and looked at digimend stuff and there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. The issue is, for some reason, the tablet has no pen sensitivity. There are buttons on the side that act as shortcuts for undo-ing actions or scrolling and zooming, and those work fine, but pen sensitivity doesn't. However, I did find a work around - unputting some digimend command line code (sudo uclogic-probe, if you're wondering) somehow prompts the computer into recognizing the tablet properly, causing pen sensitivity to work. Unfortunately, this has the effect of rendering the side buttons non functional, so I resort to having to undo using ctrl-z on the keyboard, and scrolling and zooming on my canvas using the UI buttons like some kind of cave man. It's fine though, these are relatively minor work arounds and I suppose I'd just have to learn to live this this.

Or so I thought, because on a few odd occasions, my tablet just... works... Fully functional, pen sensitivity and working buttons... and I don't know how or why. It doesn't happen often, some days I switch on my computer, log in, and it's working as it should. Most of the time, it doesn't. I don't know how or why. I am clearly too stupid to figure this one out. I will perhaps research more into this at some point but, as you may remember, I am a Linux n00b, I barely understand how to tie my shoelaces.

In conclusion - Goodbye Windows? (Probably not)

Overall, despite the issues above, I'm pretty happy with Mint - it runs every game I've tried on it perfectly fine, it's clean, loads fast, no bloatware, it's great! I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in getting into Linux but is daunted by the technical side of things. Sadly, I don't think I'll be able to FULLY migrate from Windows - as mentioned, CSP does not have Linux support. My Elgato HD Capture card (which I use to record HDMI) also does not work on Linux. I've also been getting pretty deep into the VRChat rabbit hole these days, and my Bigscreen Beyond 2 headset also seems to be Windows only. For this reason, I'll keep dual booting with Windows for when I want to hit up VRChat or anything else that I can't figure out on Linux.

Before it was released I was already expecting to enjoy Shadow Generations. It was, after all, a follow up to Sonic Generations, one of my favourite Sonic games, so more of that sounded good to me.

Of course, I'd been burned by this before; Sonic Forces also promised to be 'more Generations' and that game ended up being pretty mediocre. Still, things were clearly different this time. One of those differences was the huge focus on our antihero - Shadow the Hedgehog.

Before I go on, I should preface by admitting that I never liked Shadow the Hedgehog. I wasn't a big fan of Sonic Adventure 2, the game he debuted in, and was of the opinion that he should have stayed dead at the end of that game instead of being bought back for Heroes. He was a fine character in SA2, but the Shadow the Hedgehog game released in 2005, with it's dark, edgy writing, made Shadow a huge joke to me. I'm surprised anyone could take that character seriously after they thought it was a good idea to give a cartoon hedgehog realistic guns. His backstory seemed like the progenitor for those terrible deviantart era OC fan characters. He became a meme for years because of SEGA's seeming lack of self awareness. This edginess continued somewhat in Sonic 06, but after the disasterous result of that game it seems like SEGA tried to course correct, and since then Sonic became much more lighthearted in tone and they became much more self aware.

Perhaps they course corrected too much, as the self-awareness almost went a little too far - at the time, I remember thinking Sonic Colours' writing and simplicity was refreshing, but it seems these days people complain about the jokes and humour in that game, and the kids began to yearn for the wacky shonen anime plots of the earlier games. I didn't entirely agree with this sentinent (I was always worried about what would happen if Sonic went back to it's EDGY phase again), but in the end I didn't care how terrible the story was so long as the gameplay was FUN. I still hold Sonic Colours in high regard, but not because of it's plot, it's because it was one of the few Sonic games that didn't make me want to kill myself (which are surprisingly rare in the entire series).

Frontiers marked an apparent shift to direct the story back to taking itself more seriously, and this trend has continued in Shadow Generations. Actually, I guess Forces also tried to do this, but Frontiers clearly had more competent writers (namely Ian Flynn) at the helm. Compared to it's companion game, Shadow Gens is darker in tone, and way more serious and dramatic. Unlike Sonic Gens, which is a celebration of Sonic's past games and history, Shadow Gens is a story that basically acts as a sequel to the Shadow 2005 game, exploring the tragic backstory of Shadow and his relationship with Maria, Gerald and Black Doom.

From what I wrote earlier you might think that this return to it's edgy roots might be something I was opposed to, and I did have some reservations initially, but it has actually been executed incredibly well. It's dramatic, but not overly edgy. It's darker, but not devoid of personality or charm. They walked a fine balance of making Shadow a more serious character with additional nuance to avoid making him seem like a joke (competent writing and not giving him guns probably helped a lot with this). The game's story, as well as the Dark Beginnings animated short, actually made me like Shadow the Hedgehog as a character for the first time ever. That being said, Shadow has the luxury of being pretty much the only character in the series that has a dark, tragic backstory to flesh out. Sonic couldn't have a story like this because his backstory amounts to being a way past cool dude who like to go fast, and I can't see them doing something like this with any other character (as funny as a stand alone Chaotix game exploring their financial problems sounds) There's nothing wrong with that, but what I'm getting at is I'm hoping whatever the story of the next game is will show restraint and be of an appropriate tone.

Anyway, I have discussed at great lengths about the story. I just thought it was interesting as someone who wasn't a fan of Shadow that it would win me over. I think that speaks to how well it was written Taking plot points from shitty games and working them into something more palatable to me. Even so, none of that would have mattered if the game sucked. As I mentioned earlier, I liked Sonic Colours not for it's story, but for it's gameplay. Shadow 05 has a shitty plot, but I could forgive it if the gameplay was good (it wasn't). So if Shadow Generations was a game that sucked then having a good story wasn't going to save it.

Thankfully, not only is this a great companion to Sonic Generations, but in my view this is one of the best 3D Sonic games ever made. When I played Sonic Frontiers, I wrote how it was a good foundation for what the next Sonic game should be. Although I enjoyed traversing the open zones, I suggested that they could be downscaled, and have more effort be put into more traditional Sonic stages rather than bite sized Cyberspace missions. Shadow Generations does exactly that - it's hub world, rather than being a glorified level select as it was on Sonic Generations, is now expanded to be it's own mini open zone, filled with rails, springs, ramps and many collectables that make traversing and exploring the hub fun. It feels a more polished too - the pop in isn't particularly noticable unlike Sonic Frontiers, and though the scale isn't as impressive as Frontiers it more than makes up for that with it's main stages - each with 2 acts and several mini challenge missions. These are exactly what was missing from Frontiers - gone are the repeated themes and assets seen in the Cyberspace missions, and back are the intricately designed stages with plenty of alternate paths with cool set pieces and spectacles that are fun to experience over and over.

Also contributing to my enjoyment of the game are the controls. I already commended Frontiers for having pretty tight controls for Sonic, and these have only been refined further in Shadow Gens. Shadow just feels incredibly easy to control and being able to pull off those reactions and jumps needed to access those alt paths in the stages feels great. It also does away with the overly complex combat system, there are no crazy dodges, parries or combo moves to do, but Shadow does have his Doom Spear and launcher that mixes things up and ties into level traversal too.

In fact, it kind of makes Sonic Generations feel clunky in comparison. The original game has been 'remastered', but very little has changed, besides some rewritten dialogue and some hidden Chao to find in each level. Graphically it looks exactly the same, and the controls remain untouched. This is fine, the game was and still looks and plays great, but Sonic compared to Shadow feels a lot stiffer to control. The way Sonic handles has been refined in the years through Forces and Frontiers, so going back to a game from 11 years ago, packaged with a brand new game, unfortunately makes inevitable comparisons, and playing the two games back to back definitely takes some getting used to.

My main complaint about Shadow Generations is that there just isn't enough of it. Not that it was a short game, it's length is pretty comparable to Sonic Generations and I can see myself replaying more in the future, plus the hub world exploration certainly adds a lot to the experience. I also understand this is a smaller project, designed to be a companion to Sonic Generations and was clearly made to capitalize on the release of the Sonic 3 Movie, but part of me was hoping for something a little more comparible to the 9 levels Sonic Generations has, while Shadow Gens has just 5.