Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is fine, regardless of how you play it - but it's also visually drab and poorly written. I'm not sure if I like its cliches less than Echoes', but neither lives-up to the first one. Beyond isn't exactly a breath of fresh air so much as it's just oxygen - a huge jump in production values, especially for secondary characters; Vi-O-La is more engaging than the cockpit in Corruption, and conveys a sense of scale much more effectively; the handholding is a little more obnoxious, but nothing new. I've finished the game and thoroughly enjoyed it - up there with Zero Mission, II, Fusion, and Dread; not quite Prime or Super. The scene when VUE-995 apologises to Samus and she just shrugs? Perfection. The ending though... Trash. I don't mean that the final fight or the conclusion of the story are bad, but the overwrought combat patterns and inconsistent conventions were maddening - i.e. Don't read too much into things; just dodge and shoot... Until you do need to literally read into them, and then risk repeating a significant amount of gameplay for no real reason. It's absolutely boneheaded design marring an otherwise brilliant game. Oh, and the secret ending? No spoilers, but that might be the stupidest origin story I've ever seen. Beyond is still an overall win, but talk about tripping over the finish line.
I've finished Other M as well, and it's mostly really good. The game doesn't play quite like anything else; Sakamoto clearly wanted to try something new in the wake of the original Prime trilogy, and he almost pulled it off. The heinously bad script needs a re-write, and that means those awful performances would need to be re-recorded. While the myriad hackneyed metaphors should to be toned way down, I don't think they have to go entirely away - there's an interesting story here that explores concepts like creation and responsibility in terms of motherhood; independence and cooperation in terms of choosing to respect a particular chain of command; all of that in the context of AI, genetic engineering, and military applications thereof. This one's due a proper re-working - existing fan projects look solid, but I'd like to see Nintendo fix this mistake themselves - same story and setting, new script, edited cutscenes, and no more motion controls. Oh, and the epilogue is great right up until the end; it's like they realised what they had done, gave us what we actually wanted, and then pulled the rug out from beneath us at the last moment... I honestly laughed out loud. Anyway, Prime Hunters next.
Finally getting around to trying the Oasis Driver for Windows Mixed Reality on Windows 11 25H2, and it's pretty rad and I'm pretty grateful.
Found a Ducky One 2 60% Mini RGB (DKON2061ST) with TTC Gold Pink switches for $6 at a thrift store - missing three keycaps, pretty dirty, and not responding to every key-press. Figured worth cleaning-up and maybe getting a new set of caps if it's serviceable. A quick clean yielded some improvement, but input's still spotty and I'm not super-interested in soldering anything. Maybe some compressed air into each switch as a last resort.
Also found a NETGEAR EAX12 AX1600 Wi-Fi Range Extender/AP/Adapter for $6 - no point in replacing the AC1200 TP-Link I picked-up the other week since it's currently only extending an AC router, but I couldn't pass-up a $94-savings.
ALSO found a D-Link DCS-8010LH for $5 - which was particularly refreshing after recently fighting with a set of Blink cameras for someone else, trying to get them to work without a subscription. Pro Tip: The full local storage option is only available on Blink if you don't have any kind of plan active, including the initial free trial 🙄
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