Corpse Run 517: Only $12.99!
LIVESTREAM UPDATE:
The next livestream will be this Friday, May 15th at 7pm est! We’re gonna doodle! We’re gonna chat! We’re gonna play games!
Specifically I’m planning of messing around with Trauma Center, which seems like a very streamable game. I WILL BE THE BEST DOCTOR!
You can watch the stream here or here.
See you then!
END LIVESTREAM UPDATE!
Rich taught me was amiibos were recently and I am frankly blown away. In the merciful event that you don’t know what they are, amiibos are little figurines with a chip in them that can unlock content in a limited amount of games (I imagine the library will grow, however).
In an even smaller amount of games, amiibos can store data & create a digital “you” that can challenge other people’s amiibos.
…amiibo’s can only store data from one game at a time, however. So if you spent a lot of time training your amiibo in Smash, you’d have to delete it in order to save data from something else.
Or… you can buy a second amiibo, which I assume Nintendo is banking on.
I think this practice is absolutely disgusting.
First off, the “unlockable content” is stuff that should already be available in the game. Nintendo has made claims in the past saying they take longer to release games because they want to make sure they’re as good as they can be.
…then why is there DLC or amiibo content released later on?
Second, one save slot? What year is this? There is no reason outside of forcing consumers to buy multiple amiibos for that to be the case.
If DLC is going to exist, I’m ok with it if it’s high quality like Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2. Forcing people to buy a figurine to get insignificant unlockables is just awful.
Yet somehow these things are apparently flying off the shelves, so I guess I must be a dummy.
I see it like this, I can get Nintendo figurines that also can unlock a few costumes or something. I’m pretty sure the actual unlocks are an afterthought or something (usually). It’s fine when it’s alt costumes like in Mario Kart, because that’s hardly necessary, and aren’t necessary in Smash (and get tedious once you have as many as I), but that Mario party mode would be inexcusable if it was any good.
Hopefully they will only require save data once a series (Smash for Smash, Super Mario for Mario Party). I’d be screwed because I very rarely delete data.
Hyrule Warriors unlocking bonuses that you can normally get was good, though. The Link spinner thing I attribute to some kind of logic like “if you like Link, you’ll have his Amiibo, and so you can have this bonus for him.” Or something.
If you can’t stand the unlock thing, just get a friend’s.
Yes, I like Amiibo.
I don’t want anyone to think that amiibo’s can’t do neat things or that people can’t like them, but it’s incredibly hard to justify the purchase price. Extra costumes/skins/etc are not worth the money, and the Mario Party game mode/Smash 4 “digital you” are features that should already be part of the game. Especially Smash, as many people bought it for both the Wii U and 3DS.
If Nintendo wants to sell figurines, that’s fine! If they want to sell figurines with extremely limited capabilities so that a player can unlock game content that should already be available, that’s a cash grab. Amiibos are just a new form of DLC, which I generally hate.
Tiny Tina in BL2 (the example used in the post) was great DLC because it offered a huge new campaign complete with a ton of new levels, items, geometry, textures, voice acting, etc… it could have been a full featured game on it’s own. In order to show that I’m not blindly in love with Borderlands 2, their extra character DLC (Gaige & Kreig) should either have come out with the game at launch, or have been offered without charge when it was completed.
When DLC like that exists, companies are getting away with charging us full price for incomplete games and then charging us again for the remaining content. Unfortunately this has become the norm and will likely only get worse over time.
Hopefully I’m wrong!
That’s still a bad example for unnecessary DLC, for a few reasons:
* Neither of them were complete by the time BL2 hit release date, Krieg by nearly a year
* Gaige /was/ included free for anyone who preordered, among many other bonuses
* Both characters represented a significant amount of time and effort between voicework, animations, and significantly different skilltrees + playstyles from any of the previous 8 classes, to the point where asking for them to have been free isn’t realistic, especially when they’re already only being sold for $5
But you can get a Yoshi. Made of wool. Woolshi!
Not really seeing the logic behind Figure = good, Figure + extra stuff = cash grab. Just see the DLC as a freebie.
In order to play Amiibo mode in Mario Party 10, which is the mode closest to the original Mario Party form, you need an Amiibo to unlock it. This is not extra stuff in this case. This is a core feature to the game that is locked by this figure.
So Figure = good, yes. Figure + extra stuff is also good, yes. But this is a case of having a figure + core gameplay. An entire game mode that was the basis of Mario Party 1-8 is blocked off by a figurine. To me this is no different than Day 1 DLC, which is always frowned upon.
Personally, I collect them first because I love character figurines and would buy official Nintendo ones even if they didn’t do anything. However, considering how many there are and how cheaply they’re made, $13 is pretty steep. I wouldn’t be that upset if they weren’t such a problem to find even for that price, though.
That being said, it’s obviously a cash grab for Nintendo, and it’s been hugely successful so far. I have like 9 amiibos myself, and plan to buy several more. I just realized how much money I’m spending on these things. Fuck.
To be fair, they are coming out with a card system that will work like an amiibo, but without the fancy figurine. Not quite sure how much it will be or how they will be distributed, but it might make the single save file tolerable…maybe.
Itemized;
>It’s a device that grants you cool extra content!
It is also a standard physical collectible figure. If you are just using it for the content and you could care less for the figure itself, in Nintendo’s eyes you are doing it wrong.
>It works with just a few games…
I’m not sure what to make of it. Did you, or anyone, expect the company to patch every existing WiiU game with new content for 50+ amiibos all at the same time? Give it time.
>One save slot.
I agree. I’m not sure how the chips work, but there probably is enough for more than one game considering it’s just a few kb.
>Content that should have already existed.
Again, what is this? I don’t remember smash/fighting game players complaining that the game should have an option to train your own AI fighter, or Dinasty Warriors players rioting over not being able to press a button on the title screen (Instead of tapping a figure) to get extra random items, or how Mario Kart Wii should have allowed you to dress your Mii as other existing characters. How do you scale “Should have existed”?
Let me first state that nothing I say is absolute or representative of anyone’s thoughts but my own.
I define “should have already existed” as features that are either part of core gameplay or as features not worth paying money for.
If a company wants to release extra costumes, that isn’t worth extra money to me. The Smash AI fighter is more robust than old games “ghosting” your fights/races/etc, but virtually similar in spirit and should not be seen as a feature worth paying extra for.
The one save slot issue is particularly damning and appears to be a limitation of the technology Nintendo chose. Why they chose such a limited tech is beyond my understanding and appears designed to force players to buy multiple amiibos.
You’re right in that it’s a collectible figure, but that’s secondary. What it really is is physical DLC, which I am generally against (but there are some exceptions).
The “one save slot” thing reminds me of an experience that I had with Far Cry 4. My best friend had gotten the game with a purchase of a graphics card for his computer. I watched him play it for a bit (and I had played Far Cry 3 myself), so after he was done, he said, “You can try it out.” I was excited, and I went to start a game for myself, and…there were no other save slots. I would’ve had to have erased his to have my own save slot. I thought that was inexcusable for a game made in 2015. It kinda killed my interest in trying the game after that.
As a side-note, Pokemon games still do the one save slot thing, and it annoys me, however; I’m also usually not sharing those games with anyone.
Ehh, I feel it’s sorta a lose-lose situation. I mean, if they make the figures have only tiny, small bonuses, then you have people going ‘well what’s the point?”. But if you start giving the amiibos more value then it becomes “Hey that’s not fair, it should have been in the base game!”
Personally they should have just made an Amiibo game/games in the vein of Skylanders. But even then, people would compare it to Smash Bros and complain about needing figures for that.
Personally, I get them because they’re (at base price) cheap figures of Nintendo Characters that don’t normally get figures – which is to say, those characters that aren’t Mario or Pokemon. They’re all uniform size and style, and so even though one figure may not look like much, they look fairly impressive on my shelf with a few dozen. In this day and age of digital games, I really do like having something physical on display.
As far as the save-slots go? Considering most games that use them so far don’t actually need the save-slots, I don’t have a problem with it yet. But yeah, shouldn’t it be possible for the game to save that data, instead of the figure? Each figure just needs a unique ID, which the game would read. Now yeah, if you’re taking it to a friend’s house, then you’d have to have room for one save file on the figure, but you should be able to override say, your Smash data for Mario Party data, and then come back to Smash and have it remember the save file. Really the only problem this would cause is if you have 2 separate Wii Us, or 2 between you and a friend, you could create unique data for the same Amiibo on 2 different consoles. To which I say… so what?
Bit of a necro but I’ve just seen this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amiibo-Action-Replay-Powersaves-Nintendo/dp/B00WTDI2OM/